Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Fall/105i/Section 026/Mother and Father Baker

Mother and Father Baker were former slaves who lived in Macon County, Alabama when they were interviewed for the Federal Writer's Project on January 18, 1939.

Early Life as Slaves
Mother Baker was born as a slave and her family belonged to James Greese and Moster Greese. Mother Baker said that her owners never beat her or any of the other slaves and all mothers and their children were kept together. Children weren't sold from the mothers and fathers which would have separated them from their families. Mother Baker thought that her owners were kind and when Moster Greese was sick, all of the slaves were with Moster Greese who told them she would see them in heaven. Although Mother Baker was a slave as a child she still had good memories and was not treated as bad as most other slaves in the south.

Father Baker's mother passed away when he was two weeks old, and there was a woman who nursed him until he was able to eat. He was told to stay in the "white folk's" house as a child and help around the house although he was only given one quilt to sleep on. His owner was Old Ben Mott. Ben Mott's son-in-law, Tony, hated the slaves; he would give boys a shirt and no pants and would twist the shirt over their head and beat them for no reason. As Father Baker grew slightly older he was no longer allowed to live in the house and would have to go to the quarters where the other slaves lived and try to stay there, but they would tell him there was no room and he had nowhere to stay in the dark. He had a very hard time as a child being a slave for such cruel owners.

Adult Life
Mother and Father Baker lived together most of their adult lives in Macon County, Alabama. They lived in a house with nice flowers, a well kept yard, and several chickens of different kinds. Father Baker greatly appreciated having a home of his own and says that was why he worked so hard when he was young to get himself and all of his children a home. They had eight children and all of them received 40 acres of land from Father Baker. Throughout Mother Baker's adult life she was a strong believer in religion and went to church every Sunday, and was also very fond of the Tuskegee institute where she had been going for around 50 years by the time she was 83. She loved the Tuskegee Institute and Booker T. Washington, who was the founder; she said that going to the Tuskegee Institute gave her the same satisfaction as going to church. Father Baker also praised President Franklin D. Roosevelt saying “He’s a fine man, he believes in giving a man a chance... He even wants us to be able to read us folks.” They lived a happy life as adults and were big supporters of Booker T. Washington and President Roosevelt who were both trying to help African Americans in a world after slavery.

Tuskegee Institute
At the close of the Civil War, approximately ninety percent of the African Americans in the South were illiterate and essentially still considered as a slave caste by whites. The Tuskegee Institute is an institution created by Booker T Washington after the Civil War in an effort to help former slaves. His personal experience of having to work to rise up from the position of a slave child during the Civil War, led to his work establishing vocational schools around the country with Tuskegee being the most famous. Tuskegee’s curriculum was developed around the concept of making education relevant to students' lives and giving them training in real-life occupations. Booker T. Washington managed to acquire an old plantation which became the site of the campus. He made his students build their own school, raise their own livestock, and grow their own crops. He believed that Blacks would only be accepted by Whites if they provided society with needed skills and that they would eventually gain full social participation if they proved to be responsible citizens. Although the Tuskegee Institute was helping African Americans, it still received criticism from people like W.E.B Dubois, who had his own ideas of education for African Americans. Dubois thought that "industrial training for black youth perpetuated the subservient status of blacks and relegated academic pursuits to whites only." He believed that Washington's position on educating African Americans was a position that denied African Americans true equality.

The New Deal
During the 1930s, the United States experienced the Great Depression; during this time, a drastic amount of people in the United States were living in poverty and the United States was not in a good place financially. With the struggles of the Great Depression, the American people decided to elect Franklin D. Roosevelt to be the President with hopes he could lead the United States out of this depression. African Americans during the depression were especially struggling as they were laid off of work at a rate up to three times higher than white workers. As President, Roosevelt came up with the New Deal to get America out of this depression.The New Deal was a series of programs by the government by government handouts, new jobs, and was targeted towards low income and Americans living in poverty. African Americans benefited greatly from New Deal programs, though discrimination by local administrators was common. Low cost public housing was made available to African-American families through the New Deal program. The Works Progress Administration gave jobs to many African Americans, and its Federal Writers Project supported the work of many African-American authors who's stories otherwise would have never been known. The New Deal was viewed as a success for African Americans as many of them greatly benefitted from the New Deal programs across the country as previous president had neglected to help them during the Great Depression.