Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Spring/Section24/B.E. Cokes

Overview
B.E. Cokes was a white, lifelong "tramp" or hobo who traveled throughout the United States by freight train. He was directly involved in the relief effort of the 1937 Ohio River Flood and constantly went to jail for public drunkenness and trespassing onto trains.

Biography
B.E. Cokes was born and raised in Bardwell, Kentucky. He lived in a log house until the age of 14 when he began to show interest in exploring the outside world due to the influence of his friend Ben. After being persuaded by Ben, Cokes tricked his dad into giving him money that he would use on his journey out of town. They left on a train and headed towards Fulton, Kentucky followed by Memphis, Tennessee. While on the train toward Memphis, Ben died in an accident as he was crushed by the train’s wheels after falling asleep and sliding off the plank board he used to lay down. Ben’s death had a huge emotional impact on Cokes, who decided to return home after the incident while having been inspired to not be a hobo again. Almost a year later, Cokes met a girl who lived near him who he fell in love with despite both of their parent’s objecting to the relationship. After they both agreed to run away, Cokes tricked his dad again for some money to travel by saying the money was to pay for a boarding school as his dad wanted him to attend school. Then, he left with the girl to eventually end up in New Orleans. In the city, the girl found a job working for a Greek man who Cokes did not like. He tried to persuade her to leave her employment but she refused. Later, she claimed the man was planning to kill Cokes after the man offered him a job to go with him and his friend for duck hunting, and he ended up going home without her. On his way home, he met and got with some older tramps where he ended up getting arrested with one of them for sneaking onto a train. Cokes was forced to pick cotton and was beaten repeatedly. He ended up in a hospital where a worker contacted his dad who paid the $50 dollar fine to get him out of jail. After going back to Bardwell, he ended up marrying a different girl who died not much later in 1928, two years after his father died. Despite their short marriage, they had two kids but Cokes decided to let his deceased wife's mom keep them. He lived in Paducah, Kentucky when the 1937 Ohio River Flood occurred in the area and he worked as a part of the rescue effort due to his employment in the town on a boat. Following the flood, Cokes moved in with his only sibling, his sister, who took ownership of property in Sikeston, Missouri after the death of her husband. After a brief stint residing with his sister, Cokes once again undertook a living as a hobo and traveled throughout the country to places such as California and Canada. Cokes planned to settle down following the end of his travels.

Personal Life
B.E. Cokes was an outspoken anti-foreigner or xenophobe who went to jail numerous times for public drunkenness and sneaking onto trains. He had one sister who resided as a widow on a big farm in Sikeston, Missouri. Cokes traveled all around the United States as a tramp by train due to his interest in exploring and gaining experience. He had a daughter named Gladys who was in a troubled marriage with a man who beat her. She ended up shooting her husband in self-defense. Later on, she became happily married to a different man. Cokes also had a son named Glen who he described as good-looking. Glen went to jail for manslaughter and then worked on a boat that went from Cairo, Illinois to New Orleans. Cokes suffered from an operation on a tubercular hip that caused him to walk with a limp. Cokes was a believer in God and reincarnation.

Early 20th Century Xenophobia
The conversation on immigration and opposition to new immigrants was widespread in America in the early 1900s. Since the 1880’s, Americans held increasing levels of resentment for outsiders and newly arriving immigrants for several different reasons. Many began to associate concepts like disease, slums, and poverty to newly arriving Southern and Eastern European immigrants. Southern and Eastern European immigrants faced government reporting that supported their “inferiority” and separated them from past immigrants. Furthermore, World War I significantly raised levels of nationalism that went along with an increased dislike of foreigners. These widespread American attitudes of xenophobia led to "Discriminatory national origins quotas put in place in the 1920s [that] kept the doors open to immigrants from northern and western Europe but closed them to southern and eastern European immigrants, as well as those from Asia." As well, businesses began to value new immigrant laborers less in the face of a new focus on upgrading technology. All these changes led to rising political backlash that resulted in greater restrictions on immigration in the form of such bills like the Immigration Act of 1924 which served to limit immigration to 150,000 people a year. Before World War I, immigration in America had reached levels of one million new immigrants a year.

Prohibition
From 1920 to 1933, the sale and production of alcoholic beverages were completely banned within the United States during the Prohibition era. At the end of the era, levels of annual alcoholic consumption per capita had dropped to less than half the level prior to Prohibition. However, the drinking of alcohol became more publicly accepted, especially among young people, as a result of increased positive media coverage that took place under Lost Generation writers. As well, Americans who liked to drink continued to do so as "...historians estimate that by 1925, there were as many as 100,000 illegal bars in New York City alone...". Due to Prohibition, there were limited options for alcoholics and those suffering from alcoholism to seek help as inebriety asylums and self-help societies went into deep decline during the era. This led to the later creation in 1935 of Alcoholics Anonymous, a self-help group that used methods that used insight gained from the experience of the Prohibition era.