Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Spring/Section25/A.C. Jones

Overview
A.C. Jones was born in Smith County, Nashville. He used to work in his uncle’s store and post office, and telephone company in Carthage. Then he worked as a motorman in a street car company in Nashville. He was interviewed by Agee L for the Federal Writer’s Project in 1939.

Biography
A.C. Jones was born in Smith County, Nashville circa 1986. He was raised on a farm and started working on the farm as soon as he is old enough to work. Jones did not get much education since he helped his father with the crop in the spring and worked in his uncle’s country store through the winter months. He went through the eighth grade and quit to work, first as a regular employee in his uncle’s store and then an apprentice in a telephone company. Jones moved from Carthage to Nashville later because he thought he could make more money in Nashville. He then worked as a motorman in a street car company ever since. Though Jones worked split hours and therefore had to get up very early to work, he was satisfied with his job. According to Jones, “the company is loyal and nice” and he could make a living during that time. When visited by the interviewer Agee L. in 1939, 6 years after the Great depression. Jones admitted that “he had no extra money to save in the bank and wished he could have accumulated something for his old age”. Four years ago, around 1935, a reckless State motorcycle officer headed toward the town at about seventy or eighty mile per hour ran into Jones and his family when they almost home. Jones sued him for two thousand dollars but got nothing.

A.C. Jones didn’t approve of drinking or dancing. He thought these two things lowered people’s morals and it’s sin to do. He wanted his children to have a good education and raise them up in the right way. A.C Jones occasionally had trouble with colored people on his car when they tried to sit up to far or didn’t drop their fare in the box if they thought they could get by. He thought “the country would be better off if it didn’t have so many colored people”. A.C. Jones is a Democrat. From his perspective, a man’s vote is his privilege and women should not mess in politics. When a woman goes to the polls, she loses her womanhood.

Gender Inequality in Political Engagement
During the 19th century, women did not fit the male ideal of citizenship. According to this ideal, a citizen was an independent producer who voted and served in the military when called upon to defend the nation. Women were regarded as politically different from men and the main marker of this difference was the absence of vote. Women were not able to vote until the woman’s right movement of the nineteenth century. By common law, women lack political autonomy, they were members of the political community only through their husbands and fathers. Further, women had no legal existence separate from her husband. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, politically active women sought the vote for both instrumental and status-related reasons. They wanted to vote so they might use it to advance women’s issues and progress women’s political standing. With the vote, women could become persons before the law and they could assert their political interest in the electoral arena. After woman’s rights movement and the Nineteenth Amendment, women received the right to vote in 1920.

Entertainment in America During 1930s
During the 1930s, American people experienced the Great Depression(1929-1939). While the Great Depression ended up having a major impact on 1930s culture and fashion, people still found ways to enjoy life with what they had. When people lost their job due to high unemployment rate, they stopped earning money. Though life was difficult and the money was tight, some entertainment options grew in popularity --- particularly radio. Purchase a set of radio set does not cost much but it provides unlimited free entertainment. The whole family would sit together around the radio to enjoy sporting events and comedy, such as Amos ’n’ Andy, to relax from the everyday struggles. The rising popularity of swing music encouraged people to forget their troubles and dance. Bandleaders drew crowds of young people to ballrooms and dance halls around the country. People still enjoyed going to the movies as well. Hollywood would hold sweepstakes and drawings for prize money at movie theaters to attract audiences. One of the beloved movies, Wizard of Oz, was released toward the end of the Great Depression in August 1939. Musicals, “screwball” comedies and hard-boiled gangster pictures likewise offered audiences an escape from the grim realities of life in the 1930s.

The Prosperity of Streetcar
The first streetcars started popping up in various American cities around 1881. These buses on rails were able to hold more passengers than the previous cable cars at a low cost, enticing more pedestrians to get a ride around the city. Streetcar lines often ran right into the city’s center, which raised the value of the downtown area. Luxury retail chains and other places of entertainment seized this opportunity to set up shop at streetcar hubs. Because street cars made it easy to travel from one end of city to the other, the downtown layout was developed: commercial areas packed in the center with less residential zones surrounding the city. Though the streetcar systems well developed in many cities, enabling people commute from suburbs into city for work, ridership began to decline during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Many lines closed due to ration of rubber tires and gasoline. Though the motor buses replaces the streetcars later to some extent, economic analysis concludes that motor buses were consistently the least economical transit vehicle during 1935-1950.