Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 013/Odessa Polk

Overview
Odessa Polk was an African American woman who lived from the late 19th to mid-20th century in | Charlotte, North Carolina. She was interviewed for the Federal Writers Project in 1939 by Cora Bennet, a member of her local church.

Early Life
Odessa Polk was an African American woman born on May 22, 1896 in Charlotte, North Carolina to Walter Polk and Mary Gaither. She was the last child from her mother’s first marriage and the third of fourteen. Polk’s mother remarried when she was three and her stepfather rejected Polk and her two full siblings. All three children were sent to live with their grandmother. Money was tight in Polk’s early years because she received no financial support from her parents and her grandmother was elderly. At the age of nine, Polk began washing a woman’s dishes for twenty-five cents a week. During this time, she attended a school to work after hours for her education. The people in Polk’s life did little to emphasize the importance of education, so once she reached fifth grade she dropped out of school. Shortly after, Polk entered the work force full-time, attending to a white woman’s home. A few years later, her grandmother passed when she was a young teenager and she moved in with her aunt

Motherhood
While working domestic jobs, Polk gave birth to three daughters while she was between the ages of fifteen and twenty-three. The first born was Madeline, followed by Mary, nicknamed Wootsie, and Sara. As a single mother, Polk struggled to financially support her children and raise them while they were young. Before Sara was born she moved out of her aunt’s home and began renting a residence, claiming “I decided to change my way of livin’.” While the girls were babies or toddlers, she could not leave the home to work so she often did her neighbor’s laundry for money. Once Polk’s daughters were of school age, she was met with a greater challenge. The family never experienced food insecurity, but they struggled to afford clothing and other necessities. Polk often sacrificed her needs for her children’s own, buying them clothes for school and church, but remaining home in her threadbare attire. She recalled an incident where doctors informed her that Mary, her second child, needed her tonsils removed. Polk could not afford the surgery, so she sent Mary to school as Sara, who was young enough for the school to cover the cost of the procedure.

Later Life
Despite Polk’s strong wish for her children to graduate, none of them did. Both Madeline and Sara fell pregnant at the same time as young teenagers, giving birth to daughters of their own between 1931 and 1932. A year later, Polk’s eldest daughter also fell pregnant. All three mothers dropped out of school to work to support their own children. They also helped Polk with rent, wood, and food. Polk spent the rest of her life working for neighbors doing domestic jobs or volunteering at her local church. She worked as a cook for quite a long time, making enough to get by. She spent her final years with her family, saving up for a radio and anticipating the graduation of her grandchildren. On March 10, 1959 Polk suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 63.

Being African American during the Great Depression
The Great Depression disproportionately affected African Americans. Despite prevalent job loss “black unemployment rates in the South were double or even triple that of the white population.” This was a substantial number of people because most African Americans resided in the South between 1900-1930 at the beginning of the Great Migration. If African Americans held jobs prior to the Great Depression they were “greatly concentrated in unskilled labor and service jobs.” These jobs paid very little, and if they were lost most African Americans had very little savings to depend on during the Great Depression. New Deal agencies sought to relieve these populations, but funds were distributed by the states, many of which still practiced segregation and withheld the aid. The programs, and the administration they were implemented by, “did little to challenge existing racial discrimination and Jim Crow laws prevalent during the 1930s.”

Single Parenthood in the early 1900s
During 1900, approximately 8.5% of children lived with single parents. There was no apparent link to the prevalence of single parenthood and immigration status during that time, but there were discrepancies across race and locational differences. According to the 1900 census “blacks were about twice as likely as whites to live with a single parent,” particularly in urban areas. The causes of single parenthood typically included parental death, children born out of wedlock, or teenage pregnancy. Most of these instances resulted in single mothers raising the child or children. During the Great Depression, around 1930, birth rates suddenly fell across all demographics. Regardless, single parenthood persisted as fathers began abandoning established families, a method “sometimes called a ‘poor man’s divorce.’” Fathers were also occasionally driven to suicide, ashamed of their inability to financially support their children.

Racial Segregation in schools and the link to poverty
Completing high school in the twentieth century far from guaranteed African Americans well-paying jobs. A few years prior to the turn of the century, Plessy v. Ferguson permitted “separate but equal” racial segregation under Jim Crow laws. Black schools grew drastically underserved and underfunded. Many families doubted attending segregated schools past a certain age would be beneficial. Impoverished African American families saw their kids turning to work as a necessity to keep food on the table. In the early 1900s, high schools whose students were poor minorities were notorious for having high dropout rates. Later, a lack of education keeps these individuals trapped in low paying unskilled jobs for the rest of their lives. If these individuals had children of their own, they would struggle to financially support them. Once again, a family would have to choose between education and money. This created a pattern called the cycle of poverty.