Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 07/Mary Hines

Overview
This article is based off of the interview wherein Mary Hines is questioned about her life and experiences.

Life & Career
Mary Hines was born in Monroe County to an impoverished family. Hines's older siblings got married and became mothers and housewives as soon as they became of age, Mary on the other hand had higher ambitions. She decided that she wanted to defy the wishes of her parents and cultural expectaions by pursuing a career in teaching. She convinced her parents to allow her to be the first in her family to attend college and after months of convincing she enrolled at the Colored industrial seminary to further her education. Her parents were not very affluent as her father was a slave prior to the Civil War and because of this they couldn't afford her tuition. Hines had to pay for her own tuition by doing laundry at the Seminary. After gradauting, she returned to the seminary to teach, but after two years of teaching she decided to get married and suspend her teaching career. Unfortunatley her husband tragiclly lost his eyesight meaning he could no longer work, this also occured during the depth of the Great Depression, so Hines was forced to start harvesting food from nearby farms to feed her family.

Minority women and education
At this time minority women were not expected to achieve much more than being a housewife and mother. Being a black woman and having an education aswell as a career was practically unheard of. Although black women do attend colleges at a higher rate than males [1] the overall rate for both black men and women was very low. Historically, black educators are not very well represented but that may be due to biases that occur when history was being recorded [3]. In reality, it is belived that there were many black women involved in education that played significant roles in both the abolitionist movements and the Civil War.

Depression era impact on Women
The Great Depression impacted all aspects of American life, effecting everyone from adults to children equally. The scarcity of resources caused many women and housewives to become creative in their efforts to provide for their families [6]. During the Depression, as jobs became more rare by the day, marginalized groups such as Black people and Black women specifically, were forced to turn to self-employment as a means to sustain themselves and their family [7].