Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 07/Rosa Lee Johnson

Overview
Rosa Lee Johnson was an African-American cook and house maid that lived in Ozark, Alabama, who was interviewed by George S. Barnard as a part of the Federal Writers’ Project.

Early Life
Rosa Lee Johnson was one of sixteen children born in Waycross, Georgia. The exact date of her birth is unknown, but at the date of the interview she claimed to be about 31 years old. Her father worked as a turpentine chopper, so he was only able to come home once a week. Johnson later moved to Camilla, Georgia where her and her family cultivated corn and cotton as sharecroppers. Johnson went to school until the 3rd/4th grade, so she was able to read and write to a limited extent. Johnson married her first husband when she was about 12 or 13 years old and worked together as tenant farmers. She did not have any children with her first husband and only accumulated more debt at the end of the year. About a year later, her husband died, so she remarried and moved to Ozark, Alabama. Johnson stated that her marriage was unhappy because her husband frequently cheated on her and they lived separately; however, she did not divorce him because the costs weren’t worth it.

Life in Ozark, Alabama
Johnson lived with her son, nephew, and 3 others in a four-room house located behind Mr. Mac Pippin’s house in Ozark, Alabama. She paid $4.00 a month for the house’s rent, which did not have hydrant water, electricity, a bathtub, or toilet. In Ozark, Johnson worked for Mrs. Laura Barnes on Eufaula Street as a cook and house maid, where she was paid $2.50 a week. Her daily routine consisted of waking up at 5:30 to cook breakfast for Miss Laura’s children, followed by washing the dishes left the night before. Johnson then cleaned the dining room, kitchen, and the rest of the house. Finally, Johnson would cook what Miss Laura ordered for dinner and then leave for home after cleaning up at around 1 o’clock. Johnson spent the little free time she had watching picture shows downtown and talking to her neighbors. Johnson did not vote as it was “white folks’ business. She was also indifferent to the law because it did not bother her as a house maid. Johnson had been a part of the Methodist church since she was 12 years old, so she went to church every Sunday.

Turpentine Farming
With the industrialization of the U.S, the lumber and naval stores industries rapidly developed in the late 1800s. Consequently, entrepreneurs bought large tracts of land for the extraction of naval stores and lumber, both of which required large operating costs. As a result, [wikipedia:turpentine|turpentine]] farmers and sawmill operators sought workers at the lowest possible wage level: freedmen. Black people had been the slaves of whites before the Civil War, so they still considered them as “their natural labor supply to be used as they saw fit.” African-Americans who were often sold by the state to the highest bidder for convict leasing and debt peonage, resulting in hundreds of low-cost workers available for turpentine labor. The workers were forced to stay with their employer until their debt was paid off or they faced criminal action. Such turpentine camps in the early 1900s were basically legal methods of forced labor, aimed at the newly freed black people.

Tenant Farming and Sharecropping
After the end of the Civil War, all the slaves in the South became freedmen. The Southern states’ economy was heavily dependent on agriculture, such as the cultivation of cotton. However, with the emancipation of slaves, the Southern states were at risk of losing their main source of labor, which meant that they were at risk of losing money. As a result, in order to keep their source of labor, white plantation owners formed tenant farming and sharecropping. Tenant farming was an agricultural system where farmers cultivate crops on rented lands with a payment of product, cash, or both. Sharecropping is the agricultural system where families rent small plots of land in return for a portion of their crop, which is given to the landowner. Both of these systems were rigged to trap black farmers in a cycle of labor as farmers were often plagued with crop failures, low cotton prices, exhaustion of soil, excessive interest rates, and more. As a result, many freedmen were forced to continue laboring, only to accumulate more debt. They were essentially “system[s] of near slavery without legal sanctions,” that kept freedmen at a lower social status.

Jim Crow and Segregation in the South
Segregation was fully institutionalized in Alabama in the beginning of the 1900s. Segregation in the South was both a legal and social system created to maintain the repression of black people. Alabama passed the Black Code in 1865, which, like other black codes, suppressed and controlled the lives of black citizens. For instance, one black code required an annual tax for black people whose occupations weren’t either a farmer or servant. According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, “formal and informal policies of repression, such as separate public accommodations, limited access to suffrage, and strict control over black labor, were put into place between the 1870s and 1890s.” The Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in 1896 upheld the constitutionality of segregational facilities in the South as long as they were “separate but equal.” However, public facilities, like schools, were only separate and not equal. As a result, black children were provided with much worse educational opportunities as their white counterparts, limiting their literary proficiency significantly. The Civil War provided black people the legal equality with their former masters, but it was unable to provide the same “experience in the exercise of freedom or the moral status in the sight of his white fellow citizens.”

Voter Disenfranchisement
Voter disenfranchisement, or the revocation of voting rights, was prevalent during the Jim Crow era as a component of segregation. One way African-Americans had their voting disenfranchised was by brute force and fear. Violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan were formed to intimidate black people who sought equal political and social rights, often by methods like [wikipedia:lynching|lynching]]. Another method white people used to disenfranchise black voters was the [wikipedia:poll_tax|poll tax]]. Many Southern states began advocating for the codification of the poll tax as a prerequisite for voting beginning from the 1890s. The main reasons for the implementation of a poll tax was the “desire to eliminate the Negro voters from politics.” In addition to the poll tax, Southern states also pushed for the adoption of an educational requirement as a prerequisite for voting. These requirements were made to specifically target black voters and ensure their absence in the political sphere.