Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 10/Eliza Hall

Overview
Eliza Hall was an African American washerwoman interviewed for the Federal Writers Project in 1939.

Biography
Eliza Hall was born around 1869 into a home in Walnut Cove, North Carolina. Her mother Lucy Hall and her father Pete Hall worked for a man named Marse John Hall as slaves.

Early Life
As a child, Eliza was among eight others who would walk to an old church every day to be taught by a man named Uncle Will Bailey, a volunteer that would teach whenever he had spare time. She considered herself lucky as not many African American children were able to attend school at the time. General activities done at schools, such as reading and writing, were not what Eliza had to do where she went. Instead, the children mainly colored or sung songs while at school. This was because almost all of the children were illiterate, including the volunteers who would teach. After going to school for only five months, Eliza’s mother taught her how to become a washerwoman when she was old enough to do the job.

Adult Life
Eliza was eighteen years old when she married her spouse, Ed, who worked in a brickyard at the time. The pay was not enough for Ed and Eliza to live on, so he decided to work on a farm. After a night working in the rain, he was diagnosed with Bronchopneumonia, leading to his death. Shortly after her spouse's death, Eliza's two daughters named Sadie and Elsie became very sick at a young age from undisclosed illnesses. After her daughter's deaths, she attended Holy Cross Primitive Baptist Church regularly. She continued her work as a washerwoman to pay the bills, but struggled to compete with new laundry businesses and white workers. At the time of her interview, Eliza lived with her sister and several grandchildren near Jamesville, North Carolina.

Education for African American Children
Until the beginning of the 1900s, the white majority did not make educating African Americans a priority. Some parts of the United States, especially the south, had strong laws against the education of African Americans to protect slavery. This majority figured if African Americans obtained more knowledge, they would want jobs that require more intelligence than typical jobs given to slaves. When education became an opportunity for African Americans, segregation in schools was considered normal for people across the United States. For example, the Constitution of North Carolina required that all schools be "separate but equal", which was far from the truth. African American children never got the same supplies or books as the white children. In fact, most of the books these children had were old and passed down from the white schools. Less money was put towards schools for African Americans because they were run by a white-controlled government. Due to that, it was rare for any of these children to receive an education past primary school.

Job Challenges for African Americans During the 1930s
During the widespread economic downturn of the Great Depression, African Americans experienced the highest unemployment rates and were the first to receive job cuts. According to the Library of Congress, the unemployment rate of African Americans reached 50 percent. Racism across the country led to African Americans receiving lower-wage professions, leaving them with less financial security to fall back on when the depression hit. Many African Americans eventually lost their entry-level, low-paying professions to white people seeking jobs after losing their previous work. Since African Americans did not have many options when it came to what jobs they could obtain, they had to work intensively harder than the average white American. With the unrest caused by the mass unemployment came a new kind of hatred towards African Americans in the job market. This led to the creation of klan-like groups spreading hate across the country. In Atlanta, Georgia, a group called "The Black Shirts" paraded around the city holding signs displaying many different racial slurs against African Americans. There were also many instances where African Americans were ambushed while working and killed by white people so they could eventually take their jobs.