Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Spring/105i/Section 24/Liza "Ma" Williams

Overview
Liza “Ma” Williams was an African American laundress and root doctor born sometime in the 1830s. Williams lived with her family and two children in Savannah, Georgia. On January 13, 1939, Williams was interviewed by the Federal Writers' Project. The date of her death is unknown.

Personal Life
Little is known about Williams' early life. She worked as a laundress in different hotels in Georgia for most of her adult life. Sometime during her life, Williams married and had two children; they eventually moved to Savannah. The family lived on 640 Lavinia Street, a house within an African American segregated neighborhood. Her husband died of old aged, followed by her two children who died of unknown illnesses. After their deaths, Williams became an African root doctor in her neighborhood. In her interview with the Federal Writers Project, Williams claimed that a spirit led her to a rich treasure which ultimately gave her financial stability for some time.

Career as a Root Doctor
As a root doctor, Williams practiced witchcraft, specifically working with charms, cures, and conjures. Williams started attracting patients once she stopped working as a laundress. She claimed that her work would attract individuals from all over who would show up at any time of day.

Williams' never stated her specific concoctions of conjures; however, she goes on to list the materials she used, which include holy oil, dragon's blood, and incense. Additionally, she would perform rituals that entail specific movements or recitations.

To ward off enemies who desired to hex her, Williams would make a Hell Fire Gun. The materials Williams used included gun powder, newspaper, sulfur, rags, and a turpentine bottle. Williams claims to have made many of these guns, due to the fact she had several enemies during her time as a root doctor. Eventually, Williams stopped taking new clients when she became older. The date of her death is unknown.

Lack of Health Care Access among African Americans
Despite the abolition of African Americans, racist policies were put in place to limit their political participation and societal access. Policies of white supremacist values became were enacted, depicted with the practice of eugenics. Racist stereotypes surrounded the health, both physical and mental, of African Americans. Eugenicists viewed enslaved African Americans as mentally ill for wanting to escape and their physique as undesirable.

Because of the racist stigma surrounding their health, African Americans were offered unequal health treatment in addition to the lack of access to healthcare in general. Segregated neighborhoods in the 1930s contributed to the lack of healthcare, as they had a limited number of credible and practicing physicians. The lack of medical care also meant the lack of health specialists, making it difficult for African Americans to seek care for specific health problems. Consequently, diseases such as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra#:~:text=Pellagra%20is%20a%20disease%20caused,friction%20are%20typically%20affected%20first. pellagra], tuberculosis, and malaria were commonly found in segregated neighborhoods.

In response to the lack of health care access, Black voodoo doctors offered their medical services for free to African Americans. Between 1883 and 1938, 14.6% of voodoo arrests were related to the distribution of medical goods and medical services. Other arrests related to the fact that these voodoo doctors had no medical license; however, these doctors tended to be the only medical services within Black neighborhoods.

Residential Discrimination during the Great Depression
During the Reconstruction Era, many Black Americans pushed for their political rights, including the redistribution of land ownership. However, governments ignored this, establishing the racial segregation of Black Americans from white Americans. The Supreme Court ruling in Buchanan v. Warley (1917) attempted to began to reverse this by allowed Black Americans to purchase real estate within predominately white areas, as it violated the 14th Amendment. However, during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency, state governments successfully created other policies that restricted the economic rights of Black Americans while still following the rule of the court.

Within the first 100 days of his presidency, President FD Roosevelt created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) as an effort to refinance home mortgage loans. A major priority of the HOLC was to ensure that neighborhoods were of high quality, in order to increase its value over time and stabilize the flow of mortgage investments. During this project, the HOLC emphasized to its workers to take note of the Black population, believing it to be detrimental to the value of neighborhoods.

In order to ensure they would not be a threat to the development of neighborhoods, the HOLC disproportionately gave loans to the Black, Jewish, and immigrant population, which consequently put them into debt. To maintain high-value neighborhoods, the HOLC focused on redlining these groups into neighborhoods described as "D-rated" and of "low value". The HOLC's racist policy legally allowed for the segregation of African Americans.

The lack of funding within Black neighborhoods led to heavy police activity, and eventually police brutality. Police brutality helped establish the racist stereotype of the violent Black American, which ultimately inspired mob violence among white Americans when a Black American moved into a predominately white area. Those who lived in redlined areas were more prone to premature births, cancer, tuberculosis, postpartum depression, and mental health illnesses.