The Great Depression; Interview with Nancy Neal. Part 3

Three, speed, two... Marker, take six. [clapboard] One of the stories my dad used to tell with a lot of feeling, as he recalled it, was of driving with my mother down a rural North Carolina road. And he noticed a field that was being plowed very close to the road. But there was something strange about the plowing scene. The man was holding down the plow and guiding it through the furrows. But apparently the couple had lost their mule or their horse and had none anymore, because a woman was pulling the plow instead of the horse or mule. And it was very, very difficult work. He got close, about 20 feet to her, and saw that sweat was just pouring off of her. She was exhausted, but that was the only way they could farm that year, apparently, was, without a horse or mule, was for her to play that part. And he was always very moved by that story and thought it really set the tone

and example for what was happening in a lot of places in the South with such serious poverty. The Missouri Roadside demonstration was probably an early sit-down in terms of people getting off of the farms and saying, "we're going to be by the side of the road, we're going to be where people can find us and see us and not be hidden anymore." And so people came off their farms, moved out, found any kind of shelter, put up tents, put blankets and sheets over, shrubbery, whatever they could for shelter, and camped for several weeks. And it was crucial to feed those people. So many people got in their cars and moved along to try to help bring various kinds of supplies to them.

They had nothing with them. They came as they were from their homes and were camping without any kinds of supplies, any kind of bathroom facilities or food. So people brought them those kinds of supplies and there was quick exchange and people saying hello and thank you and then moving on to other places. I can remember one time as my mother and dad and I drove in our old Chevy down Highway 66 on one of these relief efforts that we stopped at a very weathered old barn. It was set back, I guess, 100 feet from the highway. And out of this beaten up old barn came tons of children. And I was about three or four at the time and had been riding in the back seat of the car in my usual seat, but perched on a carton of Vicks Vapor Rub.

And what we were carrying in the Kester car was many cartons of Vicks Vapor Rub because that was a stand-by for everybody in those days to rub on the chest or rub around the nose when people had colds and various kinds of infections. So our job was to deliver the Vicks Vapor Rub, and we did. And one time I got very tired of being little and unable to move and stretch. So I got out of the car and went in with my folks to deliver some Vicks. My mother had said, don't stay and you can't play because we've got to get going and there's so many illnesses that none of us can afford to get sick. We're going to have to keep going so we'll let you out and you can run and just greet the children, but then we're going to need to go to the next place. So I ran in and my folks were carrying cartons and so was I. And all these children poured out who were very thin, very raggedy, in a very damp, gray day as I recall. But they were laughing and they were glad to see us and there was immediate trust.

And so I remember handing my box over to some children and my parents handed theirs over to some grownups and we went on to the next place. But I've always had an indelible memory of the barn, of those children pouring out, of their thinness, of runny noses in the days of no kleenexes, their friendliness. And they were just acting like all children. But living in terrible circumstances. So it was an early lesson for a young child to learn that people could help people, but also that some people could be very mean to other people and cause them to live in very grim and sad circumstances. The federal government, [cough] what was the union trying to get from the federal government? What were they hoping for? What did the federal government do or not do? And how did your father feel about the government response?

The union had several hopes for- from the federal government. On a major level, they wanted the government to stand for and act out justice and to see to it that people got their rights and got the kind of protection from the law, regardless of economic circumstances. So on the larger level, it was important that the federal government take a stance that would say to everybody else, including the planter system, there is law and order in this country and it will be on the side of people who are not terribly important in the social scheme of things, as well as on the side of other people, as long as you do what is legal and proper. So they wanted that kind of response. They also wanted better legislation. There were some acts passed early on that were detrimental to the sharecroppers and tenant farmers, and that was very disappointing early on.

There were hopes that FDR would be a strong president, and eventually he got better informed, and I think that was very much because of Eleanor Roosevelt's influence on him. She came to meetings, she came to see what conditions people were living in, and so she would go home and she would say, "I'll see that Franklin has this tomorrow, or has my notes on this tomorrow." So there was a way to connect through her eventually, and there were some improved behaviors coming from the federal government, but early on a lot of disappointment because the legislation that was put in place protected the planters, as it were, helped them survive financially and made it disastrous for the low-income people who were tenant farmers and sharecroppers and depended on that system for some kind of life, and it made life worse for them rather than better. So there was immense disappointment early on.

They continued to make trips to Washington to try to get to the Secretary of Agriculture and a variety of kinds of folks and did have various meetings. Sometimes investigators would come down and say, "oh, these are just Negroes or colored people and we can't do anything." There's nothing the federal government's going to get involved in. Then another investigator would come and do it and do it right and take the word back. There were testimonies before various congressional committees on the part of the organizers, and they would take people with them who were tenant farmers and sharecropper members of the Union, and they would give the direct description of exactly what went on, case examples. And what did it all matter in terms of what the government did or what the public did? Was the public mobilized? Did they do something? Certainly the Union had an effect on many people's consciousness as kind of a consciousness raising effort through all the speeches and talks and lectures that my dad and others gave,

through its actual organizing efforts, the meetings that people had who were directly affected by the system, people who heard about the press, I think probably had some awakening in terms of what was going on here and ways that they could do a responsible, reliable job in connecting parts of the society. So there wasn't a major change made probably in people's living situations, and those changes sometimes don't come very fast. But the seeds were planted, and a different kind of seed was planted than the old cotton seeds that had been planted. And that notion was a very positive one, a very hopeful one, that common people could come together, organize themselves from whatever differences they came, and work out ways to demonstrate their need,

to let the country know what ought to be done, to actually try to communicate to the whole country that the need was immense, but not just there, that workers in a lot of situations had disastrous working conditions, and that people who were in owners' and managers' roles had major responsibilities to those workers, whether they were in the fields, which is where the poorest of the poor have usually continued to be, or whether they were in a factory. So there was a lot of awakening and connecting with what these people were trying to say, which applied far beyond where they were in a few impoverished southern states, but had implications. We're out. Okay, that's the end of camera roll, 315-99, and that was take number 6. Okay, this will be room tone for the interview with Nancy Neal.

Okay, quiet please. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, that's the end of room tone, and that's the end of the interview with Nancy Neal, and the end of today. Bye.