Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Fall/105/Section059/Alice Nixon and Charlotte Burton

Overview

Alice Nixon and Charlotte Burton were African American women who lived in Lawrenceville, North Carolina. They were sisters and were both washwomen. Their interview was conducted by Luline L. Mabry and Douglas Carter on April 14th, 1939. The interview highlighted their experiences as washwomen and talked briefly about their lives as African Americans living in the South at the time.

Biography

Alice Nixon and Charlotte Burton were African American sisters. Burton was slave born in a cotton plantation in South Carolina while Nixon was a free born just about a mile from Griffin, South Carolina. They were about 75 and 68 at the time respectively. neither of them knew the exact year they were born in, so their ages are just an estimate. Their stepdad made them both work in a plantation from a very young age which didn’t give them the opportunity to get an education hence neither of the could read or write. Their mom wanted them to go to school but their stepdad didn’t think it was necessary or helpful for either of them. They were both married twice. Nixon’s husband had passed away while Burton’s second husband was still alive. However, she hasn’t seen or heard from him in a while, which she said was good, since he doesn’t treat her right. She despised him. They were both washwomen. They wash the laundry on Mondays and Tuesdays and iron the rest of the week, but ever since Burton contracted the influenza she hasn’t been washing. She didn’t want to risk getting sick again especially since she couldn’t afford any healthcare. They both live in Nixon’s house, and have lived in Lawrenceville for about 52 years. They attend a Methodist church regularly, and their faith is what seemed to have encouraged them to get through most of life’s hardships.

Social issues

African American health care in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The health care available to African Americans and other minority groups during the late 19th and early 20th centuries was not the same offered to the whites at the time. Whites had access to better, reliable and well-funded health care services and facilities while the ones offered to African Americans and minority groups at the time, especially in the south, were the opposite. They rarely had access to health care and if they did, most of the time, it was underfunded and expensive. “W.E.B. Du Bois documented black life expectancy in 1900 at 30 to 32 years compared with 49.6 years for whites. Segregation, poverty, and the absence of health facilities or personnel locked most blacks out of any health delivery system.” “Most doctors did not follow the ethical codes of the profession as they related to blacks, Indians, and the poor.”

Separate but equal education for African Americans

The education system available to African Americans in America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries was flawed in comparison to that offered to the whites. Due to the segregation laws that were in place during this time period the education system available to African Americans was underfunded and inadequate. This made them have to compete with the whites who received a better, well-funded education. Most African Americans and peoples of color, at the time, were illiterate due to certain laws that were in place, the Jim Crow laws being an example. These laws that were in place at the time deemed African American children unworthy of being educated in the same classrooms as the White children and inferior to the Whites. “African Americans were forced to compete with White schools for limited resources (Bond,1939) and to confront perceptions that they did not need education or that they needed an education only for menial tasks (Ashmore, 1954).” “According to Anderson (1988), in 1900 in the 16 former slave states, only one African American teacher was available for every 93 school-age children (p.111).”