Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Fall/105i/Section 026/Mary Wright Hill

Mary Wright Hill was interviewed as part of the Federal Writer’s Project in 1939 by Sadie B. Hornsby (Hill 1939).

Biography

Personal Life

Mary Wright Hill, a Black school-worker from Asheville, NC, was born on March 6, 1881. Growing up with five siblings in a middle-class mixed-race family, Hill had to sacrifice many of her dreams for her family. Unable to fulfill her dreams of medical school, Hill, along with all of her siblings, got university degrees from Atlanta University and Tuskegee Institute, two of the most prominent HBCUs in the South. Soon after moving to Georgia to teach, she met her first husband, whom she married on Christmas Day. She had two daughters with him, who got social work degrees from Fisk University and Atlanta University. After Hill's first husband passed away, she married again, yet divorced the man soon after due to his lack of work and willingness to let her work. She married a third time and stayed with this husband until her death on November 26, 1946.

Professional Life

Finding her first job at a mere 13, Hill worked as a teacher in Oxford, Georgia. She sent nearly all of her income back home to support her family. After a couple of years in Oxford, she was offered a teaching job in Athens and soon became a grade school principal. As the first woman and Black woman in her position, she had to manage the school's manual facilities and students' health in addition to her administrative roles. She even worked towards her nursing degree, taking a by-mail course at a university in New York. In her principal role, she faced much discrimination. In one instance, she recalls several white men coming into her superintendent's office and offering themselves to take over her job. They assumed that because a Black woman was in the role, they could take the job. Outside of her full-time, she also worked with Georgia's illiterate adult population at a night school, teaching night school several times a week. She earned a social service civic award from Washington for all of her service to the district and children.

Social Issues

Jim Crow in the South

As a system of political oppression and discrimination, Jim Crow worked across the United States to disenfranchise Black citizens. From education and economic opportunity to political power and pleasure, Jim Crow separated Black Americans from whites and limited the possibilities for their success. Unakin to popular belief, Jim Crow was not only a force in the South. As an intranational force, Jim Crow worked equally, if not more powerfully, in the North as in the South. Scholars have even made claims that the North birthed the oppressive regime (Woodward 1955). Though, despite Blacks' experiences in both regions, the South is often noted as being notoriously indecent towards its Black citizens.

Black children reading a textbook in a segregated school, 1940.

Education Under Jim Crow

One significant aspect of Jim Crow was the limiting of educational opportunity. According to Valk and Brown (2010), education was limited not only "by absence of nearby schools," but also "by white landlords who dictated the length of the school year and determined which children could go." As many white landlords owned land that Blacks lived and worked on, they had the power to dictate much of their outside life. This injustice was one aspect of the inequitable sharecropping system. Another element was Black children's common withdrawal from school. Linked to sharecropping in that landowners demanded a certain number of crops, children frequently "had to work alongside their parents" to fulfill these landowner demands (Brooker, 2017).

Black Womanhood under Jim Crow

Expectations and Roles of Black Women in the Workforce

These same pressures were evident in Black women's workspaces, although Black women were some of the most vocal and resilient in advocating for change. This fact was especially true of well-educated women. Generally, in the nursing or education fields, sometimes both, these women pushed social boundaries and were some of the nation's leading racial advocates (Gilmore 2019). Another critical aspect of their advocacy was the creation of authentically Black spaces. Segregated schools, neighborhoods, and communities allowed for Black spaces to form and thrive, away from whites' unwarranted and unwanted judgmental eyes. Here, again, Black women were key. They believed in change on three fronts: "in living standards, in opportunities for women of both races, and in white attitudes toward African Americans" (Gilmore 2019). Black women were further expected to sacrifice their careers and personal development for their families and husbands'. This expectation placed them in a paradoxical situation with the expectation that they would both fervently fight for their community while also sacrificing themselves for others' success

Stereotypes of Black Women

During Jim Crow, many of the perverse policies and agendas unfairly oppressed Black women in a way much different from any other group. The intersection of racism and misogyny left them as one of the most vulnerable groups during the time and to this day. This intersection also led to social relations and stereotypes that surrounded them moving forward. One of these stereotypes was the depiction of the "Black Mammy". Here, the "Mammy" acted as a socio-political tool for the advancement of White America. Her depicted desexualization and submissiveness linked to her family home as well. In many instances, the "Mammy" was thought to have little love for their own Black family and friends (Pilgrim 2000). The stereotype worked to place white women and men socially superior to Black Americans, especially Black women. Tangential with this depiction of Black women is the "Jezebel" stereotype. "Jezebel", as Anderson et al writes (2018), was "an alluring and seductive African American woman who is highly sexualized and valued purely for her sexuality". This sexualization was a nearly polar opposite to the Black "Mammy".

Bibliography

Anderson, Joel R., Elise Holland, Courtney Heldreth, and Scott P. Johnson. “Revisiting the Jezebel Stereotype.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2018): 461–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684318791543.

Brooker, Russel. “The Education of Black Children in the Jim Crow South.” The Education of Black Children in The Jim Crow South. America's Black Holocaust Museum, August 21, 2020. https://www.abhmuseum.org/education-for-blacks-in-the-jim-crow-south/.

Budreau, Lisa M. “Jim Crow Compounded the Grief of African American Mothers Whose Sons Were Killed in World War I.” Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution, November 8, 2019. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/jim-crow-grief-african-american-mothers-whose-sons-were-killed-world-war-i-180973519/.

Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019.

Hill, Mary Wright. Principal of Grammar School Thirty-Three Years. Interview by Hornsby, Sadie B., July 27, 1939, Folder 175, Federal Writers Project Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill.

Pilgrim, David. “The Jezebel Stereotype,” July 2002. https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/jezebel/index.htm.

Pilgrim, David. The Mammy Caricature. Ferris State University, October 2000. https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/mammies/.

Valk, Anne M., and Leslie Brown. Living with Jim Crow: African American Women and Memories of the Segregated South. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1955.