Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Spring/Section33/Lolly Bleu

Lolly Bleu
Born	1889 Texas, USA
Died	Unknown
Occupation	Housewife and Vendor

Overview

Lolly Bleu was a Floridian squatter who left Texas with her husband soon after the Great Depression began. She was interviewed for the Federal Writers' Project on November 29th, 1938, at the age of 49 in Venus, Florida.

Biography

Early Life

Lolly Bleu was born in 1889 on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Growing up, she lived, worked, and played on a small farm. She helped with household chores and always wanted to partake in farm work with her father. Her mother was well educated and taught Lolly how to read at a very young age. However, Lolly was unable to pursue higher education due to financial instability. She met her husband, Pa, soon after graduating high school.

After Marriage

In 1920, Lolly and Pa moved from Texas to Florida in search of better farm land near Lake Okeechobee. After arriving in Venus, Florida, Lolly and Pa found a suitable plot of land for growing crops. They had nowhere to live for a couple days, until they found an abandoned barn about three miles away from their farm and set up a house there. In addition to farming, Pa had learned a lot about the nursery business growing up in Texas, so he and Lolly made a nursery about two miles away from the farm, but sadly it was raided soon after its construction, and they did not have the money to make a new one. Luckily, Lolly was a skilled quilt maker. Even though her husband insisted she not help out financially, she often sold her quilts for money, which made her emotional. She was also skilled with canning foods and often sold her items to local grocery stores.

Children

Lolly and Pa had thirteen children in total, with the two eldest boys living and working away from home, and the eldest girl working in a cafe on the lake. Lolly tried to convince the eldest boys to put in effort at school, but financial pressure forced them to drop out early and pick up low wage jobs in town. The eldest girl did not like life on the farm and wanted to move into town to send money home to the family every week. Her youngest girl, Edie, was born disabled, and Lolly was told by doctors that they should simply give up on her. However, Lolly and Pa persisted in caring for the child for as long as they could.

Social Context

Women During the Depression

In the wake of the 1929 Stock Market Crash, millions of Americans lost their jobs. However, for women, employment rates actually went up. Men who were once considered breadwinners now struggled to make money, and many women obtained a renewed sense of urgency to get to work. Women not only filled local jobs, but they also began to market their individual skills and abilities from home, despite how their husbands felt about it. The Great Depression began only a decade after the 19th amendment was passed, so many people, women included, were still agitated that women were given a voice in politics. However, the first lady at the time, Eleanor Roosevelt, was a strong advocate of having more women in office, and the rapid expansion of the federal government opened up the opportunity for women to fill many jobs, albeit mostly secretarial. While the depression advanced women’s employment and independence, they were still significantly underpaid, and given very little influence on policy.

Impact on Education

In the decade before the Great Depression, educational attainment in America was improving. Most children in rural, or countryside, areas attended school. However, during the depression, many schools closed, leaving children without a school to attend. Districts that had spent countless years building up their education programs and curriculum lost everything. Higher education was also severely impacted, as states began to cut their budgets for colleges. Due to economic hardship, individuals that were qualified to go to college had to go to work instead. The average educational loss was especially large for white females, who preferred work over education when employment indices were high. One of the first New Deal economic relief programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Civilian Conservation Corps, conducted various education programs for underprivileged youth. That, along with an increased federal budget for education, was key to curtailing the effects of the depression on school systems across the country.

References

Lolly Bleu, Florida Squatter, in the Federal Writers’ Project papers #3709, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The History Channel. “Underpaid, But Employed: How the Great Depression Affected Working Women.” Last modified March 11, 2019. https://www.history.com/news/working-women-great-depression

Milkman, Ruth. On Gender, Labor, and Inequality. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016.

Allen, Holly. Forgotten Men and Fallen Women The Cultural Politics of New Deal Narratives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015.

Schreker, Ellen. “The Bad Old Days: How higher education fared during the Great Depression. ”The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 16, 2009. https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Bad-Old-Days-Higher-Ed/44526

Kisswani, Khalid. "Did the Great Depression affect Educational Attainment in the US?" Economics Bulletin 9, no. 30 (2008): 1-10.