Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Fall/Section009/Rich Gray 2

Overview

Rich Gray was an African-American turpentine worker born and raised in Robertsville, South Carolina. At the time of the interview, he worked as the camp foreman for the South Florida Turpentine Corporation. Gray’s interview was conducted by Diggs and Huss sometime between the years 1936 and 1940.

Biography

Early Life

Rich Gray was born on March 8, 1888 to Mac and Betty Gray. He was one of 15 children with eight brothers and six sisters whom he hadn’t seen in years. He grew up in Robertsville, South Carolina where he attended school until the tenth grade when he joined the turpentine business.

Later Life

After growing up in Robertsville, South Carolina, Rich Gray moved to Lakeland, Florida where he owned nearly half a block on Quincy Street. Then he moved to Carters, Florida where he lived with his much younger wife, Lula Gray. The pair had at least a 13 year age difference. Together they stayed in a three room house on one of the oldest camps in the vicinity. The weather-beaten home once served as a home and store combined and was only reached from the highway by planks across a ditch. Rich and Lula didn’t own the house nor pay rent, but were allowed to stay as long as Rich worked for the company; a compromise he preferred to being in Lakeland despite prices being higher than in the commissary in Lakeland. But in Lakeland, Rich and Lula were not considered free. As for beliefs, both Rich and Lula Gray identified as Missionary Baptists, but Rich didn’t go to church as often as Lula. Gray was also very strong in his refusal to participate in voting or politics.

Career

During his early fifties, Rich Gray worked as the camp foreman for the South Florida Turpentine Corporation. He was responsible for keeping all the records belonging to the company and making out a written report to the boss. This meant that he covered 20 to 30 acres a day, watching out for fires and checking locations for turpentine supplies ready for dipping. The 40 men Gray oversaw were paid up to $1.50 a day; a maximum that he was hoping to change. Gray himself made around $2.50 a day and sometimes more. On a typical workday, Gray wore heavy work clothes including hickory-striped trousers, high-top boots, and a slouch sombrero. Rich Gray was also allowed to ride a company horse for the five years he worked with the South Florida Turpentine Corporation.

Social Issues

Turpentine Farming

1912 postcard showing turpentine production process in Florida

Starting in the late 1800s, the naval stores industry was booming and turpentine production camps were established in the South, including North Central Florida. “Approximately eleven million African-Americans lived in the American South” some of which as freedmen (Murphy 2020). These African-Americans principally labored as sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and wage workers since freeman were low-cost laborers for the white owned production companies. “Approximately 10 percent of black southerners owned land, but most cultivated crops on white-owned land and received a small share of the harvest" (Murphy 2020). They were either forced to stay with their employer until their debt was paid off, or they faced possible incrimination. These turpentine camps, popular during the late 1800s to early 1900s, were another form of forced labor, principally aimed at the newly freed African-Americans (Shofner 1981).

The Great Depression's Effect on African-Americans

The Great Depression was a severe economic devastation lasting from 1929 to 1939. Although every group suffered in some way from this depression, African-Americans got it the worst. Black communities across the country faced high poverty, racial segregation, and experienced the highest unemployment rate seen in the 1930s. They were said to be “last hired, first fired” (Klein 2018). To combat the effects of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the New Deal. While restoring prosperity for Americans, the New Deal was also supposed to improve the conditions of the poor and working class, but still subordinated African Americans from its social policies (Valocchi 1994) and “did little to challenge existing racial discrimination and Jim Crow laws prevalent during the 1930s” (Klein 2018). This was especially apparent in housing as the Civilian Conservation Corps established racially segregated camps, meanwhile the Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages in African-American neighborhoods, thus fostering segregation and excluding blacks from equal access to the federally insured mortgage market. Therefore, “although New Deal programs provided African-Americans with badly needed economic assistance, they were administered at a state level where racial segregation was still widely, and systemically, enforced” (Klein 2018).

Bibliography

Manuscript for Rich Gray’s Life History as written by Diggs and Huss, Folder 113, Collection 03709, Federal Writers' Project Papers 1936-1940, Wilson Library, Chapel Hill, NC.

Winters, Donald L. "Postbellum Reorganization of Southern Agriculture: The Economics of Sharecropping in Tennessee." Agricultural History 62, no. 4 (1988): 1-19. Accessed July 8, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3743372

Shofner, Jerrell H. "Forced Labor in the Florida Forests 1880-1950." Journal of Forest History 25, no. 1 (1981): 14-25. Accessed July 9, 2020. doi:10.2307/4004649

Klein, Christopher. “Last Hired, First Fired: How the Great Depression Affected African Americans.” History.com. April 18, 2018. https://www.history.com/news/last-hired-first-fired-how-the-great-depression-affected-african-americans

Valocchi, Steve. “The Racial Basis of Capitalism and the State, and the Impact of the New Deal on African Americans.” Social Problems 41, no. 3 (August 1994): 347-362. doi:10.2307/3096967

Murphy, Mary-Elizabeth B. “African Americans in the Great Depression and New Deal.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. 19 Nov. 2020. doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.632.

Brueggemann, John. “Racial Considerations and Social Policy in the 1930s.” Social Science History 26, no. 1 (2002): 139–77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40267773.