Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Fall/Section017/Mrs. Georgia Crockett Aiken

Overview

Georgia Crockett Aiken was a white woman who lived in Wilson, North Carolina. She was sixty seven when she was interviewed by Stanley Combs in 1939. She worked as a teacher throughout her life and remained active in her church and greater community after retirement. Though Mrs. Aiken was not faced with abject poverty during her lifetime, her life mirrored that of many unmarried or widowed women who lived through the early 20th century and the Great Depression.

Biography

Early Life

Georgia Crockett Aiken was born in 1872 to a middle class family. Her father worked in a wholesale merchandise store, and her mother took on sewing for other people, and their combined income allowed Crockett to remain in school long enough to obtain her teaching certificate. Though she grew up with four brothers and five sisters, none were still living by the time of her interview.

Personal Life

In 1908, Georgia Crockett Aiken moved to Wilson, where she met John Aiken, who owned a livery stable. After going out for two years, they married and began saving to buy a house together. They found a lot with a small house on it and made plans to build their own, but John Aiken died before they could begin. Despite her fear and uncertainty, Mrs. Aiken began moving forward with their former plan to build a new house, and she paid it off in four years.

In her interview, Mrs. Aiken expressed feelings of loneliness, and mentioned that her only living relative was a brother's daughter living in the North who she did not frequently see. She devoted much of her time to her house, doing her own upkeep. Though she confided that “there [had] frequently been times when money was [so] scarce that [she] [had] gone without rather than go into debt,” at the time of her interview she had in her employ a young girl who did her cooking and housekeeping and likely eased some of Mrs. Aiken’s loneliness. She showed fondness for the girl, finding ways to give her spending money outside of her room and board, and she even mentioned that she was likely to leave something in her property to the girl after Mrs. Aiken passed away.

Career

After completing the ninth grade, Georgia Aiken passed the teacher’s examination. Only seventeen, she began teaching as the sole teacher of a thirty pupil school with only one room where she taught 1st through 7th grade. Though she remained proud of the $25 a month she was making, she conceded that “it was not all a bed of roses,” as she had to drive a mule and buggy the five miles to and from school, braving muddy roads and cold weather. She told her interviewer that on days when the roads were flooded, “[she] went through the high water when even the mailman would turn back." Mrs. Aiken cared about her students and enjoyed her work, but at the time of her interview she suffered from joint pain she believed to be a result of the conditions she endured in order to teach. Accordingly, she expressed that “teachers ought to get pensions when they get old after having devoted the best years of their life to teaching.” Altogether, Georgia Aiken taught for forty eight years.

In addition to teaching, after John Aiken's death, Mrs. Aiken took over her husband’s livery stable. At the time of their marriage it was a successful business, with good equipment and a strong customer base. Though she did not know much about the livery business, Mrs. Aiken successfully managed it for a few years. However, when cars began to rise in popularity, the livery business started to struggle. Although she tried to keep the business afloat, even purchasing a car in an attempt to appeal to the changing demand, Mrs. Aiken stated that she did not have enough money to obtain enough automobiles, as they were much more expensive when they first became popular. Seeing that her business was in decline, she sold it at a loss and devoted the rest of her professional life to teaching.

Social Issues

Women's Political Participation After the 19th Amendment

After many years of fighting for women’s suffrage, the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 granted women across the country the right to vote. Of course, due to the widespread disenfranchisement of black citizens, particularly in the South, most black women would be unable to exercise this right for many years to come. Additionally, many of the promises and predictions of the suffrage movement went unfulfilled. Primarily, the time immediately after the passage of the 19th Amendment was rife with voter apathy following the widespread disillusionment of World War I and its aftermath. Additionally, the 1920s saw a shift from the citizen as a voter to the citizen as a consumer, which resulted in many citizens, women included, simply not voting.

Furthermore, women did not vote as a single unanimous body. Most women’s organizations assumed a nonpartisan position, as women were split on large issues such as racial equality, birth control, and religious fundamentalism. Additionally, while some women voters fought for gender equality, others were more apt to defend protective labor laws for women. In the North, women tended to vote for the Republican party, which had supported women’s suffrage, while in the South, women tended to vote for the Democratic party, and there never quite was the gender gap that the suffragists predicted.

Additionally, women’s representation in government was limited, as women were rarely elected. In 1925, women held only 2% of state legislative seats.

Industrialization and the Automobile

Industrialization in America began in the late 1800s, and with it came many technological advancements. One of these advancements was the automobile, which became widely available in the early 1900s. Though horses were an integral part of urban and rural life as well as the nation's growing economy throughout the 1800s, by the 1920's they were completely replaced by cars. The growth of the automobile industry not only improved urban sanitation, but it created many jobs, far replacing the ones that the industry had destroyed, such as the Aiken's livery stables. However, the reduced need for horse feed also contributed to the agricultural depression of the 1920's, which only worsened during the Great Depression.

The Great Depression

Though the US in the 1920's experienced a growing economy and mass consumerism, in 1929 the stock market collapsed and the Great Depression began. The following ten years would prove to be the worst economic depression of the industrialized world, creating incredible hardship across America. Both production and consumption dropped dramatically, and widespread layoffs caused unemployment to reach unprecedented levels. In 1933, at the absolute worst point of the Great Depression, the unemployment rate exceeded 20% and the nation was experiencing a homelessness crisis. However, after Roosevelt was elected in 1932, his administration began a widespread legislation reform, which included a project known as the New Deal that provided permanent jobs to over 8 million Americans, marking the beginning of economic recovery.

Women in the Great Depression

“Poverty is gendered in specific ways at different times, and although long-term unemployment produced severe hardship for everyone, women and men [had] diverse experiences”

During the Great Depression, due to the economic pressure on families, there was an increase in women seeking employment, and though their jobs, such as teaching and nursing, were typically more stable, they were also paid less. Additionally, married women were often prevented from getting work, as they were seen to be taking jobs away from men.

Emergence of the Welfare System

In the late 1920's, few elderly Americans had any sort of savings for retirement, but after the onset of the Great Depression, this problem was only exacerbated. Additionally, unmarried women, single mothers, and widows, such as Georgia Aiken, were unable to accumulate any savings. The only jobs available to them were “women’s jobs,” such as teaching or nursing, which did not pay enough to allow any money to be set aside. Generally, male relatives would be responsible for the financial care of these single women, but when the Great Depression hit, the male relatives, under much more financial pressure than before, began to protest. The Great Depression brought to light America's need for a federal welfare system, and the first one in America's history was established in 1935.

“In an era of growing expectations for female autonomy, single women teachers marched forward without a safety net. Their history contributes to our understanding about gender and old age in the emerging welfare state.”

References

Abelson, Elaine S. “‘Women Who Have No Men to Work for Them’: Gender and Homelessness in the Great Depression, 1930-1934.” Feminist Studies 29, no. 1 (2003): 105–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3178478.

Combs, Stanley, and Georgia Crockett Aiken. Women Are Best. Other. Accessed October 1, 2021. https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/03709/id/666/rec/1.

Graves, Kristina. “Women's Political Participation After 1920: Myth and Reality.” National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, September 10, 2020. https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/womens-political-participation-after-1920-myth-and-reality.

Ingen, Linda Van. “‘One Can't Live on Air’: Sarah McComb and the Problem of Old‐Age Income for Single Women Teachers, 1870s–1930s.” Wiley Online Library. History of Education Quarterly, April 14, 2014. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/hoeq.12056.

Lott, Jr., John R., and Lawrence W. Kenny. “Did Women's Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?” Journal of Political Economy 107, no. 6 (1999): 1163–98. https://doi.org/10.1086/250093.

“The Day the Horse Lost Its Job.” Web log. Today in Technology (blog). Microsoft. Accessed October 10, 2021. https://blogs.microsoft.com/today-in-tech/day-horse-lost-job/.