Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Fall/Section018/Rosa Faison

An African American farm in the early 1900s.

Overview

Rosa Faison was an African-American woman born on a plantation near Margarettsville, North Carolina. Faisons’ interview was conducted by Bernice Harris on December 10, 1938.

Biography

Rosa Faison was a black woman born in the mid 1800’s. She was raised in Margarettsville, North Carolina. Her mother was a slave to a white man named Darden, who was most likely her father. Faison was born into slavery and hired out by several white masters. She helped her mother throughout the plantation by tending to the farm and house. Eventually, war tore through her area as the Civil War commenced around her. She recalls being scared of “Yankees” (Union soldiers). Her white masters kept her and her family even after the war was over. She then married James Faison and rented land from wealthy whites to make ends meet. She gave birth to her daughter who lived with Faison until her death. She lived below the poverty line while supporting multiple members of her family.

Social Issues

Reconstruction Era South

The time period after the civil war was called the Reconstruction Era. The transition from slavery to free African-Americans was not as smooth as popular knowledge might believe. News of the abolition of slavery took months to make it to some farms and planations, even if the news did make it, some masters would not let their slaves leave. Masters would use violence or sometimes citing "debts" slaves had to pay in order to leave. Most slaves would not be able to make up this debt within their lifetime.

Sharecropping

Sharecropping is a system in which a tenant pays the owner/landlord of a farm/plantation in order to use a piece of their land. Payment can consist of actual currency or food produced from the field. This was a popular practice in the south after the Civil War. It kept the former slaves tied to the land without actually being considered slaves. Most often, the former slave would never make enough to leave or even pay for a bigger plot of land. Sharecropping is essentially slave labor at almost no cost to the farmer owner. As NPR states, "“The slavery that survived long past emancipation was an offense permitted by the nation”. However, this was also popular among poor white Americans because they still could not afford their own land.

The Black Female Experience During the Great Depression

The African American female experience became even worse during the Great Depression. The entry of white women into the workforce made it harder for black women to get and keep jobs. Since there was such a demand in the workforce, white private employers could pay less and less without any consequence from the government. However, most black women had to rely on their male counterparts to bring home a single income. This led to ⅕ of all people on federal aid to be African American. A historian at Trinity College said, "In every place where there could be discrimination, black women were doubly disadvantaged".

References

Forde, Kathy, and Bryan Bowman. “Exploiting Black Labor after the Abolition of Slavery.” The Conversation, July 14, 2021.

Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn. To Ask for an Equal Chance : African Americans in the Great Depression. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009. Accessed October 7, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Horst, M., Marion, A. Racial, ethnic and gender inequities in farmland ownership and farming in the U.S.. Agric Hum Values 36, 1–16 (2019).

Troltter, Joe W. “African Americans in the City: The Industrial Era, 1900-1950.” Journal of Urban History21, no. 4 (May 1995): 438–57..