Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Spring/105i/Section 22/Odessa Polk

Woman working as a laundress

Women sitting on a tree with children, similar to Polk, her daughters, and their children.

Overview

Odessa Polk
Born	Charlotte, N.C.
Cause of death	Unknown
Spouse(s)	Unmarried
Children	Madelene Polk Sarah Polk Wootsie Polk

Odessa Polk was an African American cook who lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was interviewed by the Federal Writers Project on May 9, 1939 in Charlotte N.C.

Biography

Early Life

Polk was born in 1897 to Mary Gaither and William Polk. She lived with them until she was 9 years old, when her mother remarried. Polk's stepfather prohibited her mother from keeping her children from her first marriage, so Polk moved in with her grandmother. Polk’s grandmother died and Polk moved in with her aunt. At the age of 9 Polk began washing dishes for 25 cents a week. Eventually, Polk dropped out of school to support herself and her siblings. She had her first pregnancy at the age of 15 years old. She would end up giving birth to three girls with three different fathers in the span of a few years.

Life as a Mother

After the birth of her third child, she moved into two rooms of a shared home and started taking in wash to support them. Polk was a single mother receiving no financial help from any of the children's fathers. According to Polk's interview with the Federal Writers' Project, she put her daughters through school and made sure they attended church every week. However, like her, all three of her daughters got pregnant as teenagers and dropped out of school. None of them married and only one received financial help from the father, leaving Polk with supporting her three daughters and their children.

Later Life

Eventually, Polk, her daughters and their children moved into their own house. Polk began working as a cook, earning nine dollars a week. Each of the daughters picked up work and as a household, the women brought in 23 dollars weekly. Polk became involved in the church, spending all of her free time heading clubs there. Polk's date of death is unknown.

Social Issues

Teen Pregnancy in African American Women

According to the census bureau, since the early 1900's Black women have consistently had higher rates of teenage and premarital pregnancy than women of any other ethnicity or race in the United States . This is due to a mix of societal and economic factors that disproportionately affect Black women. The main factors that influence teenage pregnancy in African American women are poverty, location, access to birth control, and sex education . The poor are far more likely to become pregnant as a teenager than the wealthy, women living in rural areas are more likely to than those living in urban areas, and women who lack access to birth control and sex education than those who have it. Because of historical discrimination against Black people, but women especially, these issues--poverty, location and access to birth control and education--disproportionately affect their communities, making their teen pregnancy rates higher.

Premarital Pregnancy during the Great Depression

Because gender roles shifted during the Great Depression, there was also a change in sexual relations. As men were laid off of work, societal pressure on masculinity as a defining characteristic in households decreased and women became more powerful in the household and society. Because of this new empowerment in other aspects of life, women became more sexually empowered as well . This caused sexual relations before marriage to increase, which naturally led to an increase in premarital pregnancy as well. Another factor that made premarital pregnancy increase sharply was the lack of access to birth control during this time period as well--because people were poor, they could not afford it. Also, with many men not being able to provide for themselves, much less a family, marriage rates dropped . This means that when women did get pregnant, not as many got married after, which led to more single mothers.

African American Women and the Feminist Movement in the 1930s

The feminist movement of the 1930's is famous for getting women out of the house and going to work. It was a time of empowerment, however, history tends to only consider this movement affect on White women. Because Black women had always been working, whether it be as wash women, cooks or maids, they did not experience a large movement to get out of the house and work. In fact, African American women were arguably most harshly affected during this time. While White women were praised for working to support their families, Black women just continued to do work they had always done, without being supported by the movement . This meant that they had to deal with the hate that women got during this time period, such as Mrs. Samuel Gompers calling women who worked outside of the home unnatural and accused them of taking jobs away from men, while simultaneously being left out of the support and excitement of the feminist movement .

Citations

[1, 2, 3] Bennett and Northrop, Folder 294: Bachelor Mothers, in the Federal Writers' Project papers #3709, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

[4] Bachu, Amara. Trends in Premarital Childbearing: 1930 to 1994. Current Population Reports, P23-197. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC, 1999. Accessed March 8, 2021.

[5] McElvaine, Robert S. “Gender Roles and Sexual Relations, Impact of the Great Depression On.”  https://www.encyclopedia.com/economics/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/gender-roles-and-sexual-relations-impact-great-depression. Accessed on March 8, 2021.

[6] Moran, Mickey. “1930’s America-Feminist Void?” http://people.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1988-9/moran.htm. Accessed 8 March 2021.

[7] Ward, Sarah. “Women and Work: African American Women in Depression Era America.” City University of New York. Accessed March 8, 2021. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3734&context=gc_etds