Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Summer/105/Section 15/Althy Cooke

Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Summer/105/Section 15/Althy Cooke
Born	Althy Cooke circa 1880s in North Carolina
Died	Unknown
Spouse(s)	Dan Cooke
Children	Nora, Tom, Mont, John

Althy Cooke

A home in Pleasant Hill, NC.

Overview

Althy Cooke was the wife of a sharecropper in Pleasant Hill, NC in the 1930s. She was interviewed by Bernice K. Harris for the Federal Writers Project on December 6th, 1938.

Life

Early Life

Cooke was born to sharecropper parents not far from the neighborhood in which they resided in Pleasant Hill, North Carolina. She went to school until third grade and then left in order to help and work at home since school was not the family's highest priority. She stated that after she left her family and was "freed", she worked for wages until she met her husband Dan. Cooke and Dan married shortly after meeting.

Adult Life

Life as a Sharecropper

The Cooke family sharecropped underneath a man named S.T. Daniel in the Pleasant Hill, North Carolina. Cooke herself stated that they had moved to various properties of their landowner over the past decade. Since both Cooke and her husband's parents were sharecroppers, they were born into the field. One of their sons entered a sharecrop of his own, creating a third generation of sharecroppers within the Cooke lineage. On their farm they grew many things, and in December of 1938 peanuts were their big crop. Though, sharecropping did not generate much income for the family since they had to give a large cut back to Daniel. This led to them being in poverty, which was a heightened experience during The Great Depression.

Family

Cooke's family consisted of her, her husband Dan, and her children Nora, Tom, Mont, and John. All of her children attended school at a young age, but stopped within the time of 3rd to 6th grade to help at home. John and Mont, the youngest sons, work on the sharecropping land. Nora, who was 23 years old at the time of an interview with the Federal Writers Project, helps out within the house along with her mother. Their son Tom was married and had a sharecrop of his own to tend to with his family.

Her husband Dan had a rough time growing up and did not go to school so he could stay home to help on his families sharecrop. Throughout his youth he did not take care of himself well; he did not eat nutritiously due to a lack of resources and was led to a life of drinking, which he attributes to causing his blindness.

Impoverished Circumstances for the Cooke Family

Cooke and her family lived in circumstances typical of sharecropping families during The Great Depression. She described her house as "in a strew", and had many aspects of living that were in disrepair. Sharecropping was not a profession that generated a lot of income. In the case of the Cooke family the reason they made it by was due to the $2,000 dollar disability checks that Dan received. Due to a lack of money the whole family lacked nutritious food which caused a slew of health issues for the parents. Cooke had low blood pressure and pellagra which she was unable to treat with diet.

All of the family members had the right to vote but lacked access to it. The closest location to vote was in Seabord, NC by about a 15 minute drive. Though, the family car had been broken down and spending money to fix it was not the priority due to other aspects of the family's lifestyle being in disarray. Her daughter Nora was not registered to voted and stated that she did not think she ever would. Dan tries to vote when he is able to get to Seabord, but it is not often.

One of the privileges that the Cooke family had was access to adult education. All of them were taken out of school early or did not attend at all in order to make more money working on a sharecrop, as young people who could be working being in school was a loss of money. Cooke learned to read again in her spare time, but could only afford to read the papers from the Roanoke Herald in Roanoke Rapids, NC.

Social Context

Socioeconomic Inequality Within Sharecropping Families in the 1930s

FDR, who was President of the United States during the Great Depression.

Within families that were involved in sharecropping there were inequalities in the socioeconomic realm that pushed several sharecropping families below the poverty line. Those that owned the land lived in a cycle of exploitation and harvest from those that would sharecrop underneath them, as the landowners would make money by putting in no labor. On the other hand, the families that sharecropped got their profit cut after long hard hours of working while landowners earned money without effort. Many sharecropping families during the early 1900s had to pull their children out of school as well to help on the farm which limited many other employment opportunities that could have been possible. Additionally, many sharecropping families did not have access to updated farming technologies that would boost productivity and financial output which other farmers may have had. All of these factors combined led to uneven rural development within sharecropping communities, and poverty within families. Poverty is typically generational, and can cause a variety of health issues and other lifestyle issues that can pass down from parent to child.

Voter Suppression in the American South

"It is important to acknowledge that it has always, or almost for the entire history of our country, been about race, that voter suppression has been inextricably intertwined with an attempt to stop first Black men, and since then other people of color from voting," Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of Voting Rights and Elections at the Brennan Center, told ABC News.

During the Great Depression, many rural areas faced voter suppression due to a lack of accessibility for many voters. Many areas within the Southern United States faced this issue specifically due to a lack of proper infrastructure that supported voting in certain areas. This may include not having a voting center in every town (or town of residence), a lack of safe transportation to polling locations, or a lack of information widespread about elections through education or other means. Within the South during the era of the Great Depression less funds were centralized in these areas and did not promote the infrastructure needed for many citizens to vote. As well, many citizens were not fully educated which may have made voting a more difficult task. Many gave up on voting, leading to a lack of representation of certain groups. Voter suppression as targeted groups of people of color since the Civil War, and targets citizens of rural areas as well.

Works Cited

1. Interview, Bernice Harris interviewing Althy Cooke, folder 1028, Federal Writers' Project Papers, 1936-1940, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2. Mann, Susan A. 1984. "Sharecropping in the Cotton South: A Case of Uneven Development in Agriculture." Rural Sociology 49 (3) (Fall): 412. http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/scholarly-journals/sharecropping-cotton-south-case-uneven/docview/1290944776/se-2?accountid=14244.
3. “What Was It Like Growing Up in the South During the 1930s?” Reference. March 30, 2020. Accessed July 14, 2021. https://www.reference.com/history/like-growing-up-south-during-1930s-46533e3f6102910f.
4. Day, Richard H. "The Economics of Technological Change and the Demise of the Sharecropper." The American Economic Review 57, no. 3 (1967): 427-49. Accessed July 13, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1812112.
5. Belle, Deborah, and Joanne Doucet. “Poverty, Inequality, and Discrimination as Sources of Depression Among U.S. Women.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 27, no. 2 (June 2003): 101–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-6402.00090.
6. Smith, Terrance. "Timeline: Voter suppression in the US from the Civil War to today." ABC News. August 20, 2020. Accessed July 19, 2021. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-voter-suppression-us-civil-war-today/story?id=72248473.
7. Pitzer, Kyle, Mcclendon, Gena Gunn, and Michael Sherraden. "Voting Infrastructure and Process: Another Form of Voter Suppression?" Social Service Review 95, no. 2 (2021): 175-209. Accessed July 18, 2021. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/714491.