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Walker Evans, "Houses and Billboards, Atlanta, 1936."
For the past week I’ve been looking through the Federal Writers’ Project life histories at the Library of Congress site. These narratives were gathered between 1936 and 1940 in most of Georgia‘s major cities. Some are hilarious, some are sad, some are enlightening, some are all of the above. Specifically, I was reading those of Atlanta residents. Typically the WPA writer includes the street address of the person he or she is interviewing, so I’ve been Google Mapping to figure out if these homes still exist (they don’t).
In “I Got a Record,” Molly Kensey assumes the interviewer is coming to talk with her about Gone With the Wind, which was clearly the talk of the town. Journalists from all over were converging on Atlanta interested in the Civil War and Reconstruction, interviewing those who remembered it including African Americans who were not permitted to attend the premiere of the film.
You say you want me to talk to you ’bout the experiences uv my life, is this somethin’ ’bout ‘Gone With The Wind’? Oh, I thought maybe it was, I’ve heard so much ’bout the Premiere of ‘Gone With The Wind’ I jes’ know’d when you axed me to talk with you it was somethin’ ’bout that. Well, that’s alright, I wouldn’t have mind tellin’ you nohow ef it was, fer I got a record and I don’t mind tellin’ it to nobody.
(Sometimes the writers phonetically spell out the dialects which in many cases becomes tedious and offensive.)
There’s also a narrative by Alex Samuels, a former physics professor at Georgia Tech who lived in a trailer on Edgewood Avenue in “The More Modest Among Us,” and a brief life history of John Wesley Dobbs in “I Saw the Stars.”
The writers are not objective bystanders in some of their transcriptions. In a couple, the writer quickly weighs in on the level of taste evident in the interviewee’s home or appearance:
Her voice trailed off speculatively, giving me a chance to raise my eyes from my note-pad and really study her. She was not a pretty woman and I was seeing her probably at her worst, but she was very pleasant and had a warm smile. I realized that if she but had more time and money to devote to personal grooming she could present a pausably fair appearance. Now, however, she merely slumped in a chair, somewhat worn from her morning activities. Her red-gold hair, really of fine texture, was straight except for the ends which held the frizzly remains of a narrow-wave permanent, and straggled uncombed about her face. Her features were irregular, the face quite broad, yet with high cheek bones and [?] contours which tapered to an almost pointed chin. A peculiar fullness of the eyelids produced the illusionof a slant which made her appear just a bit oriental despite her blondness.
Impartially considered, the pictures were crude and gaudy, inharmonious mixtures of bright reds, yellows, and greens; but it was obvious that they were to Mrs. Whechel an outlet for the creative impulse.
Mrs. Whelchel might be described as “good stable peasant stock”. “Reliable” would express her in a word. She is tall, large-boned, and has a definite tendency toward “heftiness”. Though her uncorrected figure is well under control at present, one can see her firmly-bulging calves are but a prelude to ultimate general massiveness.
I learned interesting facts about the legal profession in Georgia in the 1930s in “Mrs. Brown“:
[My husband] went through high school in [South] Dakota and then took one correspondence course in law. And then a friend taught him law too … jest taught him free. And then he and this man went into practicing. That was here in Atlanta jest before I married him. He come to Atlanta because Georgia is the easiest state in the Union to pass the bar.
Ms. F. Hodge in “Unable to Stage a Comeback” gives some background on the fire of 1917. Maybe I am naive but I have never heard it said until this narrative that the fire was started by racist arsonists. Does anyone know any more about this?
The fire started in a small dwelling near fort and Decatur Streets, just a little shack. There didn’t seem to be a much significance attached to the fire at first. I was teaching at [this?] time at the Parochial School. I continued, my classes, although some of the parents had become alarmed and came for their children, I permitted those to go whose parents came but not without trying to discourage them from taking their children out because I felt the fire would soon be over. The fire kept coming as though by leaps and bounds. It was the greatest fire in the history of Atlanta. The fire continued to sweep the colored section and still the whites didn’t seemed so concerned about it. On and on the fire swept with destruction in its wake and finally it reached the white section – Druid Hills. Then the City of Atlanta busied itself to stop the fire. Well, the fire had such a headway that it was necessary for houses directly in the path of the fire to be dynamited and houses was blown up. Of course, the entire fourth ward mostly inhabited by Negroes, was entirely burned before anything was done. It was said that two white men had started the fire and went from house to house putting something on the house and then that house caught. It was during the time we were in the midst of the World War an whether this was or not I could not say with any authority but I do know two white men were in my house when I got home from my school. They asked if there was anything they could do to assist and soon afterwards my house was on fire. The houses that they didn’t go in were not burned.
Walker Evans, "Negro Barber Shop Interior, Atlanta" (1936)
“E.W. Evans, Brick Layer and Plasterer,” born into slavery, freed at age 10 during emancipation, who went on to be a mason who laid some of the bricks for AUC’s Fairchild-Stone Hall, has a harrowing account of the 1906 race riots:
I’ve witnessed some trying times here too. I saw the riot and the great fire that practically burned up a part of Atlanta. I saw the toll of the riot–hatred, prejudice, and murder. I wuz working out on what is now Highland Avenue at the time. Soldiers had to be sent out and they wuz supposed to protect everyone but some of them didn’t uphold the law. There wuz a gang of soldiers, and I say gang because that is just what I feel they wuz from the way they acted, dressed in uniform of Uncle Sam and sent out because they wuz supposed to keep the law and there they wuz breaking it. They wuz acting like ordinary, revengeful people, pouring out their hatred for the Negro. Those soldiers came down the streets shouting and singing:
‘We are rough, we are tough, We are rough, we are tough We Kill niggers and never get enough.’
That gang of soldiers went right on their marching and when they got to McGruder Street they killed a Negro. They patrolled Randolph Street and went on down Irwin. They seemed bent on showing their wrath against the Negro. That wuz a pitiful time.
The UGA library and the Atlanta History Center have photos of WPA’s construction projects in Georgia.
Grady Hospital, African American waiting room (Ca. 1936)
Grady Hospital, White waiting room (Ca. 1936)
More of Walker Evans’ photos of mostly rural life in America can be found at the Farm Security Administration website. You can read more about the New Deal in Georgia in the Georgia Encyclopedia. And if all this has you super jazzed about how great things were in the 1930s, this week happens to be the Plaza Theatre’s 70th anniversary celebration, with all things 1939, including Gone With the Wind!
Tags: depression, federal writers project, works progress administration
incredibly fascinating
Great post.
When this popped up in my Google Reader, I was taking a breather from Errol Morris’ 7 part blog series called THE CASE OF THE INAPPROPRIATE ALARM CLOCK that explores several specific examples of Depression-era photography. I read your post and then I turned back to the 7th Morris post, and it contains the very same Walker Evans “Houses and Billboards” photo as this one! It was an odd coincidence, but I think his posts and this one have a lot more in common.
It’s weird how the intention of a journalist (or a photographer) can change the story completely, and often turn the attention to the person who is reporting instead of the person who is telling the story. Describing Mrs. Whelchel as “good stable peasant stock,” for example, creates a bond with the reader that’s ultimately super-condescending to Mrs. Whelchel, even though the description might not be false.
What’s stranger is that the more faithfully speech is recorded, the more pejorative the document becomes, especially if the storyteller’s speech diverges from the standard dialect. I agree that in many cases this becomes offensive, but I wonder why that’s so offensive in the written word and who is it that’s really taking offense. It seems like in the spirit of “authenticity” the journalist ends up creating something that’s distracting and misleading.
But then, what if the journalist took a photograph or a sound recording of the subject with the same intention in mind? No doubt the end result would be interpreted completely differently.
Maybe I should just shut up and take a linguistics or creative non-fiction course or something, but I guess all this is to say is your post is thought-provoking.
OF COURSE the heir to the Brer Rabbit fortune weighs in on the vernacular issue. In short, the interviewers generally didn’t phonetically write out dialects for white or white-collar subjects while they did so for black or working-class people. I guess that’s why I found it kind of offensive. No doubt just about everyone they talked to in Georgia in the 1930s was dropping the r after a vowel and and the g in -ing and adding vowels all over the place to make words one to four syllables longer than they should be, as is the Southern way. But the writers only spell it out sometimes. Even in the one interview with the black mason they spell “was” as “wuz”- well, that’s how everyone says it. That’s how the dictionary spells it phonetically. If they’d done this faithful transcription of dialect for everyone they interviewed, as a way of preserving all the Southern speech patterns of the day, I wouldn’t be so annoyed by it where it does happen.
“the Brer Rabbit fortune”
We got $600 in royalties this year! I spent it all in one place! Thank you, Georgia Natural Gas for the month of December!
I should also add that the above photos of Grady are by some unnamed photographer, not Walker Evans.
I don’t think writing in the vernacular is necessarily condescending, although Christa has a good point about using it consistently. Flannery O’Connor reproduces Southern speech quite often in her work, and I think it’s an effective way to help paint a picture.
Spelling “was” like “wuz” is not very enlightening. But when O’Connor writes, “Nothing ails him…He’ll put it up terreckly”, it adds flavor.
It certainly can be distracting, especially when it’s not done with an ear for dialect. The “Gone With the Wind” example is atrocious mainly because it doesn’t sound authentic — it doesn’t faithfully reproduce the conversation.
Great post! Just curious if anyone may know where the Walker Evans’ photo “Houses and Billboards, Atlanta, 1936″ may have been taken? I’ve seen the picture a number of time and always wondered. My guess is that it may have been in the Capitol Avenue area that was blown out by construction of the downtown connector and urban renewal of the Atlanta Stadium.
Indeed, a great post.