%images; ]> wpa0-07090406 [Miss Smith, the lady at the last place]: a machine readable transcription. Life Histories from the Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940; American Memory, Library of Congress. Selected and converted. American Memory, Library of Congress.

Washington, DC, 1994.

Preceding element provides place and date of transcription only.

For more information about this text and this American Memory collection, refer to accompanying matter.

 U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers' Project (Folklore Project, Life Histories, 1936-39); Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Copyright status not determined; refer to accompanying matter.

The National Digital Library Program at the Library of Congress makes digitized historical materials available for education and scholarship.

This transcription is intended to have an accuracy of 99.95 percent or greater and is not intended to reproduce the appearance of the original work. The accompanying images provide a facsimile of this work and represent the appearance of the original.

 1994/03/15 2002/04/05
0001

[?]

Accession no.

W 3643

Date received

10/10/40

Consignment no.

1

Shipped from

Wash. Office

Label

Amount

5p

[?]

WPA L. C. PROJECT Writers' UNIT

Folklore Collection (or Type)

Title Employment [Begin]: Miss Smith, the lady at the last place . . .

Place of origin Chicago, Illinois Date 4/26/39

Project worker Grace Outlaw

Project editor

Remarks

0002

W36543

Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview

CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF

FORM A

Circumstances of Interview [Employment ?]

FOLKLORE

CHICAGO

430 Words

May 18 1939

STATE Illinois

NAME OF WORKER Grace Outlaw

ADDRESS 507 East Oakwood Boulevard

DATE April 26, 1939

SUBJECT Employment

1. Date and time of interview April 24, 1939

2. Place of interview - (ISES) Illinois Employment Service

3. Name and address of informant Overheard in the waiting room of the office by the writer

4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with informant.

5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you - None

6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.

The waiting room of the office is in the center of a large airy room around the walls of which are offices used by interviewers. The applicants apply from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon; they discuss everything from personalities to war threats.

0003

FORM B

Personal History of Informant

CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF

FOLKLORE

CHICAGO

STATE Illinois

NAME OF WORKER Grace Outlaw

ADDRESS 507 East Oakwood Boulevard

DATE April 26, 1939

SUBJECT Employment

NAME OF INFORMANT Conversations overheard in the waiting room.

1. Ancestry - Folk talking were Negroes, obviously of same ancestry . (?)

2. Place and date of birth

3. Family

4. Places lived in, with dates

5. Education, with dates

6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates

7. Special skills and interests

8. Community and religious activities

9. Description of informant

10. Other Points gained in interview
0004

FORM C

Text of Interview (Unedited )

CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF

FOLKLORE

CHICAGO

STATE Illinois

NAME OF WORKER Grace Outlaw

ADDRESS 507 East Oakwood Boulevard

DATE April 26, 1939

SUBJECT Employment

NAME OF INFORMANT

Clerk: “Miss Smith, the lady at the last place we sent you was very dissatisfied with your work.”

Miss Smith: “How come?”

Clerk: “She wrote in and said you worked too slowly and were not very neat with your work.”

Miss Smith: “Bet she didn't tell you she didn't have nothing to eat in the house . . . come tellin me she's on a diet and caint eat much . . . what's that got to do with me? I crawled round over them floors on a empty belly cause I thought she'd least have some coffee in the joint.”

Clerk: “She said she'd give you another trial if you promised not to spatter her base-board with the oil mop and leave it dirty.”

Miss Smith: “Humph! . . . gimme another trial! . . . what she gonna pay? . . . never mind, if she didn't like my work I dont wanta work for her. She got all she paid for and more. Aintcha got nothing else?”

0005

FORM D

Extra Comment

CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF

FOLKLORE

CHICAGO

STATE Illinois

NAME OF WORKER Grace Outlaw

ADDRESS 507 East Oakwood Boulevard

DATE April 26, 1939

SUBJECT Employment

NAME OF INFORMANT

Clerk: “Not right now, Miss Smith . . . perhaps later today.” Miss Smith went back to her seat, grumbling as she went.

Another Incident

Miss Smith: “Hello Mae, . . . d'you hear that? . . . old woman talking bout I worked too slow. An chile she didn't have enough to eat in that house to feed a chinch.”

Mae: “You tellin me! . . . I worked for a old hag who give me molded bread, said, “Just trim off the mold”.

Miss Smith: “The worst that I ever heard was the old hussy who said she didn't believe in the help eating before they worked cause they got lazy, but I fixed her for that . . . me and the cook stocked up when I left that day.”

Mae: “You know something, us colored folks is losing ground every day . . . I been listening to that woman over there in the office and five outa every six calls she answers, wants white only.”

Miss Smith: “It's the God's truth! . . . same way in the papers . . all the adds but a few asking for white only . . . and on jobs where we used to always work too.”

0006 3

Mae: “Lookit all the hotels . . . aint hardly no colored boys in 'em no more and the red caps at the stations . . . aint no such thing as colored folks work no more.”

Miss Smith: “I'm gonna get myself a a'phabet job just as soon as I can . . . they just as good and last longer than this private work . . . and you show dont work as hard neither.”

Mae: “You got something there, girl . . . my boyfriend's got one and he aint work but six hours a day and aint never work on Saddiys and Sundays . . . now you know that's a sender.”

Miss Smith: “But they aint got no salary much. . . fifty-five dollars a mont.”

Mae: “When is you made fifty-five dollars in one mont?”

Miss Smith: Well, come to think of it . . . I show ain't.”