ALABAMA IN THE 1900S

LIFE

• Share cropping and tenant farming were the dominant model of Alabama agriculture from the late-nineteenth century through the onset of WW2. Landless farmers worked the plots of other landowners. Women sewed and mended clothing, and washed clothes by hand. They made soap from lard, baked bread, and canned everything from beef and pork to green beans and tomatoes.

CHORES

• Farm families spent much of their time trying to raise a crop and grow their own food. Weather influenced every aspect of life on the farm in the 1930s. Farm gardens helped keep rural families fed. Many chores had to be done daily: hauling water, gathering eggs, tending the garden, and filling the wood box. And some chores like milking cows and feeding livestock had to be done more than once a day. Fieldwork started early, with feeding and harnessing.

ENTERTAINMENT

• With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds of programs, from sermons to soap operas.

SCHOOL

• Many farm children rode horses to school. Not all of them could get to school every day, like Cliff Peterson who found a way to play hooky, then his parents found out and was in trouble. One of the main goals of education was to teach students to read.

FOOD

• Poor whites and blacks fed their families with whatever they could grow, hunt, fish, and forage.
• Foods from back then:Corn Chowder, Southern Fried Catfish, Southern cream cake, and southern style country ham.