1940S ALABAMA

LIFE IN EARLY ALABAMA

• March 25: Nine black youths, soon to be known as the Scottsboro Boys, are arrested in Paint Rock and jailed in Scottsboro, the Jackson County seat. Charged with raping two white women on a freight train from Chattanooga, the sheriff had to protect them from mob violence that night. Based on questionable evidence, the convictions by an all-white jury generated international outrage.
• Tennessee Valley Authority created to develop resources of poor Appalachian South, including large parts of north Alabama.

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SCHOOLS

• State sales tax instituted to help fund education.
• Schools were still segregated pre 1940.

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FOOD

• Most food was grown by farmers or grown at home in a garden.

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ENTERTAINMENT

• Speakeasies were secret places where people could drink, smoke, and gamble without persecution.

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CHORES

• 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 the horses.

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