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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Alice P. Evitt, July 18, 1979. Interview H-0162. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Community interdependence helps weather Depression

The Depression hit the mill workers hard, Evitt remembers, but with help from one another and the church, the community endured.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Alice P. Evitt, July 18, 1979. Interview H-0162. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

JIM LELOUDIS:
One of the big things we haven't talked about yet is the Depression. What do you remember about the Depression, how it affected people out here?
ALICE P. EVITT:
It affected them right smart. I think it affected people everywhere mostly. I've never had to go hungry. I'm thankful for that. I've always had a little something to go on, and I never did pay much attention to such as that.
JIM LELOUDIS:
What did people do to survive? How did you make it through it?
ALICE P. EVITT:
I don't know. We just got along good. They'd give us stuff at the church. We'd go down there and they'd give us food. Once a week they'd give you food down there and help you.
JIM LELOUDIS:
Where would that food come from?
ALICE P. EVITT:
I don't know.
JIM LELOUDIS:
Did the mill owners get it?
ALICE P. EVITT:
I don't know who'd get it. To be honest with you, I don't know. It could of come from the city or welfare or whatever you call it. It could of come from there. I don't know whether they had any welfare or anything there then or not, I don't know, but anyway we got it. We'd get food down there. Seemed like we always managed to get a little something. Everybody around here always raised a garden.
JIM LELOUDIS:
So you made it by growing your own food. Did the mill here ever close?
ALICE P. EVITT:
Sometimes, maybe stand a week's vacation or something like that. That's the only time I ever knowed it to close. It run with steam back then. Later on, it went on electric.