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How Did The Great Depression Affect African American Women

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The Great Depression was a test of character and strength. The poverty ridden United states was a testament to the strong and willing. During this Depression women where the backbone to society. Women helped when no one else would. They gave when there was nothing to give and fought for those who could not. Listening to interviews of women recalling the Depression era lays out a similar theme. A need to help those who had nothing. Even women who had almost nothing themselves helped when they could.
Three women, Kitty McCullough, Emma Tiller, and Dorothy Bernstein all told a similar story of giving. Kitty McCullough recounted poor traveling men who stopped and asked for money. She would not have money to give but gave them food instead. One man she had helped wore shabby clothes so she gave away her husband’s best suit. When she told her husband, she stated, “anyway you have three …show more content…

The white women would claim if they helped the white man he would have just kept coming back. Though the women regularly helped African American men, even giving money for cigarettes. Tiller being an African American woman discussed her and others secretly leaving food by trash cans for the white men. This was so they had help without the white women knowing. That was only when they were at work. Emma Tiller shared a similar scene of traveling men asking for help at her door. Tiller states, “I had gone in my house and taken my husband’s old shoes and his clothes and some of em’ he needed em’ himself but, I didn’t feel he need em’ as bad… because that man was in a worser shape than he was in” (CITE). Tiller was stating that she had seen these men scavenging and invite them to stop at her home. Like Kitty, though she was personally not well-off, she gave something nice her husband had away. Simply over the idea these men had even less than them so why would they not

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