“RAISE UP A CHILD"

Edith V.P. Hudley, Wendy Haight, and Peggy Miller

PART 1:  Childhood

Part one of Mrs. Hudley’s oral history encompasses her childhood from 1920 to 1935, which she spent “in the country” on a small family farm. The farm included a four-room home built by Edith’s father, Aaron, which housed his wife, Mamie, and their eight children. The house did not have indoor plumbing or electricity and was heated by a fireplace. The family farm was on the “Patton tract,” land set aside by the “white Pattons” (former slave owners) at the end of slavery to be passed along to the “black Pattons” (former slaves) over the generations. From this land, Aaron and Mamie fed their family and raised cotton for cash. Aaron also did a variety of jobs within the community for cash, including making railroad ties, digging wells, and picking cotton. The farm faced the woods and was surrounded on three sides by fields. From her home, Edith could see four other homes, the family farms of relatives. Transportation was by foot, mule, or mule-drawn wagon. Mrs. Hudley estimates that when she was growing up, her community consisted of twenty families who had lived on the land from slavery times. Some owned their land as did the Pattons, and others were share croppers, that is, tenant farmers who received a share of the value of crops minus charges for housing, seeds, tools, and so on. Throughout this community, Edith was known as “Aaron Patton’s baby daughter” or “Little Mamie.”

The Patton tract was approximately 16 miles outside of Kennard, Texas, in Houston County.Kennard was settled in the 1850s around a small sawmill that shut down the year of Edith’s birth. Much of the area eventually was sold to the federal government and reforested in the 1930s to become part of the Davy Crockett National Forest. Although the closing of the mill had a profound impact on the economy of Kennard, the population remained stable through the 1930s. During Edith’s childhood, Kennard had a population of approximately six hundred and had eight general stores, a bank, a hotel, a drugstore, and a school (Bishop, 2001). This is the town to which Edith and her family traveled to shop and do their business.

Edith Hudley grew up during segregation times. As a child, Edith wondered why it was that she worked alongside of whites in the fields but she was not allowed to attend the same school. She did not question that the whites attended a different church, but wondered why they would come to her church to hear the singing. In town, Edith was not permitted to try on shoes in the white-owned store or to drink, eat, swim, or use toilets in “whites only” facilities.

During Mrs. Hudley’s childhood, blacks were excluded from the political system. For example, in some places blacks (but not whites) had to pass literacy tests in order to vote. In Texas and many other southern states, poll taxes eliminated most blacks from the voting rolls. Blacks also were kept from participating in the political system through terrorist activities, including those of the Ku Klux Klan (Johnson, 1997).

Mrs. Hudley’s childhood occurred in the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan. In the early 1920s, the Klan numbered over 3 million people and had expanded to become nearly a national organization. Its goal was to reassert the dominance of the white Protestant community through whipping, torture, and even murder (Johnson, 1997). Nationwide, Mrs. Hudley’s home state of Texas ranks third (behind Mississippi and Georgia and ahead of Louisiana and Alabama) in the number of recorded deaths by lynching. In the 1920s and 1930s lynching was considered by whites to be a form of interracial social control and recreation rather than crime, and hence law enforcement was uneven and ineffectual. Although the number of recorded deaths by lynching declined in the twentieth century, there nevertheless were seventy-six black deaths in 1919, twenty-three in 1926, and twenty-four in 1933. Note that these statistics refer to recorded lynchings resulting in death. Some lynchings were not recorded, and some “only” involved torture and dismemberment (Zangrando, 1991). However, it is important to note that the Klan of the 1920s and 1930s, for all of its hype and hatred, failed to deflect the nation’s progress toward a pluralistic, democratic society (Trelease, 1992).

Edith’s experience of this cultural and historical context was complex. She describes whites and blacks in her rural, southern community as “tied” by common ancestors. From an early age she recognized that this common ancestry was a result of the rape of her ancestors (e.g., Aunt Sarah) by white men in slavery times, and she also enjoyed the kindness of the white Pattons of her own childhood. The “white Pattons” recognized the “black Pattons” as relatives and assisted them in times of need. For example, after Mamie’s death they employed Edith’s older brothers, looked out for Edith when she conducted errands in town, and helped the family with transportation. Although these people and many other whites treated Edith’s family with kindness and humanity, she reports that other whites were “salty”—they would “look right through you.” Some were even dangerous.

When reading part 1, you may find it helpful to refer to Appendix A, which outlines several key events in Mrs. Hudley’s childhood. Edith enjoyed her position as baby of the family until the birth of a brother in 1926 and another brother in 1928. In 1927, at the age of seven, Edith enrolled in an all black elementary school. In 1930, Edith’s mother, Mamie, died at the age of forty-one from complications of childbirth. In 1931, the family home burned down, and extended family and other community members housed the family and provided food and clothing until Aaron could rebuild.

Appendix B lists a number of people who figured prominently in Mrs. Hudley’s childhood. Mrs. Hudley’s parents, Aaron Franklin Patton (1880–1946) and Mamie E. Scott Patton (1889–1930), were deeply loved and have remained powerful role models throughout her life. There were a number of other adults who stepped in to help the family after Mamie’s death, including Edith’s godmother, Mama Carrie, and Aaron’s sisters, Aunt Mollie and Aunt Martie. During Mamie’s two year illness, Edith loved and cared for her baby brothers, Oliver Wendell and Willie Oscar, beginning her lifetime passion for raising children. Nor was Edith, herself, without the care and guidance of older children and adolescents, including her older siblings—Ruth, Andrew, Percell, Mary Sterling, and Margie Louise—and her beloved and admired godbrother, Harvey.

For students and teachers, Appendix C raises a variety of topics for thought, discussion, and further study. These issues are designed to complement coursework in social work (especially Human Behavior in the Social Environment and Women, Society, and Social Welfare Issues), education, human development, and developmental psychology.

References

Bishop, E.H. (2001). Kennard, TX. The Handbook of Texas Online. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/KK/hlk6.html

Johnson, P. (1997). A history of the American people. New York: Harper Perennial.

Trelease, A. (1992). Ku Klux Klan. In E. Foner & J. Garraty (Eds.), The readers companion to American history. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

Zangrando, R. (1991). Lynching. In E. Foner & J. Garraty (Eds.), The readers companion to American history. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.