Days beyond Recall: Subsistence Homesteading in the Rural South,Circa 1920

Abstract

Accented in some 100 semi-structured interviews with Southern aged poor is the bitter struggle to survive. People worked long hours for little, bartering farm produce for the few store-bought necessities. Primitive housing, education and medicine sufficed. Both black and white poor suffered brutal exploitation, despite which they review their life with satisfaction. We hypothesize that, to maintain mental health, it is better to idealize the unalterable past. Several global assessments of “morale” are discussed. It is also suggested that this journal become a clearing house for questions that measure psychic well-being in the aged more naturally and by indirection than do scales in current use.