Item #7212 [Archive of letters and miscellaneous documents mainly reflecting the experiences of an African American couple in Texas during the Great Depression and World War II.]. Hazel E. Ferrell, Pinkard.
[Archive of letters and miscellaneous documents mainly reflecting the experiences of an African American couple in Texas during the Great Depression and World War II.]
[Archive of letters and miscellaneous documents mainly reflecting the experiences of an African American couple in Texas during the Great Depression and World War II.]
[Archive of letters and miscellaneous documents mainly reflecting the experiences of an African American couple in Texas during the Great Depression and World War II.]

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[Archive of letters and miscellaneous documents mainly reflecting the experiences of an African American couple in Texas during the Great Depression and World War II.]

Austin, Coolidge, Mexia, and other locations throughout Texas and Oklahoma; 1936–1943. 73 autograph letters (mostly 11” x 8” or 8” x 5”), 185 pp; 1 typed letter (11” x 8.25”), 1 p.; 25 used, non-pictorial postcards (mostly 5.5” x 3.25”); most letters and postcards in pencil. 1 driver’s license, 1 driver’s license application, 1 commercial operator license, 1 U.S. Employment Service ID, 1 photo ID to enter Mexia internment Camp, 1 gasoline ration application (blank), 19 pay stubs, 1 notice of layoff, 6 car-related receipts, 2 notices of debt, several notifications from employers. Along with 1 remnant of clothing with Ferrell’s US Navy nametag and 2 metal buttons from the Ballantyne Engineering Co., one of which identifies its bearer as “Laborer-162.”.

An archive compiled by one J.L. Ferrell, mostly consisting of letters from his eventual wife Hazel E. Pinkard, illuminating her progression from college courses, dances, and basketball games to marriage, jobs, and children, dogged all the while by financial worry and occasional loneliness. Also included are various papers relating to Ferrell’s military service and other employment as well as a number of letters from family and friends.

This archive paints a picture of African American life in the late Depression and first years of World War II through the lives of J.L. Ferrell and his correspondents, particularly his sweetheart and eventual wife, Hazel E. Pinkard. Through Pinkard, the archive sheds considerable light on young female adulthood and the difficult balancing act between the stress and excitement of college life and the delights and consequences of a romantic relationship.

Originally from Coolidge, Texas, Pinkard was a student at Tillotson College in Austin from at least 1936 to 1939. Her early letters sketch the contours of college life for a young woman of color under the leadership of prominent Black educator Mary Elizabeth Branch. After years of falling enrollment and financial woes, Branch reinstated Tillotson as a vibrant four year co-ed college and a member of the American Association of Colleges. Pinkard writes about her courses in phys ed (which “makes me eat every thing I can get my hands on and drink a gallon of water a day, who wouldn’t get fat?”) and home ec (in which they debated, among other things, whether it is right or wrong to smoke and drink: “Child we had the worst argument on this subject, you should have been here”). Other letters report on dances and friends, reference popular music, and recount notable events, including an especially exciting basketball game against Xavier University of New Orleans and “the Presidents Speech”—Roosevelt’s second Inaugural Address in January 1937. In spite of a few bumps in their relationship (“J.L.! how dare you stand me up like this? What is the matter? Whats happened? What has come over you? You surely aren’t the same J.L. I used to know”), there is a second—and real—pregnancy scare in 1939: “I am having such a hard week this time I went to a Dr. here. He says their is no question to my being you know what and their is nothing that can be done to make me feel better […] I feel that marriage is our best way out think this over.” The correspondence resumes in 1942, with Pinkard—now Mrs. Ferrell—writing to her “Hubby” about home and farm life, including news of their son, “Jr.”

J.L. Ferrell served some time as Steward’s Mate 2nd Class Petty Officer in the Navy, and worked a variety of jobs, from cotton picking to truck driving to construction, in various locations around Texas and Oklahoma. A photo ID, pay stub, and termination notice indicate that Ferrell briefly worked at the Mexia Internment Camp, which, as the largest of Texas’s 70 POW camps, housed as many as 8,500 predominantly German prisoners of war. By working away from home, Ferrell evidently provided essential financial support to his family back in Coolidge. A 1938 letter from his sister Bobbie reports that: “Mama said hello to you and Daley and you all be good and pray and work and save your money and come home when you all can she said if you all got plenty cotton stay up there and work because its nothing down here to do.” The same year, his sister Eliza wrote again of their mother: “She wont you to if you can spear her some money send it if it ant but a dollar send it because I ant got nothing to give her and cant get any work to do so you stay as long as you can and make all you can and please do right.”

Besides news of health and money from home and a few employment-related notes from friends, Ferrell’s other correspondents supplement Hazel’s picture of dating and social life at the time. He evidently saw a few other sweethearts come and go (“I am sorry your girl friend’s sick but as far as the banquet goes, it unfortunate for her and lucky for me (smile)”), along with a couple joke letters (“This is not crazy just a little foolish”). J.L. died in 1986 and Hazel in 1994. Both are buried in Coolidge, Texas.

REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGES:

From Hazel:

28 Sept., 1936, Austin: “We also stopped in town and window shopped and then went to the station to see the Frisco Train come in and make her stop people were everywhere with their bags and suitcases it really made me think of leaving you in Waco Sunday morning […] I am going to the city library now.”

18 Oct., 1937, Austin: “There were a dance given for the foot balls boys only. The students sure did raise a lots of hell because they were not all invited. They thought they were not premitted to the dance because of the way they carried out at the last one but the teachers assured us that that wasnt why although the president [Mary Elizabeth Branch] did kick a little but there wasnt much she could say because some of the men teachers acted just like the students.”

27 Oct., 1937, Austin: “The Prairie View game was here Saturday […] I intended to go to the dance after the game with a girl friend of mine but her boy friend came over about the time we were ready to leave and wouldn’t let her go, so I stayed at home too. Everyone says the dance was red hot. […] The Y.M.C.A boys had a musical program last nite and on that program a boy sang ‘I am confessing that I love you.’ The funny thing is some of the students cried while he sang it. I can imagine they were thinking of their loves back home. I all but cried myself. […] I close here but I won’t ask you to excuse bad writing because I am taking a course in writing. Would you ever dreamed it? (smile) Hazel”

1 Feb., 1937, Austin: “Say you should have been here to see the baskit-ball game between Tillotson and Xavier University of New Orleans Louisiana. Their boys could really play. They were Catholic’s the main forwards wore a cross arround their necks. Every time they shot a gold they would make a cross before they did so I mean they didn’t ever miss. When they game out on the field to play they all neiled in prayer and got up and beat hell out of our boys. […] I can’t find words to describe the game to you as I saw it, but its worth money for a person who loves basketball as well as you to have seen the game. […] I don’t like all of my clothes getting too small in the waist I am beginning to feel somewhat worried about it. If you remember the twenty seventh of this month will make three months that is if anything is wrong. You said you hope it wasn’t anything we will be sorry […] but I wouldn’t be so sorry if it means you and I together. Of course I want to go to school but if things are so I cant go, then I just cant. I cant help it now it is too late when I could help it I didnt its too late to cry now. I have tried several things to make me ___ or ___ you know but they did no good.”

19 Oct., 1943, Mexia: “When the day come when I can move off this end of the road I’ll praise the Lord for it is just so lonesome until its sceary. People’s voices and to see someone pass seem like ghosts because it’s so seldom we see anyone. The winds been so hiegh and my old ragedy house have rattle so until I am as nervious as I can be. […] Jr. is playing. Dorothy is cooking supper and Norman is feeding up his hogs and things He is picking over his cotton again. WIllie Culton is helping him. Be sure to sign up for your ration book no. 4 before the 30th of this month. Go to the school house nearest you, take your ration book no. 3 with you. Now thats the way we must get signed up I am sure the same rule apply to that state also.”

From family and friends:

1 Nov., 1938, Coolidge: “Papa sais Hello Gus said Hello and tell Black bud to keep his Black Ass up there, and Darley said tell him he dont wish him no bad luck but he hope he dont get home.”

13 Nov., 1938, Waco: “I hardly know how to begin as we have drifted so far apart, and you know as well as I do that I was always considered sweetheart no. 2 with you. I thought by this time, the wedding bells would be ringing for you.”

2 Dec., 1938, Coolidge: “Dear Brother, Today leave me and family during pretty good and hope the same of you. Boy how come you was so long by writing to us we just dident know what had become of you. You just wouldn’t write, you ask me had Hazel come home no she is sick and in the hospital Mama was out there last Monday”

10 May, 1938, Mexia (nonsense letter): “I set my self down, pencil in hand, to typewrite you a few lines, please excuse my pen. We do not live where we lived, but we live where we moved, Sorry we are so fur together and I wish we were close apart. […] I saw a sign on the rond that said this will take you to Sandy, so I got on it and set there for three hours and the d_ _ _ thing never did move. I am mailing your winter coat, you wore last summer by telephone, as it is to heavy to send by porcel post, I cut the buttons off hoping to make it lighter you will find them in the inside pocket. One of my neighbors babies swollowed some straightpins, we fed him iron cushion and he got all right.”

5 Sept., 1943, Frederick, OK: “Received your letter yesterday in regard to cotton picking. Have just started pulling at $1.25 per hundret. We have had a dry summer and cotton is not as good as the last two years. It has lots of bolls but they are small. […] I will need some pullers so if you get here I can use you.”

REFERENCES: “Mary Elizabeth Branch (1881-1944),” Blackpast.org; “Branch, Mary Elizabeth,” Handbook of Texas Online; “Mexia (Texas) USA POW Camp,” worldandmilitarynotes.com; Kramer, Arnold. “When the Afrika Korps Came To Texas,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 80.3, 1977.

CONDITION: Overall very good, no losses to letters; wear to envelopes (2 with major tears). Some rumpled documents but all clean and fully intact.

Item #7212

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