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1001 Broad St.
West Durham, N. 0.
July 12, 1938
I. L. M.
THE DUNNES
Sally Dunne is the mother of thirteen children,
three of whom are dead and three married. Seven of the
children ranging from two and a half to eighteen live
with their mother and father in an old, four -room,
loosely -built house located a short distance from the
houses belonging to the company which owns the mill
where John Dunne works. Some of the people in the mill
village will tell you that the Dunnes were asked to move
off the hill because the near -by neighbors discovered
that their coal was disappearing at night, others will
tell you that they did not take proper care of the
company's house. At any rate the Dunnes cannot rent
a company house and they pay $13 a month for the dilapi-
dated one in which they live. It is becoming increasing-
ly difficult for them to find a house of any kind because
there have been months when the rent was not paid. John
Dunne makes fourteen dollars a week and on that the
family of nine must live.
As you come to the intersection of Broad and 0
Ste. you will more than likely see Sally's smaller
children playing in the little patch of front yard and
when you ask them where she is they will answer readily,
"Mama, is settin, out on the back porch." One of them
runs ahead of you into the house and you walk uneasily
through the confusion which is their home. The first
two rooms are crowded with dirty beds and a few shabby
chairs. The bedroom on the right contains a dusty
table and a dustier radio. You look at the dirty floor
and your mind is brought back to the fact that the
woman who keeps this house is "settin, out on the back
porch."
You find Sally out there on the small porch surround-
ed by three of her children who are helping her tag
tobacco sacks. Her unwieldy body bulges over the sides
of her chair and an enormous tumor gives her the ap-
pearance of permanent pregnancy. She tells one of the
children to get up and give you his chair. She waits
for you to speak and when you have made some introductory
remark she says "I keep alookin, toward you but I can't
hardly see you. They aint no sight atall in one eye
and the sight in the other is gettin, dimmer fast."
She speaks of her blindness in a tone of such
complete acceptance that you do not know what to say.
You look into the dining room at the crude, home-made
table with its ugly oilcloth and then at the icebox
which is the other piece of furniture in the room.
You decide to ask Sally about her work and soon she is
telling you that she and the children tag 20,000 of the
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sacks a week and for it they receive $1.53. "It seems
like that money goes further than John's wages," she
continues. Sometimes we use it for clothes and now and
again we buy somethin, foolish which I reckin we ought
to get along without. I buy the "Durham Sun" for the
children and it costs 150 a week, but they do love to
read the funnies."
As Sally goes on to tell you of her early life
you decide that even if her eyes were strong the paper
she takes for the children would interest her very
little as reading matter. She had time to go no further
than the third grade, for her public work -life started
at ten.
Sally was born in Arkansas on a 160 acre farm
belonging to her grandfather, Josiah White. As a
young man Josiah was a tenant farmer in Durham Oounty
and after he was married he moved to Mississippi,
hoping to find there such conditions as would give
him a chance to become in time a land -owner. Believ-
ing, after two years of hard labor, that possibilities
of his becoming a land -owner in that State were remote
he moved with his wife and one child into Arkansas.
No other children were born to him and by the time his
daughter, Molly, mother of Sally, was eighteen he had
paid for his 160 acre farm and furnished it with live
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stock. Molly married a neighboring tenant who then
came to live with her on her father's place. When he
died eight years later he left Molly with Sally and
three younger children. It was not long until Josiah
died and his widow, after selling the farm and stock
for $1,300, returned to North Carolina.
Near a bag factory in East Durham Molly's mother
bought a four -room house for herself and Molly's family.
While the grandmother looked after the three smaller
children Molly went into the mill. She took Sally, then
an energetic child of ten, along and found work for her
at twenty-five cents a day. Molly made around fifty
cents daily and on the combined wages of mother and
child the family subsisted.
Sally had worked a long time before she was
sixteen. When she reached that age she felt that life
must indeed be half over. Work without any sort of
recreation always had been her lot and marriage appear-
ed to offer at least one advantage change. Child
bearing began immediately and with it even more
responsibility and less time for thoughts of recreation.
It seems foolish to her today that grown people should
want to go to ball games and picture shows. Her dis-
like of billiard parlors is pronounced but not nearly
so much as her fear of liouor stores.