The scope of work done by southern slaves in the 1850s?
Yes
No

Slave owners’ willingness to provide food and shelter for their slaves?
Yes
No

Slaves’ resistance to their enslavement?
Yes
No

In 1929, a white Mississippi singer named Dutch Coleman recorded a hillbilly tune titled, “Granny Get Your Hair Cut.” At a time when the Great Depression had already hit southern cotton farmers, Coleman sang:

Some folks they talk about the farm relief
Listen here folks, this is my belief
The boll weevil he’s an awful pest
So the flappers and the short skirts done the rest

Chorus:
So Granny get your hair cut, paint your face and shine
Granny get your hair cut short like mine
If you want to kick high, have a big time
Granny get your hair cut short like mine

In eighteen hundred and ninety-two
The women wore their dresses down to the top of the shoe
Nineteen hundred and twenty-three
They went to wearin’ ‘em up above their knee

If the women wear their dresses like-a they used to
Let me tell you farmers what it surely would do
Cause your cotton to go to twenty cents a pound
After the dresses went upward, why the cotton went down

When women wore their dresses long the farmer was sublime
When they cut the dresses cotton went to a dime
Keep on getting shorter, I’ll tell you what they’ll do
Instead of three yards they will only get two

Now let me tell you ladies and let me tell you straight
You better make ‘em longer before its too late
‘Cause there’s one thing about it and it’s not no joke
If you don’t make ‘em longer, why the farmer’s goin’ broke

Can you use the song as evidence for:

The troubles facing cotton farmers in 1929?
Yes
No

The politics of women’s fashions?
Yes
No

Gender relations within farm families?
Yes
No

The classic blues of the 1920s provided many female African-American singers a new public space to discuss their lives and assert control over their own careers and images. In 1923, the popular blues singer Bessie Smith recorded “Sam Jones Blues.” In a strong, defiant voice, Smith declared:

[spoken]
Who’s that knocking on that door? Jones?
You better get away from that door.
I don’t know anybody named Jones.
You’re in the right church, brother, but the wrong pew.

[sung]
Sam Jones left his lovely wife just to step around.
Came back home, about a year, looking for his high brown.
Went to his accustomed door
And he knocked his knock of four
His wife, she came, but to his shame,
She knew his face no more.

Sam said, “I’m you husband, dear,”
But she said, “Dear, that’s strange to hear.”
You ain’t talking to Mrs. Jones,
You’re speaking to Miss Wilson now.
I used to be your lovely mate,
But the judge done changed my fate.

Was the time you could walk round here
And call this place your home sweet home.
But now its all mine for a time,
I’m free and sitting all alone.

Don’t need your clothes. Don’t need your rent.
Don’t need your ones and twos
Though I ain’t rich, I know my stitch
I earned my strutting shoes.

Say, hand me the key that unlocks my front door
Because that bell don’t read “Sam Jones” no more.
You ain’t talking to Mrs. Jones,
You’re speaking to Miss Wilson now.

Can you use this song as evidence for:

Black women’s struggle to control their own lives?
Yes
No

The relationship between economic independence and gender equality in some women’s lives?
Yes
No

Popular ideas about women’s independence?
Yes
No