Margaret Jarman Hagood's Mothers of the South as Sociological Documentary

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to discuss why and how Margaret Jarman Hagood's 1939 monograph, Mothers of the South: Portraiture of the White Tenant Farm Woman, was a unique contribution to the sociological and documentary study of the rural white woman in the South during the Great Depression. Hagood's work represents a lasting document of how these women experienced the poverty of the South during the 1930s. Mothers of the South is also part of a larger intellectual and aesthetic movement during the period known as documentary. Her work is compared and contrasted with a selection of its predecessors along with how her work was unique in its focus on rural white mothers.