[Granville-Hough] 17 Jul 2009 - Sharecroppers

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:05:05 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Sharecroppers - 17 Jul 2009

Share Cropping and ShareCroppers.

After the Civil War, with millions of freed slaves, and equally 
destitute white people, some means had to be worked out for food to be 
produced and for some type of co-existence economy to be established. 
The solution which evolved over several years was for the black people 
to stay where they were and work the same land they had worked before. 
They would have a home and all they had before, and they would pay for 
it with half the produce of their labor. It became known as half and 
half share cropping and was found all across the South. It applied to 
white people with no land just as it did to blacks.
 From the economic point of view, the terms were more favorable to the 
tenant than it was in other parts of the United States or in other parts 
of the world. What worked against it in the South were the vagaries of 
the market, row cropping, and soil erosion. When the system fell apart 
in WWII, it was little better than slavery for the tenant, whether black 
or white. You lived from year to year, hoping to clear enough to pay 
your debts. If you could not, you moved on. To the landowner, the 
situation was worse. The land was washing away, with poorer yields, year 
to year, to such a point that it was problematical a tenant could pay 
the debts of the year. The typical landowner had to stand good for the 
debts the tenant incurred with local merchants. That was part of the 
trade, or deal, which allowed the tenant to move to the land in question.
The share-cropperÆs interest was in the yearÆs crop, the here and now. 
He did not want to do the extra work of maintaining terraces, or other 
methods of slowing soil erosion. He had little interest in cover crops 
or crop rotation which would benefit future tenants. If he found his 
debts exceeded the amount of cotton or corn left in the field to be 
gathered, he would simply move away and abandon it all, leaving the 
landowner with the debt and the crops. The typical share cropper knew 
how to grow and row-crop cotton and corn, but had minimal experience 
with other cash crops. They knew nothing of orchards, chickens, cattle, 
or other long term sources of income. They wanted to cut the trees 
easiest to split for firewood, and were generally astounded anyone would 
expect them to cut up limbs and defective trees. Nearly all the share 
cropper women knew how to grow annual garden vegetables, and used them 
up completely, leaving a bare garden. The landowner to sharecropper tug 
of war was a classical one of those who look to the land to sustain them 
in the future, and those who have only their daily labor to sustain 
them. It is no wonder that leaders of WWII found such ready sources of 
labor across the country. Smith County, MS, lost half its population in 
that short period, 10,000 of its 20,000 people. A whole unsatisfactory 
way of life disappeared. Large tracts of land were abandoned to become 
national forests or game preserves. New ways of farming had to evolve 
for those left with the land.
I have written some things about three tenant families, the white Evans 
family, refugees from Cohay Camp, the negro Boykins, and the negro 
Duckworths. We got along well with them; indeed, we got along well with 
most tenants until times began to change and soil erosion became more 
advanced about 1940. From then on, it was a losing proposition, and no 
tenants were satisfactory, either to us or to anyone else.
I want to mention the Ashley family, who lived with us when I was about 
12 years old. This unfortunate family had three deaf-mute children, 
Delmar, Elmer, and a sister, and these children were about my age. We 
played together, and I learned to communicate with them with sign 
language. Delmar was old enough to be a regular plowhand, and one old 
mule, Ada, learned to respond to his sounds. He and she got along well 
together and they could do more work than others who had to stop and 
smoke or talk. Elmer and I worked together at hoeing or other simple 
tasks. I could discuss anything with Elmer which we knew in common, 
using sign language. After I graduated from West Point, I once saw Elmer 
in Magee, and we could still communicate. He had worked for a defense 
industry plant on the Gulf Coast. One time after the Ashley family had 
moved to another farm on the Highway, I asked him if he would go with me 
to look after some cattle we had in the Big Woods. He agreed, and we 
rode into the woods bareback on our mare, Dixie. In the process of 
closing a gate, Elmer got off and Dixie got out of my control and 
galloped away. So we were separated, and I could not see Elmer. I could 
hear him yell and I would go there and he would be somewhere else 
looking for me. This went on all afternoon until I had to go home to 
report. My mother immediately sent me to the Ashley home, where I found 
Elmer safely eating supper. He had simply given up and had gone home. He 
was a sensible and intelligent fellow.
The Cook family lived with us when I was perhaps in kindergarden. Henry 
was my age and we were great friends and playmates. I think the Cooks 
were Sullivan descendants but I do not know how. After Henry moved over 
into SullivanÆs Hollow, he sent me a present of a white rat. The rat was 
tame and soon escaped from the cage. The best I could tell, it bred with 
the brown rats in our barn, and we soon had a mixed breed of rats. The 
father in this family had a sister not known to us, but whom we later 
learned was ôTennessee Tom,ö a famous prostitute of Jackson and Memphis. 
This woman conned my parents one Sunday morning with cries of anguish 
and woe when she arrived in her T-model car. She claimed to be deathly 
ill. My parents put her in bed, then soon after the Sheriff arrived 
chasing her. Somehow my father convinced the sheriff he had the wrong 
car, and sent him on his way. The woman had a miraculous recovery and 
said her brother was Mr. Cook, whom she then went to visit. A few years 
later, my father was in Jackson and found young Henry selling peanuts to 
train passengers. Apparently the whole family had joined Tennessee Tom 
in Jackson. Perhaps the life on the margins in Jackson was better than 
share cropping in Smith County.
My father heard that one of his first cousins had fallen on bad times 
and wanted a place to live. Her sons, William and Clyde Darden, were 
healthy young men, so he made a trade with her. William and Clyde were 
Sullivan descendants, and they each later married Sullivan descendants. 
The mother was Martha B. ôBellö (Clark) (Darden) Green, twice widowed, 
with the two sons and a daughter Quilla Green. Bell was daughter of 
Sarah A. Miller and her first-cousin husband, James Jackson Clark. 
William Darden had never been to school a day in his life, but Clyde had 
learned to read and write, and Quilla was a good student. William was a 
very intelligent and observant person, used to living on what he could 
find and catch in the woods in and around SullivanÆs Hollow. One day he 
was walking with my father along a path to a field when he reached down 
and grabbed a rabbit behind a clump of broom sage. He had trained his 
part blood-hound dog ôDrumö to do all kinds of interesting things. I 
liked ôDrum,ö but I learned that blood hounds do salivate a great deal, 
and being friends with one is not the most sanitary approach to life. 
They lived one year with us, then moved back to the Oak Grove Community 
where all three children married. I think William learned to read and 
write in the Army during WWII, and he became a respected farmer in the 
SullivanÆs Hollow. Clyde married and went to the Gulf Coast in WWII. 
Quilla married a tenant farmer, B. T. Cruise, and also lived in 
SullivanÆs Hollow. Quilla was the family genealogist and we corresponded 
for some time.
The Andrew Johnson family lived with us before I can remember well. They 
then moved to the farm of Mr. King Oliver Sullivan, near Mize. One son 
ôAncy,ö became an entrepreneur in Mize. One son ôDeeö was said to have 
married a daughter of K. O. Sullivan who had been my second grade 
teacher, but the records show she married someone else.
Weldon Keith and Leo Herrington lived with us each for one year or more. 
They were hard-working young men from local communities with young 
families. The Hall/Tew family was with us for one year, then went back 
to Simpson County. They were Sullivan descendants. Some of those I 
remember as unsatisfactory were Old Man Jones, about half-Choctaw, 
Preacher Walker, a con man of the first order, W. P. Allen/Sullivan (who 
moved away from an ungathered crop). As I noted, share-cropping was 
uneconomical by 1940, but my mother did not know any other way to use 
the land.