White Gold “Cotton”: The Sharecroppers Stories

By Charles Watkins III

This is set in the rural part of America in the 1960s.

A great deal of African Americans were still in the South, picking cotton, chopping cotton, and working on plantations. Little did we know that in the 1960s, there was an industrial revolution not only in the north with the steel mills, stockyards, constructions, and in others, like domestic jobs in the home, hotels, and for drivers in all aspects of transportation.

Every Sunday morning, African Americans would attend church, all day long in most situations because that was a tradition that was taking place in the South during the sharecropping days and slavery days.

I found out that a great deal of churches provided financial support and education for the laughs because Americans were sharecroppers. African Americans, with their best Sunday clothes on, headed to the church to thank God for another week.

Traditions such as gold traditions were maintained by the shoppers and also African American landholders and owners as well. There was also a great deal of landowners doing shopping. At this time, they did not have as much property as plantation owners. But they were lying on this, and they had so much pride in what they did in their work.

These basic and general values for African Americans on Sundays is very powerful.

Let us look forward to the next book that will discuss what happened after 1965 once the sharecropper grandson enters the Chicago metropolitan area after being gone for seven years and see his views and understanding of returning back from the rule of Mississippi to the Uptown Chicago. Lets see what changes in opportunity that will be taken advantage of and the disadvantages that he will experience.

This is my view. This is my love for the book White Gold Cotton and Sharecroppers Stories.

Charles Watkins lll, author of the book

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: May 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781489716842

Charles Watkins III

Charles Watkins the book called White Gold Cotton the sharecropping stories the Hobbies consists of writing short stories painting with acrylic paint on heavy cotton canvas and and linen canvas enjoy playing tennis and spending time with my daughters Tamia and Tamera I have a hobby also consist of restoring old cars and listen to good jazz music also enjoy tasting of good wine malt scotch I also enjoy listening to other people experience and Journeys at they are had in life Im also encouraged by younger people best trying to reach their goals trying to become someone and having a dreams to come true as a teacher one of the main object as I had with student and training them that it will propel them up out of the situation with their Authority in educational for the future I am so blessed to be able to enjoy the simple things of life from a variety of backgrounds with people also enjoy my oldest daughter success at Jackson State University Gallery director that loves promoting art her name is Shonda I have a lovely son as well his name is Charles Watkins to 4th a devoted father and hard worker as well that lives in Jackson Mississippi one grandson by the name of Camry and other one other name of Cody I am so blessed to be able to fulfill my dream and to write this book that I have planned to write so many years that has became a great part of me and that Im able to share with society and my readers hopefully it will be a motivation for other people to write into paint and to express themselves in the area of creative writing.

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Copyright © 2018 Charles Watkins III.

Interior Art Credit:    Paintings by Charles Watkins III

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-1683-5 (sc)

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LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 04/26/2018

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 The Northern Migration

Chapter 2 Arrival In Mississippi

Chapter 3 That Ugly House

Chapter 4 Our New School

Chapter 5 Plantations And Sharecropping

Chapter 6 Cotton

Chapter 7 The Arts Of Chopping And Picking Cotton

Chapter 8 Family Dynamics

Chapter 9 Segregation

Chapter 10 Farm Life

Chapter 11 Home Life And Leisure Time

Chapter 12 Church

Chapter 13 My Livestock

Chapter 14 Grandpa’s Pickup Truck

Chapter 15 Rolling Stores

Chapter 16 Random Observations

Chapter 17 Education In Clay County And Mississippi

Chapter 18 Returning To Chicago

About The Author

CHAPTER ONE

THE NORTHERN MIGRATION

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The Great Migration -- the relocation of more than six million African-Americans from the rural South to the Northern Midwest from 1916 to 1970 -- had a significant impact on many of the nation’s urban areas.

This is my personal experience while living on the Rural Clay, County, which is located on the outskirts of West Point, Mississippi. It is part of the triangle geographical area where you have Tupelo, Columbus, Aberdeen and Starkville. West Point is located about two and a half hours from Memphis, Tennessee—going south toward West Point, Mississippi.

My grandparents lived and worked for the Brand Plantation known as J. T. Brand Plantation. The Brands’ had one of the largest plantation in Clay County which produces its own highway, general store, and had its own cotton gin. The Brands’ process all of this through its own cotton gin process and all the surrounding community cotton through his cotton gin.

Mr. J. T. Brand is a well-organized businessman, producing a great deal of cotton every year, and had hundreds of African-American living on his properties—cultivating and harvesting cotton, for the cotton processing market.

I lived in the J. T. Brand Plantation with my grandparents for 7 years. This is my personal experiences, when I lived in Rural Clay, Country, the Rural part of West Point, Mississippi. My Grandparents were Alice Harris Watkins and Charles Watkins, Sr. I worked side-by-side with my grandparents in the plantation. My grandparents were accountable for 16 acres of cultivating cotton in that plantation. The area which my grandparents lived in was called Bermuda—and the people in the area were called the Muda. This was that dialect they use. The people in that community have their own way of speaking and talking.

For those who found jobs, they could make as much in one day as they did in a month as a sharecropper. Some Negroes would make $20 to $30 a day.

There also were great opportunities for Negroes to do well in many other ways, as their newfound purchasing power enabled them to provide comfortable lives for their families – comfortable lives that were only a dream for the sharecropper. Negroes now could educate their children, purchase a house, purchase a business, even send their children to college to become teachers, doctors, lawyers, business people, whatever they wanted to become.

Some Negroes had problems adjusting to their improved financial situation and the temptations of a big city. Some had no self-control.

Unfortunately, some of the country males became abusive to their families, treating them they same way they had been treated by the white landowners back home. With the better standard of living, and opportunities for women to find work, the family dynamics were very different up north. The black men who could not adapt would leave their families without continuing to support them.

That left Negro families especially vulnerable, as the mothers often were unable to support their children.

This was one of the worst results of the big migration. Fathers in the South seldom left their families.

Of course, many Negro men did very well in providing everything necessary for their families. Some men took the opportunity to educate their children and sustain or improve the standard of living for future generations.

My parents left Mississippi for Chicago, when I was two years old, to find a better way of life. Compared with living as sharecroppers in Mississippi, finding better work and a higher standard of living up north was an easy choice. My mother joined my father in Chicago after he had been there about a year. When I was a boy, I recall my father did well providing food and clothing; however he showed little interest in education for us.

Later, back in Chicago with my mother after my parents had separated, I recognized she had challenges in providing for the basic needs of five children. Back in the 1960s, the laws didn’t place as many requirements on fathers as there are today.

CHAPTER TWO

ARRIVAL IN MISSISSIPPI

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As I was preparing to leave Chicago, my cousin and I speculated that once I reached Mississippi I would become a cowboy like the ones we saw on television. Surely Mississippi was as wild and woolly as the Old West!

We arrived in West Point, Miss., late in the summer of 1957 after driving all night. During the long drive I could hear the car’s suspension groan from its heavy load: my Grandma, my two brothers, my two sisters and me, with my father driving. For 11 hours, we were packed in that car like sardines in a can.

And when we saw the rural area where my grandparents lived, and their ugly house, I was horrified. I never imagined I would spend the next eight years there.

To make matters worse, our grandpa’s reception was not very friendly, either. He must have known that we had no idea what was involved in living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, and that he would have to teach us.

When our father told us we were going to Mississippi, we thought this would be a family vacation! Instead, my father stayed one day, then drove back to Chicago with his youngest brother John. To me it felt like a hostage exchange, leaving us kids to work the farm and taking my uncle to a better life in Chicago. Plus we didn’t know how long we were supposed to live with our grandparents as neither they nor my father said anything about it.

No one asked us, of course.

We all were very young: Ella Bell was 8; me, 7; Samuel, 5; Daniel, 4; and Peggy, 3.

The first nice thing we noticed in Mississippi was the fresh air, similar to the scent of water where fish are dwelling. The water affects the air in ways that please your lungs! Of course, there are other country smells that aren’t very pleasant, such as manure. Fertilizer from cow dung was used widely.

That fresh air was the only highlight of our arrival. Although I had been a free-spirited Chicago boy raised in a totally different environment, I knew I was in a different world now.

I was told that my Grandma would be picking me and my sibling brothers and sisters would be go down south to visit my grandparents upon their arrival to pick us up from Chicago. The travelling from uncles and aunts house had became something that I didn’t understand, however now as I think of thing it was apparent that our mother had lost her apartment this would explain the reason why we were living with my uncle Jordan and aunt Mary. I had never met my grandma mother at that time but I waited on the opportunity to go to Mississippi Down south that was the common word to visit them. We were never giving any detail as what the visit would be like the only explanation that I would recall would be like the Cowboys which I would see on television for example Roy Roger and Gene Autry the Glomorouse Cowboys. I couldn’t wait to get dressed in my cowboys outfits once I arrival in Mississippi. This was my vision of going down south to visit my grandparents. One of the most exciting thing I wanted to met my grandparents which I had never met. I didn’t know that that where two sets of grandparents I just knew that my father mother would be the person that would be taking to Mississippi to spend time with them in the south during that vacation to the south. I wanted to pictures how my grandma would look; I was very visual from looking at television because we where high restricted from going outside of the house without supervision. Any time we wanted to go out of the house we had to have permission to go outside of that apartment we lived indoors. I how I enjoyed looking at Elvis Presley on the television not really knowing what color of a person made in the society in which we lived in while living. I was very curious in what would my grandma look like once she arrived to pick up me and my sibling to take us back to Mississippi to live with her after all I’ve never seen her in my entire life.

From my observation of television my visual of my grandma was the lady on the pancake box at that time which was the lady Aunt Jemima a southern lady that I picture her to resemble. Upon my grandma and father arrival to