Out of Yazoo City

By Willie B. Powell

Willie describes the events of her growing up with various family members and being a firsthand eyewitness of segregation in the South during the 1950s, as she recalls. Living with her grandparents in Yazoo City, Mississippi, is the basis of the early times from five to twelve years of age.

After her grandfather died, it became a new experience for both her and her grandmother. They were uprooted from Mississippi by an aunt who moved them to Chicago, Robbins, Illinois. Being shifted from one family member to another was a struggle for survival until Willie was enrolled in Piney Woods Country Life School. Piney Woods had a motto of educating the head, heart, and hand. Each student learned two marketable skills by working half-day and academics half-day. Kudos goes to Piney Woods for her success in the work arena and a fifty-year marriage. She met her husband at Piney Woods. This is her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662426698

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Out of Yazoo City

Willie B. Powell

Copyright © 2021 Willie B. Powell

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-6624-2670-4 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-6624-2669-8 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

I Was There

Remembering Early Years

Life in Mississippi

Chicago

My View of Piney Woods Country Life School

Tributes

New York/Wagner

Work and Children

A United States Army Career Soldier

Staff Sergeant Jesse James Kitchens's Teams

My Perspective on the Life of a Soldier

The Flaw

Background

Yazoo City

Mt. Olive Baptist Church

The Big House

Description of the Little House on the Hill

About the Author

To my children:

Jesse Jr., Crystal, Kimberly, and their spouses: Mark, Chris, and Tonya

To my grandchildren:

Skye and Sterling

Introduction

Growing up from the time of birth, I lived with different family members. From my cousins Frances and Peter Powell to my grandparents (Mama and Papa) to my mother Genoline (Cude), to my aunt Inez, and my aunt Sweetie Mae. Finally, I was sent to Piney Woods Country Life School. I attended there from 1955 to 1962. Not exactly a foster child, but I felt like one. All these transitions have been compiled in telling this story of my life.

I Was There

Written in 1999

I was born in the segregated South, Yazoo City, Mississippi.

I ate with the dog out of a cracked plate where my aunt was a day worker. I was one of the children who walked three miles to school one way.

I was scared when Emmett Till became a casualty of racial bigotry.

I was one of the groups who could not sit at the lunch counter at Woolworths. I was a student at Piney Woods Country Life School.

I was there when the schools throughout the South were desegregated.

I was one of the first ten students to attend a previously all-white college on Staten Island. I participated in the freedom marches and rallies of the sixties.

Joan Baez, Leon Bibb, Peter, Paul and Mary sang at the rallies. Chubby Checker did the twist.

Jimmy Hendrix was far-out on the guitar.

I listened to the poetry of the hippies in Greenwich Village.

I celebrated with many African countries as they obtained their independence. I cringed at the rub out of Malcolm X.

I stood on Liberty Island, visiting the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

I was hired to work at Manufacturers Hanover Trust in Manhattan as a clerk.

I marched on Washington and stood near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, to listen to Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream.

I was twenty-one and horrified at the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I got married at Borough Hall, the City of New York.

I cried when Martin Luther King was murdered. I was anguished when Bobby, too, was murdered. I just missed my metro transfer reminiscing.

One day, waiting for my transfer to work at Montgomery College, Rockville, Maryland, these thoughts came to me. That evening, I typed them.

Willie B. Powell, picture taken by Mr. Allen Providence (1962). I was singing.

Remembering Early Years

My life has been a struggle from the time I was born. Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, in 1941, I was given to Peter and Frances Powell at the age of three months. They lived in South Bend, Indiana, in the 1940s. My mother and grandfather had gone to South Bend to find jobs. Peter was my mother's nephew. He and his wife Frances had no children at the time. I grew up calling Frances mother. My mother, Genoline (Cude), was twenty years old when she had me. I was her third child.

Genoline got married to Mr. L. C. Richardson, living in South Bend, Indiana, as well. Frances had advised Cude not to marry Mr. Richardson because my grandfather (Papa) had learned Mr. Richardson had another family back down in Mississippi. My mother felt she had no choice because she was pregnant. Alma was born a year later.

Mr. Richardson decided to leave South