Speaker 1: To me, that was success where most people were dying
Speaker 1: to get away from the country because they saw other
Speaker 1: people going north look like they was building a better
Speaker 1: life because they came back driving a new car. I
Speaker 1: didn't look at having a new car as being success.
Speaker 1: I looked at my dad having a better crop. That
Speaker 1: was the success that I was looking for, even as
Speaker 1: a smaller child. I wanted my success to be right
Speaker 1: here on the land.
Speaker 2: On this episode, I want to introduce you to a
Speaker 2: fourth generation soybean and rice farmer, eighty seven year old
Speaker 2: Ellis Bell from Forest City, Arkansas. Today, he still farms
Speaker 2: on the land purchased by his great great grandfather in
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty one. Mister Ellis as an African American, and
Speaker 2: many in his community left the South in what historians
Speaker 2: call the Great Migration, which took place between nineteen ten
Speaker 2: and the nineteen seventies. But mister Ellis wanted to make
Speaker 2: a life for himself on the land that he was
Speaker 2: born on, and with much struggle, grit, and wisdom he did.
Speaker 2: Mister Ellis is a renaissance man. He had to be
Speaker 2: creative to keep his farm alive, and in his career
Speaker 2: he built airplanes. He was an insurance broker. He's a pilot,
Speaker 2: but deep in his bones he's a farmer. In twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, he was inducted into the Arkansas Agricultural Hall
Speaker 2: of Fame, but the future of his farm is in question.
Speaker 2: This is an extraordinary story and I really doubt that
Speaker 2: you're gonna want to miss this one. And Hey, this
Speaker 2: week on the Meat Eater YouTube channel, my Alaskan goat
Speaker 2: bow hunting film comes out. You should check that out.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay nukemb and this is the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 2: story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land.
Speaker 2: Presented by FHF gear, American made purpose built hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the
Speaker 2: place as we explore.
Speaker 1: My name is Ellis bell I was born in Foyst City, Arkansas,
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight. My great great grandfather, he was
Speaker 1: discharged in eighteen eighty three, came out after the Civil War.
Speaker 1: They was either able to bude through whatever the government
Speaker 1: program was, but my great great grandfather obtained this eighty
Speaker 1: three acres at that time, but it's my understanding he
Speaker 1: paid about three hundred dollars for this land.
Speaker 2: Mister Ellis is sitting at his dining room table in
Speaker 2: his home built sometime around nineteen thirty, and he seemed
Speaker 2: proud to mention that the joys were handcut by his father,
Speaker 2: Rice Bell. Myyars perked up when I learned that in
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty one, his great great grandfather purchased the land,
Speaker 2: just sixteen years after the end of the Civil War.
Speaker 2: Joseph Doody, that was the name of his great great grandfather,
Speaker 2: and he moved here from Tennessee after the war, but
Speaker 2: was never enslaved. But he lived a short life.
Speaker 1: My great great grandfather he passed away at and he
Speaker 1: was like a forty three or forty four. At an
Speaker 1: early age. Supposedly he got kicked by a mule in
Speaker 1: the service and never recovered from it. So I've got
Speaker 1: many many letters and things like that where my grandmother
Speaker 1: was trying to get a pincheon that was given to
Speaker 1: soldiers who had got injured in the wall, and she
Speaker 1: was getting the pension to raise her daughter, you know,
Speaker 1: after he after he.
Speaker 2: Died, Joseph Dudy died a year's long, slow death from
Speaker 2: a mule kick. Mister Ellis's home and farm is just
Speaker 2: outside of Forest City, in a region we called the Delta.
Speaker 2: It's flat, fertile agricultural land influenced by the ancient flooding
Speaker 2: of the Mississippi River. It's also the region of Arkansas
Speaker 2: where the vast majority of slavery took place. There was
Speaker 2: big ag there was a need for big labor. Like
Speaker 2: mister Ellis, I've lived in Arkansas my whole life, and
Speaker 2: I can testify that there are social artifacts of this
Speaker 2: tragic period in American history still evident today. And if
Speaker 2: you'll permit me to be real, I'll share with you
Speaker 2: something that's always puzzled me. I grew up in western
Speaker 2: Arkansas and didn't go to school with a single African
Speaker 2: American person. I didn't know a black person growing up,
Speaker 2: while some schools in eastern Arkansas in the Delta were
Speaker 2: almost all African American. This snippet will find relevance as
Speaker 2: we continue to tell this story. And it's interesting to
Speaker 2: me the stories that we remember and the stories that
Speaker 2: mister Ellis Is gonna tell us. It feels like age
Speaker 2: weeds out the riff raft and by the time a
Speaker 2: man is in his eighties, even his late eighties, the
Speaker 2: ones that he can recall all are clearly essential and
Speaker 2: they formed the architecture of his life. This next story
Speaker 2: is from the nineteen forties and was formative. It was
Speaker 2: when mister Ellis was just a child.
Speaker 1: And I like to tell the story when my father
Speaker 1: told my mother. This was in March. He said, they're
Speaker 1: getting their loans and I'm going up here to the
Speaker 1: bank to see if I can get a loan. And
Speaker 1: I heard them talking, and I says, can I go?
Speaker 1: And they says, no, it's too cold to No, you
Speaker 1: can't go. Because I like to follow my dad everywhere,
Speaker 1: And so we went to bed. The next morning, my dad,
Speaker 1: I heard him. When he got up, he put the
Speaker 1: team together, he tied them off, came back and eat breakfast.
Speaker 1: And I was still begging to go, so they let
Speaker 1: me go. We drove downtown and we tied off those
Speaker 1: team and we walked down to the bank, and we
Speaker 1: walked in the lobby of the bank, and I had
Speaker 1: never seen so many white men's in one place, and
Speaker 1: all of my life they were all having fun. And
Speaker 1: you know they were all there. I guess they knew
Speaker 1: that they were going to get their money to farm
Speaker 1: that year. And my dad we walked down into Rotunda
Speaker 1: and my dad by we got about halfway in the
Speaker 1: Bank of Metals and he says to my dad, Rice,
Speaker 1: I can't let you have no money, he says, but
Speaker 1: if you go out to see the Lindsey Boys, they'll
Speaker 1: take care of you.
Speaker 2: That story gives a razor sharp image of the nineteen
Speaker 2: forty South. There's a controversial idea I've heard much of
Speaker 2: my life regarding America's past, and it's problematic in a
Speaker 2: generalization at best. If you'll permit me, I will say
Speaker 2: something that's usually unset and it's this that the South
Speaker 2: valued the individual black man but devalued the race on
Speaker 2: a systemic level, and Northerners didn't value the individual black man,
Speaker 2: but valued the race. And I'm being vulnerable here because
Speaker 2: it feels weird to say that out loud, but we
Speaker 2: see this in history, and thankfully that thing is less
Speaker 2: true today than it was forty years ago. The exact
Speaker 2: reasons are unclear, but mister Rice, who this banker knew
Speaker 2: by name, wasn't able to get money from this bank
Speaker 2: because he was an African American. But ironically the bankers
Speaker 2: seemed to treat him with respect, but they'd arranged for
Speaker 2: someone else in town to handle the black business. I'd
Speaker 2: also like to note that in the early nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: mister Ellis's family was still driving a wagon. The model
Speaker 2: T had been around for almost four decades. Cars and
Speaker 2: trucks were the norm. But the story continues, We're now
Speaker 2: back with mister Ellis in the wagon.
Speaker 1: So we walked back down there and got in the wagon,
Speaker 1: drove for four miles out here to Carwell, Arkansas, and
Speaker 1: we got out of the wagon and we proceeded into
Speaker 1: the Lindsey Boys store and there was a man standing
Speaker 1: on the porch crying, and I was looking him up
Speaker 1: and down because I had never seen a grown man cry,
Speaker 1: so I felt like that either he had a broken
Speaker 1: arm or somebody didn't beat him up or something. But
Speaker 1: he was holding it up against the post, the post
Speaker 1: to hold the porch of he was crying, so I
Speaker 1: was that's my dad, that's the word man crying. My
Speaker 1: dad didn't say anything. So we walked in there, and
Speaker 1: the Lindsy guy knew my dad, and I guess he
Speaker 1: knew who he's out there for. He says Rice. He says,
Speaker 1: we got you covered. He said, anything change. My dad said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like to buy another meule, another cow or whatever,
Speaker 1: few plow or whatever. He said, that's what a couple
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, three hundred dollars. My dad said yeah, he said,
Speaker 1: we got you covered. So we proceeded to walk back
Speaker 1: out of the Lindsey Boys store and this man still
Speaker 1: sitting there crying, and I'm looking him up and down.
Speaker 1: Why is this man crying? I'm asking my dad. My
Speaker 1: dad's not telling me he knew because he was listening
Speaker 1: to what the other guys was saying. But I wasn't
Speaker 1: listening to them. I'm wondering to what's thrown this man.
Speaker 1: So we get in the wagon and my dad said, well,
Speaker 1: the reason he's crying is because he lived on this
Speaker 1: man's farm. And I guess you're sharecropping or whatever. And
Speaker 1: he got his money from this from the Lindy brother
Speaker 1: for his part, and he went in there and they
Speaker 1: told him that the man said he couldn't stay there
Speaker 1: any longer. Hit the move because they the man told him.
Speaker 1: He says, you can't ready to your kids in school
Speaker 1: until I get through picking my cottin And he raised
Speaker 1: his kids in school anyway, So he had to go
Speaker 1: home and tell his wife that they had to move.
Speaker 1: And he didn't have no place to go, he said,
Speaker 1: and that's why he's crying.
Speaker 2: The crying sharecroppers. Landowner wanted the man's kids to work
Speaker 2: the fields until the cotton was picked, but the father
Speaker 2: pulled them out of the fields and sent them to
Speaker 2: school in the late summer. It's clear this man wanted
Speaker 2: the best for his kids. He wanted him to get
Speaker 2: an education. But it made the landowner mad and he
Speaker 2: kicked the whole family off the land. This is the
Speaker 2: kind of stuff that made many African Americans want to
Speaker 2: leave the South, and they did in great number. It's
Speaker 2: called the Great Migration. Let's get back in the wagon
Speaker 2: with the young Ellis Bell.
Speaker 1: And of course by this time, you know it's I mean,
Speaker 1: we got started that morning before day, going downtown. By
Speaker 1: this time it's wed in the afternoon, it's windy, it's cold,
Speaker 1: it's hell. And they had put a palette in the
Speaker 1: wagon for me because they knew that I'd be took
Speaker 1: it out befo. I got back so my dad put
Speaker 1: me back there on the pallette and covered me up.
Speaker 1: And if you ever rolled on a steel wheel wagon
Speaker 1: over the rock road, that wheel did not miss a
Speaker 1: rock in that road. Looked like it drove me crazy
Speaker 1: while I was laying there until I went to sleep.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that was a story I thought was worth
Speaker 1: telling because again that's part of the hard times that
Speaker 1: I've seen in my life. Well, we raised the hogs
Speaker 1: in cattle. Like I said, it was the natural American community,
Speaker 1: and we would get together as a community and kill hogs.
Speaker 1: You know, we may have five or ten may would
Speaker 1: kill hogs all day long. You know, you'd bring you
Speaker 1: three or four up and they'd dress them and kill
Speaker 1: them and you know, work them up. And the families
Speaker 1: would get together and they would do a lot, do
Speaker 1: the hams. And then you know they'd get together and
Speaker 1: they'd cure them together. But you know, we raised hogs
Speaker 1: and we raised cattle, and we had a smokehouse, and
Speaker 1: my mother and them used to have to go to
Speaker 1: their smokehouse and feed other people in the community. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, there would leave new people come into this
Speaker 1: community that didn't have anything, didn't have anything to eat.
Speaker 1: They could always go to their house, the smoke house,
Speaker 1: and get a ham. She can a lot, so she
Speaker 1: raised big garden and she'd give them a jaw. There's
Speaker 1: a jar there. That's what Afro American people did together
Speaker 1: back in those days. And I won't say they flourished,
Speaker 1: but maybe that's how they came through hard times together
Speaker 1: by working together. It looked like it was until integration
Speaker 1: started taking place that people started scattering. They start not
Speaker 1: doing his merch together, and it's been splintered. Looked like
Speaker 1: to me pretty much ever since. In certain ways like that,
Speaker 1: we didn't do that, and then a lot of people
Speaker 1: left the country. Of course, you know, I went north,
Speaker 1: started working in the factories and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Mister Ellis saw something interesting, tragic and complicated. It's far
Speaker 2: beyond me to understand in its fullness. But did you
Speaker 2: hear him say that desegregation splintered Black communities. It's clear
Speaker 2: that segregation was a destructive cultural practice and desegregation was
Speaker 2: a positive for society. But many now see the implementation
Speaker 2: of integration brought forth many problems. Like mister Ellis saw.
Speaker 2: It broke up many traditionally black communities and resulted in
Speaker 2: what author sheare of Cash and described as social and
Speaker 2: political fragmentation because it replaced community institutions that were led, supported,
Speaker 2: and filled with Black people for community institutions that were
Speaker 2: led by somebody else. Schools are the best example. Segregated
Speaker 2: schools had black teachers and faculty, and now the black
Speaker 2: kids went to schools without any black people and leadership
Speaker 2: at all. And this hostility isn't speculative or exaggerated, as
Speaker 2: evidenced by the Little Rock nine incident from September nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty seven. I think you can see where all this
Speaker 2: is going. Mister Ellis graduated from a segregated school in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six, just ninety miles east of Little Rock.
Speaker 2: But the next thing that he saw kind of blew
Speaker 2: my mind.
Speaker 1: I didn't spend time crying over something that somebody didn't
Speaker 1: want me to do. You know. I was raised up
Speaker 1: here in Arkansas, and you know, and we passed by
Speaker 1: the white schools all the time on our way to
Speaker 1: the black schools, so you know, and what was hard
Speaker 1: for me is that sometime we didn't walk almost seven
Speaker 1: miles of school, and we would pass Chinese people walking
Speaker 1: from their home to the white schools. And we would
Speaker 1: be passing in going to the black schools.
Speaker 2: The rabbit hole of the South just keeps getting deeper
Speaker 2: and deeper the more that you peer in. Arriving as
Speaker 2: early as the eighteen seventies, there were many chineseants in
Speaker 2: the South who came here to fill in the labor
Speaker 2: void created by African Americans leaving after the Civil War,
Speaker 2: and many in the South would find themselves in the
Speaker 2: grocery business. By the mid nineteen hundreds. Do you remember
Speaker 2: Bear Grease Hall of Famer Hulk Collier of Mississippi having
Speaker 2: the neighborhood kids buy him an orange drink from the
Speaker 2: China grocery before he would tell them stories. That's interesting.
Speaker 2: These formative memories of mister Ellis are so powerful. But
Speaker 2: this next one set the tone for his life. It's
Speaker 2: a story about his mother.
Speaker 1: When this was an all Afro American community out here,
Speaker 1: most people that lived out here, I didn't know about
Speaker 1: one family that was Caucasian that lived about a mile
Speaker 1: down the road. And there was a stir to be
Speaker 1: told about that, and that is their name was Jones.
Speaker 1: And I remember them fairly well. And one night it
Speaker 1: was cold in the wintertime, and we had pulled all
Speaker 1: the beds into the room where the fireplace was, and
Speaker 1: my two sisters were sleeping at the head of the bed,
Speaker 1: and I was sleeping at the foot of the bed,
Speaker 1: and my dad mother had another bed off to the
Speaker 1: side of that bed in the same room. And we
Speaker 1: had a fireplace in there, and we had a frame house,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was opening the bottom, and you know,
Speaker 1: it took a lot to keep it warm. It was
Speaker 1: because back in those days, that's when we had zero
Speaker 1: degrees for five and six and seven days, like it's
Speaker 1: almost unheard of now, you know, like it was back
Speaker 1: in those days. And one night I awakened when my
Speaker 1: dad opened the door. He said to my mother and
Speaker 1: he says, I got the horse saddle and tied to
Speaker 1: the porch, and I saw my mother. She was dressed
Speaker 1: so bunterly tight that all I could see was like
Speaker 1: a ball standing there, still wrapping herself. So I says
Speaker 1: to my mother, says, where are you going? And she says,
Speaker 1: I'm going to help missus Jones. And I thought about
Speaker 1: it for a little bit. She said, I don't want
Speaker 1: to help miss Jones, she says, having the baby. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, missus Jones. I don't know no black
Speaker 1: people with the last name Jones. So I said to
Speaker 1: my mother, I says, that's a white woman. She turned
Speaker 1: and looked at me, and I hadn't seen her face,
Speaker 1: but I had saw her body being wrapped, and all
Speaker 1: I could see was her eyes. And she says to me,
Speaker 1: AL said, but she's a human being. And then she
Speaker 1: walked out of the house and got on this horse.
Speaker 1: And back in those days, the bridges was impassable. You
Speaker 1: had to the horse had to go around the bridge
Speaker 1: almost to get across him. You had to go around
Speaker 1: in the creek. And then of course it was woods
Speaker 1: all through here. And I we was living right over there,
Speaker 1: and I told you it was born. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know if she's going to come through the woods to
Speaker 1: get to Missus Jones, or she's gonna try to go
Speaker 1: around the road to get to Missus Jones. I didn't
Speaker 1: know any of that. But anyway, I started crying because
Speaker 1: I felt like that whatever route she took was gonna
Speaker 1: be very dangerous, and I didn't know if i'd see
Speaker 1: her again. So I stopped crying.
Speaker 3: And that was a lesson to me, you know, for
Speaker 3: her to tell me that she was a human being.
Speaker 2: What a powerful story that shows the character of his
Speaker 2: mother and father. I know we're neck deep in the
Speaker 2: bear grease, but this next story is probably gonna make
Speaker 2: you laugh. I wanted to know if mister Alice ever
Speaker 2: did much hunting.
Speaker 1: I wasn't fishing with you know, I like to follow people,
Speaker 1: like to do things. My dad was never a hunter.
Speaker 1: I had an uncle.
Speaker 3: My cousin was Hannah.
Speaker 1: And they used to talk about the fun they'd have
Speaker 1: going out of what hunt at night.
Speaker 3: One night they was going out coon and I went
Speaker 3: with him. The scariest night of my life.
Speaker 4: Oh, I was from fridaticle falling a hole. They wouldn't
Speaker 4: fight me and they were shooting them cool. They was
Speaker 4: falling out of the tree. That was an experience what
Speaker 4: I got back home, I never wanted to go again.
Speaker 3: That's my experiencing hunting.
Speaker 1: Otherwise. You know, you know there's plenty of rabbits running
Speaker 1: around here. You know, we'd shoot one every once in
Speaker 1: a while.
Speaker 2: Mister Allie got a kick out of telling that story,
Speaker 2: and so did I. But let's get back to the farm.
Speaker 1: See in this part of the country, this land, back
Speaker 1: in the day wouldn't raise anything. Anything that was west
Speaker 1: of the ridge up here wouldn't hardly grow anything. When
Speaker 1: we picked cotton, we had knee pads because cotton wouldn't
Speaker 1: grow two feet high, Holly, But cotton back in those
Speaker 1: days was you know, and because cotten was king, they
Speaker 1: could still make a little money by growing cotton. There
Speaker 1: was a knee high you know in the sheds that
Speaker 1: would be when I was a kid, that would be
Speaker 1: knee pass all around the wall where people had to
Speaker 1: get on their knees to pick the cotten. Well, I
Speaker 1: worked very closely with my mother and my father. I
Speaker 1: would help them, I would. I was there, chatter wherever
Speaker 1: they went, wherever they did. I was always there, being nosy,
Speaker 1: trying to help her in the way, you know, it
Speaker 1: was cooking or whether it was out, you know, rowling
Speaker 1: the horses and music. You know, I was rowling the
Speaker 1: horses and music. When I had to stand on the
Speaker 1: gate to put a bridle on them. You know, I'd
Speaker 1: drive them to come up and get some coin, and
Speaker 1: I'd stand up on the gate and put the bridle
Speaker 1: on them. And uh, you know, I remember when I
Speaker 1: was probably four years old. I guess again, I would
Speaker 1: follow my daddy place he went. Whenever he went out
Speaker 1: to feed the hogs and stuff. I'd go and he
Speaker 1: finally built something where I could clumb up that, and
Speaker 1: finally he put my clothes on me, and he says, okay,
Speaker 1: you can do it by yourself. Man. Oh sure. I'd
Speaker 1: show him how I could do it, and I was
Speaker 1: happy to go out there early in the morning. They'd
Speaker 1: bottle me up and put some clothes on me, and
Speaker 1: I'd go feed the hogs. I was that kind of
Speaker 1: a person. And of course that's where he used to
Speaker 1: hide his piece round there in the cotten seed hogs,
Speaker 1: you know, you say, the cotton seeds for the next year,
Speaker 1: and he'd make his brand in. I knew where he
Speaker 1: had his stash, so i'd go feed the hogs and
Speaker 1: I had a jug. Did I turn up and get
Speaker 1: me a few swags every every day? That's probably about
Speaker 1: four and a half and one day I looked at
Speaker 1: that jug.
Speaker 3: It was only fool. That's so boy, I'm in trouble now.
Speaker 3: I don't remember.
Speaker 1: I drank it all up. I pulled it out, but
Speaker 1: I didn't want him to know that. You know what,
Speaker 1: I got three feet in a hog go back in
Speaker 1: the house, and they'd be set at the table drinking
Speaker 1: coffee and tea and stuff, and I'd be feeling good.
Speaker 3: That was something that I kept to myself.
Speaker 1: I didn't never tell him by.
Speaker 2: It, you know, mister Ellis, I think you knew better
Speaker 2: than to be chugging your daddy's peach brandy. And what
Speaker 2: he'd tell us later was that his dad made it
Speaker 2: from wagon loads of peaches that he'd bring home. But
Speaker 2: we're now at a major transition point in mister Ellis's life.
Speaker 2: In the chronology of his story. He graduates high school,
Speaker 2: but he quickly gets sucked away from the family farm.
Speaker 1: And I graduated in fifty six, I went away to
Speaker 1: the Saint Louis area full of winter, and then I was
Speaker 1: going to come back and farm. Fifty seven. Landed a
Speaker 1: job for the winter. While they're in Saint Louis, I
Speaker 1: was taking boys out to McDonald Douglas Aircraft where they
Speaker 1: were seeking a job, and I was there transportation person
Speaker 1: because I had a car, they didn't they have one.
Speaker 2: He graduated and went to Saint Louis, Missouri, in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty seven. While he was taking some friends to a
Speaker 2: job interview. He ended up landing a job at a
Speaker 2: major aircraft manufacturer, but was quickly confronted with the attitude
Speaker 2: of the nation towards integration.
Speaker 1: I found out that McDonald douglas was taking in black
Speaker 1: people because they were being asked to do it, because
Speaker 1: they weren't hiring minority people out there, and they didn't
Speaker 1: really want you out there, even though there was a
Speaker 1: mandate to do it. And I found out that after
Speaker 1: I was there, they wouldn't give me anything to do.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't tell me, they wouldn't say good morning to me.
Speaker 1: They just let me stand around out there in the shop.
Speaker 1: And what McDonald had I used to call it fifteen
Speaker 1: in and fifteen out. They would bring fifteen in on
Speaker 1: Monday and start them for training, but on Friday they
Speaker 1: would let fifteen go. So if you were there thirty days,
Speaker 1: I believe it was thirty days, you could get in,
Speaker 1: you could you could join the union, and so to
Speaker 1: keep you from joining the union, they would take you
Speaker 1: out of there. In other words, on Friday evening they
Speaker 1: let you go. So I was watching and I was
Speaker 1: seeing that every Friday, and I'm saying to myself, since
Speaker 1: they're not giving me a job. They won't sign me
Speaker 1: in to a job, but they won't give me a job.
Speaker 1: They won't talk to me. I'm probably gonna be one
Speaker 1: of those and shown up. They told me one Friday morning,
Speaker 1: says get your belongings, and they already had a group
Speaker 1: of black boys standing over there, and they says, go
Speaker 1: get in that line over there, And of course, me
Speaker 1: being visual, I saw. I knew where the supervisors were,
Speaker 1: the general formers and people like that. I got to
Speaker 1: know who they were. I've got to know their names.
Speaker 1: I didn't know them personally, but I've heard their names
Speaker 1: enough to know who they were. So when they asked
Speaker 1: me to get my belongings and go and send in
Speaker 1: that line, I broke rank and went and went to
Speaker 1: the superintendent's office, and I asked the young lady. I says,
Speaker 1: you know, there's Mike Golion in that said it was
Speaker 1: the general forman's name. She said, no, he's out. I says,
Speaker 1: She says, can I help you? I says yeah, I says,
Speaker 1: I like to talk to him. I said, and I
Speaker 1: was upstairs and I pointed to her as a big wonder.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm standing over there with that groups of boys,
Speaker 1: and I says, I would like to talk to him,
Speaker 1: and she said, when he come back, i'll tell him.
Speaker 1: So sure enough, about fifteen minutes he came out on
Speaker 1: the floor and he grabbed my supervised. He didn't talk
Speaker 1: to me, and he told my He just told my
Speaker 1: supervitor what my name was, and my supervisor looked over
Speaker 1: there at me, and then he begged for me to get.
Speaker 3: Out of the line.
Speaker 1: And that's how I got sieved. Otherwise i'd have been gone.
Speaker 2: This nineteen fifties company checked its integration box while hiring
Speaker 2: but firing these men. Because they knew that mister Ellis
Speaker 2: could see what was going on. They let him keep
Speaker 2: his job, but no telling how many others were fired.
Speaker 1: I landed a job there and took training and smart
Speaker 1: which was sheet metal work, and after mastering that, I
Speaker 1: went on to become a aircraft mechanic out on the
Speaker 1: flight line there at McDonald Douglas, and I stayed there
Speaker 1: thirteen years.
Speaker 2: And anyone who's ever tried to save a family farm
Speaker 2: knows that it takes some creativity and hard work. In
Speaker 2: mister Ellis's case, it meant that he had to build
Speaker 2: a career somewhere else, with the end goal of making
Speaker 2: it back to the farm that was purchased by his
Speaker 2: great great grandfather Joseph in eighteen eighty one, the Bell Farm.
Speaker 2: There just wasn't enough money in farming to support him
Speaker 2: and his parents right out of high school, but he
Speaker 2: made regular trips back to Arkansas to help his dad,
Speaker 2: but the end goal was always staying on the farm.
Speaker 2: During his time with the aircraft company, he also earned
Speaker 2: his pilot's license, which is an incredible feat in an
Speaker 2: out of itself. But mister Ellis's work ethic didn't stop
Speaker 2: in the aircraft industry. He started up a completely new
Speaker 2: career while working up there.
Speaker 1: While there, I also took insurance courses in the evening
Speaker 1: and started selling insurance. But in the meantime I was
Speaker 1: almost had dual residency. I was still coming home to
Speaker 1: help my father farm because I felt like one day
Speaker 1: that I still might be able to come back to
Speaker 1: the farm. And finally, at a point in time after
Speaker 1: leaving McDonald Douglas, I became an insurance broker and that
Speaker 1: gave me, you know, my own bass, so I could
Speaker 1: be away three or four days in a row out
Speaker 1: here on the farm and then go back to my
Speaker 1: insurance business. I had a nice staff and everything. So
Speaker 1: that was a great experience for me, and it taught
Speaker 1: me a lot about business. Even though I only had
Speaker 1: a high school education, I pretty well had a photostatic memory.
Speaker 1: I didn't have to write things down. I could remember things,
Speaker 1: and I could get things done. And you know, I
Speaker 1: could go out and visit with a family and I
Speaker 1: can remember all the kids' names and wether or that
Speaker 1: they went to college, and all those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: So it was a great experience. But my experience in
Speaker 1: having a dual residency because I'd never forgot my roots.
Speaker 1: Arkansas is where I was born Rokansas, where I really
Speaker 1: wanted to be, and that's where I still am.
Speaker 2: From nineteen sixty five to twenty fourteen, mister Ellis ran
Speaker 2: Bell's and Associates insurance agency and managed billions of dollars
Speaker 2: in assets. He had to go to the city to
Speaker 2: make money so that he could survive back here in Arkansas.
Speaker 2: That's the difficulty with many of these rural, poverty stricken
Speaker 2: states is that you got to go somewhere else if
Speaker 2: you really want to make the money. But the thing
Speaker 2: that stitched it together, stitched the city and his farm together,
Speaker 2: was that he was able to fly. He was a pilot,
Speaker 2: and he managed to buy his own plane. It was
Speaker 2: the only way that he could run a farm and
Speaker 2: an insurance agency out of Saint Louis. But one day
Speaker 2: early in his career, he got a tip from a
Speaker 2: crop duster that he was in serious jeopardy and it
Speaker 2: could have cost him everything.
Speaker 1: And very often, you know, I would leave Kansas and
Speaker 1: head read straight into Foyst City, or I would leave
Speaker 1: from Chicago and head straight into Foyst City. And often
Speaker 1: i'd come in and because I did a lot of
Speaker 1: night flying, and that would be uh. And I used
Speaker 1: to come into the Foyd City airport and I would
Speaker 1: see cars out there, and I knew that they were
Speaker 1: detective cars, I suppose, and I thought nothing about it.
Speaker 1: And one day they flew They flew crop dusters and
Speaker 1: stuff out of the airport in the daytime, and I
Speaker 1: had crops and they would fly my crops and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And these guys knew me, they knew kind
Speaker 1: of what I was doing. And I had seen these
Speaker 1: guys out there, and one night I flew in there,
Speaker 1: and when I pulled my airplane into the to the
Speaker 1: parking place. They all came up to me, and when
Speaker 1: I opened the door and stepped out, they were all
Speaker 1: laughing and smiling and everything. And when I stepped out,
Speaker 1: all those smiles came to a front and I wondered why,
Speaker 1: But I didn't know. I didn't know why. But one day,
Speaker 1: one of the pilots that was flying my crops, he
Speaker 1: found out that I was in town because that was
Speaker 1: the day that I did. I didn't. I came in
Speaker 1: in the day, so I parked on my private runway
Speaker 1: on the farm, didn't have lights. He came out and
Speaker 1: he says, change your pattern, And I says, what do
Speaker 1: you mean? He said, well, you're coming in at night
Speaker 1: and you're disrupting their drug pick up out there, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna put some drugs in your airplane and bust you.
Speaker 1: Because when you come in, if they're plane that's delivering
Speaker 1: their drugs can't land, he's burning up fuel and he
Speaker 1: may not be able to get to his next stop.
Speaker 1: So they're gonna they're gonna put a stop to you.
Speaker 1: And that was very dishearted to know the way I
Speaker 1: was working and my earnesty, you know, my not being
Speaker 1: able to borrow money, and it was one thing, and
Speaker 1: I'd kind of overcome that, but through skill and hard
Speaker 1: work overcome that. But here's something now that I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna be overcome because I'm gonna be in jail. I
Speaker 1: really it really made me angry at first. And there
Speaker 1: was some people who just couldn't understand, even from my
Speaker 1: own people, how I was doing all of these things,
Speaker 1: buying land, buying an airplan, farming, come in and go
Speaker 1: on when I want to. They just see people around
Speaker 1: it does that they do that, not even white, holly
Speaker 1: white people. So I said, well, you know, I was
Speaker 1: gonna go up there and confront the authorities about what
Speaker 1: I was hearing. And I said to myself, boy, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be righting the way in jail. When people be said,
Speaker 1: I know that he was doing something wrong, finding that
Speaker 1: airplane and doing all that stuff. We knew he was
Speaker 1: hauling drugs. Had to be doing something. I says, no,
Speaker 1: just change the pattern. So I stopped coming in at night.
Speaker 1: I saw purposely coming in in the daytime. So I
Speaker 1: was feel well thankful to that guy who came out
Speaker 1: to the farm to tell me that.
Speaker 2: I think this is a testament to the wisdom of
Speaker 2: mister Ellis and navigating his life in this era. Ego
Speaker 2: could have got him into a fight that he couldn't win,
Speaker 2: but he just changed his pattern and he beat the system.
Speaker 2: His life is full of stories like this and him
Speaker 2: overcoming the odds. I'd also like to note that this
Speaker 2: man spent the first fifteen years of his life riding
Speaker 2: in a wagon pulled by mules. He only had a
Speaker 2: high school diploma, and then by middle age he owned
Speaker 2: his own plane and would fly across the country running
Speaker 2: a business and farm. Even from a technology aspect, wagon
Speaker 2: to plane pretty astonishing. He did this all the while
Speaker 2: acquiring more and more land adding to his Arkansas farm.
Speaker 2: This is truly an incredible story, but I think you're
Speaker 2: going to be surprised at the end. I now want
Speaker 2: to understand how mister Ellis evaluated success.
Speaker 1: When I saw my life one year and one year
Speaker 1: or two years later, I had a better life than
Speaker 1: I had two years before. To me, I was always
Speaker 1: sending some success, and it was in small increments. Sometimes
Speaker 1: looked like it didn't move, sometime it did move, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it leaf rocked. To me, that's what success it
Speaker 1: was about. Having gone to school was about having a
Speaker 1: little bit more money in my back and a little
Speaker 1: bit more knowledge in my head, a little bitter outlook
Speaker 1: on life with my mother and them having more meat
Speaker 1: in the smokehouse, more hogs and a hog lot, more cattle.
Speaker 1: Going from a wagon to a car to a truck.
Speaker 1: To me, that was success. Where most people were dying
Speaker 1: to get away from the country because they saw other
Speaker 1: people going north looked like they was building a better
Speaker 1: life because they came back driving a new car.
Speaker 3: I didn't look at.
Speaker 1: Having a new car as being success. I looked at
Speaker 1: my dad having a better crop. That was the success
Speaker 1: that I was looking for. Even as a smaller child,
Speaker 1: I would go north for the summer some time and
Speaker 1: spend a week or twfty days with somebody and come back.
Speaker 1: I still had no desire to go north. I wanted
Speaker 1: my success to be right here on the land. That
Speaker 1: was what I I had looked upon as success.
Speaker 2: In the time period when over six million African Americans
Speaker 2: moved out of the South to northern cities, mister Ellis
Speaker 2: stayed home to scrap through the inherent difficulties of the
Speaker 2: region and make it here. And at eighty seven years old.
Speaker 2: I think we can say that he's done that. This
Speaker 2: next story is a significant part of mister Ellis's legacy,
Speaker 2: and it came from an unlikely place. You may recognize
Speaker 2: the name Monsanto.
Speaker 1: I had been buying mon Santral's stock for a while,
Speaker 1: but I've never been going to the stockholders meeting, and
Speaker 1: I had signed up for it, but I would never go.
Speaker 1: And my office was a couple of miles from Monsanto's headquarters.
Speaker 1: And I happened to be in town one day and
Speaker 1: I knew the stockholders meeting was being held. So I
Speaker 1: said to myself, I think I'll go to a stockholders meeting.
Speaker 1: So I got up and I went down there. When
Speaker 1: I was approaching the table where you sign in, I
Speaker 1: noticed there was some afore Americans standing around in there.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't know them, but they were standing
Speaker 1: around in there, so I was cool, you know, other
Speaker 1: black people here, but I didn't see many in the line,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what the position was there. I
Speaker 1: guess they was in security or something, you know, And
Speaker 1: people was kind of looking at me, kind of funny.
Speaker 1: So I gets to the table and the lady stops
Speaker 1: me and she looks at my condenials, and she asked
Speaker 1: me to step aside. And I was wondering why she
Speaker 1: asked me to step aside. I knew I done took
Speaker 1: care of everything. I hadn't done this two or three
Speaker 1: years in a row, but I hadn't been there. And
Speaker 1: so she went back in the back, and I guess
Speaker 1: she talked to some people because they had never seen
Speaker 1: an A for American come through the line. So the
Speaker 1: lady that came from the back says to me, mister Bell,
Speaker 1: come on here. So I go on here and I
Speaker 1: take my seat. They're holding Stockholds meeting and they got
Speaker 1: a couple of Afro American people who was on the
Speaker 1: board of Monsanto. They're sitting up there on the front
Speaker 1: on the on the podium, and there's some other employees
Speaker 1: setting in the audience. You know, I didn't know them,
Speaker 1: but they were sitting here and there. You know, you
Speaker 1: could see a black face every once in a while.
Speaker 1: After the meeting was over, people who had bought stock
Speaker 1: was testified about how well the stock had been doing
Speaker 1: and how they was enjoining their entire retirement and their
Speaker 1: dividings and stuff that they were getting. And I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there listening to all of this, and something was telling
Speaker 1: me say something. So when I got a break, I
Speaker 1: got up and I said to the board, my name
Speaker 1: was Elis bell I was I'm a fourth generation farmer
Speaker 1: for City, Arkansas, and I says, and I read many
Speaker 1: magazines and I see where mansanto was given to schools.
Speaker 1: That's helping Caucasian kids, I says, But I'd never see
Speaker 1: them giving to schools that's helping after American kids. And
Speaker 1: when I say that, the CEO stood straight up and
Speaker 1: he's talk guy.
Speaker 3: He's standing there and I'm still talking. And when I
Speaker 3: finished talking, he, uh, don't you go nowhere? I want
Speaker 3: to talk to you. So after the meeting is over, well,
Speaker 3: he makes a v I n off that stage. I'm
Speaker 3: over all right. He sets them in and we started talking.
Speaker 3: We stayed there two hours after the meeting. Everybody was gone.
Speaker 3: He says, I think it's a legitimate question, and I'm
Speaker 3: gonna see if I can do something about it. And
Speaker 3: that's how I got my non private organizations called it.
Speaker 1: The next thing we know, we were on our way
Speaker 1: educating kids about agriculture in conjunction with the Universe of Missouri,
Speaker 1: Junction of Illinois, East Saint Louis, Illinois, Bolivar County, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: High Bluff, Arkansas. We were setting up agg classes to
Speaker 1: show kids where their food was coming from and telling
Speaker 1: how imparted there was to get involved in agriculture.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and seven, mister Ellis founded bell Agtech,
Speaker 2: which for almost twenty years has helped minority high school
Speaker 2: students find pathways into agriculture. However, there is an irony
Speaker 2: which is sad to me, when he spoke about the
Speaker 2: future of his own farm. I consider not putting this
Speaker 2: in the story because it's deeply personal to mister Ellis,
Speaker 2: but it's just the hard reality that isn't the beautiful
Speaker 2: bow that we'd like to see at the end of
Speaker 2: the story.
Speaker 1: Of course, the farm is not being passed on. I'm
Speaker 1: probably the last generation of farmers. How does that make
Speaker 1: you feel tired? At eighty seven, I don't feel like
Speaker 1: I may find one more year of me. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to put together something to.
Speaker 3: Go one more year.
Speaker 1: I still like to look back and said, I've still
Speaker 1: had a good life. I've had a not a happy
Speaker 1: life all the time, but it was it was a
Speaker 1: you know, kind of painful, and there's some stories to
Speaker 1: be told. You know, I've enjoyed my life. You know,
Speaker 1: you got to have a mindset. You know, when I
Speaker 1: say mindset, it gets back to that decision thing. What
Speaker 1: decisions do you make? How do you make them? What
Speaker 1: do you make them? Just decisions decisions. As it said,
Speaker 1: I was always guided to do the right thing. Very
Speaker 1: few times I wound up failing to get the job done.
Speaker 1: Faith that I could get it done. You get the
Speaker 1: Good Lord look deaft at me. You know it's me
Speaker 1: and the Good Lord and my health. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to keep them all together.
Speaker 2: The complexities and challenges of the large scale row crop
Speaker 2: agriculture of the last thirty years have seemed almost insurmountable
Speaker 2: to small time American farmers, and though mister Ellis's great
Speaker 2: great grandfather Joseph would now marvel at the size and
Speaker 2: scale of the Bell Farm in twenty twenty five in
Speaker 2: a big ag world, it's a small farm. Keeping it
Speaker 2: alive this long has been a feat, not far from
Speaker 2: a miracle, fueled by the hard work, grit, and determination
Speaker 2: of one. What an incredible story. Thank you, mister Ellis
Speaker 2: for who you are. I can't thank you enough for
Speaker 2: listening to Bear, Grease and Brent's This Country Life podcast.
Speaker 2: Please leave us a review on iTunes and share this
Speaker 2: podcast with a friend. This week, keep the wild Places
Speaker 2: wild because that's where the Bears live