Speaker 1: After the West had been one, the gold had been gotten.
Speaker 1: This was the last frontier in America, this god forsaken twump.
Speaker 2: Telling the story as big as the one The Mississippi
Speaker 2: River has is a challenge. Like its drainage basin, which
Speaker 2: stretches from New York to Idaho all the way down
Speaker 2: to the Gulf of Mexico, its reaches wide and diverse,
Speaker 2: like its stories. The end of episode one was like
Speaker 2: coming to an intersection that split into seven different roads
Speaker 2: that all looked equally as promising. Each road a story
Speaker 2: I have simply chosen in a direction that suits me
Speaker 2: and seems logical. I want to talk about the settlement
Speaker 2: of the Mississippi Delta and the people who were here
Speaker 2: and the challenges that gave them their identity. Will be
Speaker 2: veering out of the river into its floodplain, because, as
Speaker 2: William Faulkner said, to understand the world, you must first
Speaker 2: understand a place like Mississippi. Once again, we'll be leaning
Speaker 2: on author Hank Berdine and New York Times bestselling author
Speaker 2: John Barry, and a new voice to bear grease, mistery
Speaker 2: and I's dear friend raised in the Delta, mister Earl Jasper.
Speaker 3: This is as.
Speaker 2: Unique a bear Grease as we've ever made. I really
Speaker 2: doubt you're gonna want to miss this.
Speaker 4: One faith family community help keep you grounded, help keep
Speaker 4: your mind straight, and kept you to the point where
Speaker 4: you said, Okay, this is where it is right now,
Speaker 4: and you won't have to deal with this always just
Speaker 4: stay focused.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukem, 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 live their lives close to the land.
Speaker 2: Presented by FHF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the
Speaker 2: places we explore. It's not like most rivers, beautiful to
Speaker 2: the site, not one that the eye loves to dwell
Speaker 2: upon as it sweeps along, nor can wander along its
Speaker 2: bank or trust yourself without danger to its stream. It
Speaker 2: is a furious, rapid, desolating torrent, loaded with alluvial soil,
Speaker 2: pouring its impetuous water through wild tracks. It sweeps down
Speaker 2: whole forest with its course, which disappear in tumultuous confusion,
Speaker 2: whirled away by the stream now loaded with a mass
Speaker 2: of soil which nourish their roots, often blocking up and
Speaker 2: changing the channel of the river, which, in its anger
Speaker 2: at being opposed inundates and devastates the whole country around.
Speaker 2: It is a river of desolation, and instead of reminding you,
Speaker 2: like other rivers, of an angel which has descended for
Speaker 2: the benefit of man, you imagine it a devil. A
Speaker 2: European traveler wrote this about the Mississippi River in eighteen
Speaker 2: thirty seven. I saw this in John Berry's book Rising Tide.
Speaker 2: She's a real beast. The Mississippi River drains parts of
Speaker 2: thirty one states and two Canadian provinces, and forty one
Speaker 2: percent of the continental United States if you count the
Speaker 2: Missouri River its tributary. The Mississippi is the longest river
Speaker 2: in the world. Only the Amazon and the Congo have
Speaker 2: larger drainage basins. We misstated in the last episode and
Speaker 2: said that the Nile had a bigger drainage basin, but
Speaker 2: the Big Muddy has a bigger drainage basin than the Nile.
Speaker 2: The river slopes in an average of three inches per mile,
Speaker 2: runs through some of the flattest ground in the world,
Speaker 2: with average speeds around nine miles per hour and eighteen
Speaker 2: In a flood, the riverbed can scour sixty feet deep
Speaker 2: and fill itself back in in a month. At flood stage,
Speaker 2: the river can pump out over four million acre feet
Speaker 2: of water per day. In the last episode, we learned
Speaker 2: about the energy of rivers, their hydraulic complexity, and their
Speaker 2: drive to carry sediment. We learned about levees and dikes
Speaker 2: and jetties and cutoffs, and got a sense of the
Speaker 2: river's sheer size. We've learned about some of the early
Speaker 2: human history of the river and its importance to America.
Speaker 2: And if you'll give me the liberty, we're going to
Speaker 2: focus on the people in one particular part of the
Speaker 2: Lower Mississippi, a place called the delta. But we first
Speaker 2: have got to define the big concept of the delta.
Speaker 3: There's two deltas. Stay with me.
Speaker 2: A river delta is a triangular shape made by the
Speaker 2: deposition of sediment as moving water intersects a non moving
Speaker 2: body of water, and the slowing speed makes the sediment
Speaker 2: settle out and from above this would look like a
Speaker 2: triangle like the Greek letter delta. The true geologic head
Speaker 2: of the Mississippi delta starts at Cape Girardo, Missouri and
Speaker 2: runs all the way to New Orleans. At one time,
Speaker 2: the Gulf of Mexico extended far north into America and
Speaker 2: the river filled in the ocean with sediment, building this
Speaker 2: big delta. However, the term Mississippi Delta can mean a
Speaker 2: more specific region in Mississippi and Arkansas, and when people
Speaker 2: say the delta in the South, they're often referring to
Speaker 2: the alluvial floodplain of the Mississippi from Memphis to Vicksburg,
Speaker 2: which also includes the floodplain of the Yazoo River, which
Speaker 2: flows through the interior of Mississippi and empties into.
Speaker 3: The river at Vicksburg.
Speaker 2: This delta also includes the west side of the Mississippi
Speaker 2: in this stretch in Arkansas. It's the delta inside of
Speaker 2: the Delta. Here's our Captain Hank Berdine from Chatham, Mississippi,
Speaker 2: introducing us to the delta.
Speaker 1: What we call the Mississippi Delta was on alluvial bottom
Speaker 1: land on a Lousville hardwood bottomland of the Azoo and
Speaker 1: the Mississippi deltas it was an impenetrable jungle flooded every year.
Speaker 1: It was solid hardwoods and then the swamp areas, cypress trees,
Speaker 1: your oxbow lakes, willow trees, cypresses. You could hardly walk
Speaker 1: through a lot of the areas along the riparian banks
Speaker 1: of the rivers, creeks and streams in here because of
Speaker 1: the dense, dense cambrige, and you couldn't walk from unless
Speaker 1: you hacked them with a cane knife or follow the
Speaker 1: game trail. In the woods itself, the trees were comparable
Speaker 1: to a lot of the Redwoods and all right in California,
Speaker 1: because you had these massive oaks, some of them sixteen
Speaker 1: eighteen feet in diameter, with a canopy over the top
Speaker 1: that shaded below. So you didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: trees underneath that brush because the something couldn't.
Speaker 2: Get to them.
Speaker 1: But then you'd get up next to a creek and
Speaker 1: there was a cane break that you couldn't walk through,
Speaker 1: and it was an impenetrable jungle. It was loaded with bear, wildcats, panthers, alligators,
Speaker 1: alligator snapping turtles, alligator gau You had monstrous cotton mouthed
Speaker 1: water markings and diamondback rattlesnakes. It was a wildlife paradise,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't hardly get in here.
Speaker 2: It's hard to imagine these ancient virgin forests and cane breaks.
Speaker 2: And he didn't mention the waterfowl super highway the river
Speaker 2: was and still is today. The incredible the natural resources
Speaker 2: of the Delta were protected by the flooding of the
Speaker 2: river far longer than most places in America. Mississippi became
Speaker 2: a state in eighteen seventeen, but much of the western
Speaker 2: side of the state, the river side, was undeveloped until
Speaker 2: after the Civil War. The government levees of the late
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds made this region habitable, but before levees it
Speaker 2: was a wild place. Here's an excerpt from John Berry's
Speaker 2: book Rising Tide.
Speaker 3: About the pre civilized Delta.
Speaker 2: The land, wrote another traveler, was a jungle equal to
Speaker 2: any in Africa, with dense forests of cane and giant
Speaker 2: trees from which hung great, clinging vines of wild grape
Speaker 2: and muskydine. The density of growth suffocated, choked off air,
Speaker 2: held in moisture, and a pulsating heat was so thick
Speaker 2: a horse and rider couldn't penetrate. Even on foot. One
Speaker 2: needed to cut one's way through. Only the trees, some
Speaker 2: hundred feet high, burst above the choking vines and cane
Speaker 2: into the sunshine. Stinging flies, gnats, and mosquitoes swarmed around
Speaker 2: any visitors. One pioneer reported killing fourteen bears in eight days.
Speaker 2: One warned of wolves and the fatted alligator, while the
Speaker 2: panther basket at the river's edge, and the cane breaks
Speaker 2: almost impervious to man, nearly as large as a young calf.
Speaker 2: They're the most savage looking animal I ever saw. Their strong,
Speaker 2: sinewy legs with large hooked claws like a cat, could
Speaker 2: tear a man to pieces in a trice if they
Speaker 2: chose to the wild animals, the rattlesnakes, and water moccasins.
Speaker 2: The yellow fever and malaria made it worried. One settler quote,
Speaker 2: almost worth a man's life to cast his lot in
Speaker 2: the swamp. Yet the river made it worth the risk.
Speaker 2: The river left gold in the delta. It was gold,
Speaker 2: the color of chocolate. Gold that was not in the earth,
Speaker 2: but was the earth elsewhere. One measures the thickness of
Speaker 2: good top soil and inches here good lush soil measures
Speaker 2: tens of feet thick. A nineteen oh one report published
Speaker 2: by the American Economic Association said, quote, nature knows not
Speaker 2: how to compound a richer soil. A nineteen oh six
Speaker 2: scientific assessment concluded that the nutrients and the soil were
Speaker 2: unexcelled by those of any other soil in the world.
Speaker 2: The Delta, however, overwhelmed individual farmers. To take the land
Speaker 2: from the river, to clear it, to drain it, and
Speaker 2: protect it required an enormous outlay of capital and labor.
Speaker 2: From the first the Delta demanded organization, capital, entrepreneurship, and
Speaker 2: gambling instincts. It was a place for empire. That's a
Speaker 2: wild place. Here's hank with how this jungle the river
Speaker 2: side of the Mississippi was settled, and it.
Speaker 1: Will not until before the Civil War that the Delta
Speaker 1: even began being cleared. Folks would come down the river
Speaker 1: from Kentucky, get on the river bank, which every river
Speaker 1: has a riparian bank, which builds a natural levee on
Speaker 1: it itself. As the floods come and the water overflows
Speaker 1: the banks, what it does. The heavier particles come out first.
Speaker 1: That is your sandier particles, your heavy loamy type things
Speaker 1: will drift down and away from that bank. You get
Speaker 1: into bottom, lower areas, and that's where your real silty, fine,
Speaker 1: fine sands, fine dirt and loam settle down. That's what
Speaker 1: we call buckshott gumbo. It's a real heavy clay type dirt.
Speaker 1: Your sandier upper ground we call sandy loan call it
Speaker 1: ice cream, ice cream dirt. I mean, you can go
Speaker 1: out there and throw curnel of corn out there and
Speaker 1: next thing you know, you got corn crop. You know,
Speaker 1: it's some of the most fertile dirt that we've said
Speaker 1: in the world. So the only area is beginning to
Speaker 1: be cleared and for cotton well on the Missippi Ruver.
Speaker 2: The only agriculture on the western side of the Mississippi
Speaker 2: before the Civil War was right along the banks of
Speaker 2: the Mississippi River. They didn't penetrate into the interior of
Speaker 2: the Delta. That's important to understand. In eighteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: less than ten percent of the Delta was developed. That
Speaker 2: means ninety percent of it was virgin forest. It truly
Speaker 2: was a wilderness. And here's how they eventually got inland.
Speaker 1: During that time, there were no roads. There weren't no railroads.
Speaker 1: There was no way to get in here. Here's a swamp.
Speaker 1: So the state of Mississippi gave rights of way, huge
Speaker 1: tracks of rights of way to railroad companies to begin
Speaker 1: opening up the Delta for cotton production and logging. So
Speaker 1: once the railroad companies realized the high rout that they
Speaker 1: needed to take to get into the Delta, then they
Speaker 1: began nudging into the North Delta out of Memphis and
Speaker 1: off of those railroad lines. They'd run what we called
Speaker 1: little dummy lines.
Speaker 4: Didn't they have what.
Speaker 1: We call a groundhog. Sawmell easily moved Sawmell. And because
Speaker 1: of the timber, the oak, the ash, the cypress, the
Speaker 1: pecan that came out of the Mississippi Delta, Memphis became
Speaker 1: known as the hardwood capital of the world. They were
Speaker 1: producing more hardwood than anywhere else because of the Mississippi Delta. Now,
Speaker 1: as those lands were cleared by the timber companies, if
Speaker 1: it was good ground, they would sell off those excess
Speaker 1: rights of ways to folks coming in from Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: different areas to continue the clearing and open up for
Speaker 1: cotton production.
Speaker 2: The railroads opened up new country paid for by logging.
Speaker 2: At this time, wood was the primary construction material for
Speaker 2: almost everything that man made. Once the land was cleared,
Speaker 2: it went into private ownership for farms. Here's some perspective
Speaker 2: on the timing of the settlement of the Delta.
Speaker 1: During that time in early eighteen hundreds on up through
Speaker 1: the middle eighteen hundreds, as the West was being opened up,
Speaker 1: Transcontinental Railroad was completed, the gold rush had gone on
Speaker 1: in California. They had already cut the majority of the
Speaker 1: timber in the northeast, and then they hit the northwest,
Speaker 1: the Redwoods, the big Sequaliya areas, Washington State. This was
Speaker 1: the very last area in the country. The timber here
Speaker 1: was massive. I would ask my mama men conversations, what
Speaker 1: is so unique about the Delta. It say it's the people,
Speaker 1: and I would say, yes, that's absolutely a never disputed
Speaker 1: my mama on anything, but I would say, yes, it
Speaker 1: is the people. And I want to love step further
Speaker 1: the people that win the Delta. Then, after the West
Speaker 1: had been one, the gold had been gotten, this was
Speaker 1: the last frontier in America, this god forsaken swamp. And
Speaker 1: those people that came in here were true pioneers. They
Speaker 1: were in an uninhabitable place trying to eke out a
Speaker 1: living in some of the best dirt in the world.
Speaker 1: So when I think of that it's that pioneering spirit
Speaker 1: that helped create the Delta, to make the Delta what
Speaker 1: it is today. And a lot of the people that
Speaker 1: are in the Delta right now today. I said, grandparents.
Speaker 1: It's not a great great grandparents, I said, grandparents that
Speaker 1: were true pioneers that came in here opening this place up.
Speaker 2: Hank's grandparents cleared land for and started farming and helped
Speaker 2: found the town of Ruleville, Mississippi. It's not intuitive to
Speaker 2: think that the Mississippi Delta region of this country was
Speaker 2: one of the last to be settled. We typically think
Speaker 2: of the West being the last region settled. However, nowhere
Speaker 2: else had such a giant flooding river. It wasn't until
Speaker 2: after the big government levees of the late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 2: that this region was truly safe to live in, well,
Speaker 2: sort of safe.
Speaker 1: As all of that was happening, the Delta was being
Speaker 1: cleared from the top downtrod to bottom. William Faulkner would
Speaker 1: come in here and hunt. He called it to big Woods,
Speaker 1: and he saw what was happening and wrote in one
Speaker 1: of his books that the Mississippi Delta was deaniy rivered, deswamped,
Speaker 1: and denuded in two generations. Once those railroads started coming in,
Speaker 1: and that's what happened.
Speaker 2: Once they learned how to live in the delta, it
Speaker 2: opened up fast and furious. If you remember Bear Grease
Speaker 2: Hall of Famer, Hulk Callier, a former enslaved man, was
Speaker 2: a market hunter who sold bear meat to logging camps
Speaker 2: in the late eighteen hundreds. He was legitimately believed to
Speaker 2: have killed three thousand bears in his lifetime.
Speaker 3: He was a hound hunter.
Speaker 2: You can hear that whole series on Bear Grease episode
Speaker 2: sixty eight, seventy and seventy two. It's all about Hulk Callier,
Speaker 2: and I hope you remember that. Our boat Captain Hank
Speaker 2: Berdine is one of the guardians of Hult Collier's legacy
Speaker 2: in Mississippi. He and Minor Ferris Buchanan worked hard to
Speaker 2: get Holt's grave turned into a monument in downtown Greenville, Mississippi.
Speaker 2: Hank can hardly talk about Holt without crying. I think
Speaker 2: that's something. William Faulkner, who Hank talked about, was from
Speaker 2: Mississippi and is considered one of the greatest American writers
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century, who rebirthed the Southern narrative to
Speaker 2: the country. He was known for his elaborate prose and
Speaker 2: for using multiple narrators called stream of consciousness writing. But
Speaker 2: his big theme was exposing the sense of tragedy carried
Speaker 2: by the people in the South after the Civil War.
Speaker 2: This place was war torn and beat up. Falkner was
Speaker 2: known for writing about the complex racial issues in the South.
Speaker 2: Here's the quote that Hank was talking about. It's from
Speaker 2: Falkner's book, Go Down Moses, written in nineteen forty. I've
Speaker 2: slightly revised this quote, omitting a touch of the original language.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: This delta, he thought, this delta, this land which man
Speaker 2: has de swamped and denuded and derivered in two generations,
Speaker 2: so that white men can own plantations and commute every
Speaker 2: night to Memphis, and black men own plantations and writeing
Speaker 2: Jim Crow cars to Chicago to live in millionaire's mansions
Speaker 2: on Lake Shore Drive, where white men rent farms and
Speaker 2: live like black people, and blacks crop on shares and
Speaker 2: live like animals, where cotton is planet and grows man
Speaker 2: tall in the very cracks of the sidewalks, and usury
Speaker 2: and mortgage and bankruptcy and measureless wealth, Chinese, African, Aran
Speaker 2: and jew all breed and spawn together until no man
Speaker 2: has time to say which is witch, nor cares no wonder.
Speaker 2: The ruined woods I used to know don't cry for retribution.
Speaker 2: The people who have destroyed it will accomplish its revenge.
Speaker 2: It's clear that, like the natural system of the river,
Speaker 2: the history of this place is complex. I don't fully
Speaker 2: claim to understand what Faultner meant, except for one part.
Speaker 2: He was saying that the people who destroyed the physical delta,
Speaker 2: drained her swamps and cut her ancient trees, will self
Speaker 2: inflict the land's revenge. He connected the social challenges of
Speaker 2: the South to its treatment of the land, which is
Speaker 2: an interesting thought.
Speaker 3: It's almost like the richness.
Speaker 2: Of the soil bred a unique kind of human greed.
Speaker 2: But the South doesn't stand out in this country as
Speaker 2: the only place that has abused the land. The impact
Speaker 2: of civilization and all that that includes has been widespread,
Speaker 2: and interestingly, it seems like we're having social issues everywhere.
Speaker 2: I have a question for John Berry about the delta.
Speaker 2: So there was a quote in the book from a
Speaker 2: geologist in eighteen fifty seven, and he said, whatever the
Speaker 2: delta of the Nile may have once been will only
Speaker 2: be a shadow of what this alluvial plain of the
Speaker 2: Mississippi will be. It will be the central point, the
Speaker 2: garden spot of the North American continent where wealth and
Speaker 2: prosperity culminate. This was in eighteen fifty seven, about the
Speaker 2: time that man really started to put his hand on
Speaker 2: the river. Much of the Delta was still virgin wilderness
Speaker 2: at that time, a lot of it. So this is
Speaker 2: like the beginning, a look into the future of what
Speaker 2: this land could be. And as I read that, that
Speaker 2: doesn't sound like what the Delta became.
Speaker 5: Well, you know the Delta, and again we're talking not
Speaker 5: just when you say delta. People may think the Mississippi Delta,
Speaker 5: technically the Yazu Mississippi Delta, but it really means a
Speaker 5: much larger area. But that had that area has been,
Speaker 5: you know, a tremendous agricultural producer, you know, whether or not,
Speaker 5: obviously best known for cotton, but there's a lot more
Speaker 5: than cotton. So I think in that sense, the prediction
Speaker 5: you know, pretty much came true. In terms of poverty,
Speaker 5: that's a different story. You know, you have some of
Speaker 5: the greatest discrepancies anywhere in the country, and you know
Speaker 5: some of those some of those counties, you know, are
Speaker 5: among the poorest in the United States. The poverty, obviously
Speaker 5: is a relic of slavery and the sharecrops system which
Speaker 5: persisted after slavery, when a tremendous amount of exploitation of
Speaker 5: African Americans, you know, the school systems didn't get the
Speaker 5: same support that you know, white schools did, and so
Speaker 5: forth and so on.
Speaker 2: I just read the same quote to longtime Mississippi resident
Speaker 2: Wilbert Primos, the one from eighteen fifty seven, and I
Speaker 2: asked him if he thought the geologists prediction of the
Speaker 2: Delta's success came true.
Speaker 3: Here's what he said.
Speaker 6: I think that it did. I mean, if you look
Speaker 6: right before the Civil War, Natchez had more millionaires than
Speaker 6: any city in the United States, all made from the
Speaker 6: Delta on the Louisiana side of Missippi side, agriculture, agriculture
Speaker 6: the hardy South side. And of course slavery was a
Speaker 6: huge part of that. And to understand that and how
Speaker 6: that came about, you know, it was to have cheap labor,
Speaker 6: and then they were brought to the Delta to be
Speaker 6: a part of that process. They even got Italians. That's
Speaker 6: why there's so many Italian farmers from the Mississippi Delta now,
Speaker 6: because they were brought over here.
Speaker 2: From Italy to be the labor right to be sharecroppers.
Speaker 2: In John Barry's book, it talks about how there were
Speaker 2: in Italy. There were signs on however they were traveling
Speaker 2: to get here by boat that said if you're going
Speaker 2: to Mississippi or if you're going to Arkansas, basically you.
Speaker 3: Should reconsider it's a trap.
Speaker 2: It's a scam because they brought over all these Italians
Speaker 2: that to be sharecroppers, and it was like a failure.
Speaker 2: I mean, they were really mistreated and weren't the deal
Speaker 2: wasn't as good as it should have been. But there's
Speaker 2: still lots of Italian immigrants in the South.
Speaker 6: That's right. And then living conditions were deplorable.
Speaker 2: For a long period of time before the Civil War, Natchez,
Speaker 2: Mississippi claimed to have more millionaires per capita than anywhere
Speaker 2: in the United States. That's a wild stat Here's Hank
Speaker 2: describing a very unusual happening in Delta culture, one that
Speaker 2: you might not expect.
Speaker 1: But during this time, as these places were opened up
Speaker 1: and these families were coming down here in Virginia, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: South Carolina somewhat, if you may say, aristocratic families, that's
Speaker 1: where they came from. That's what they'd been used to.
Speaker 1: They'd build big houses, I don't like to call them
Speaker 1: mansions into Delta, we call them big house. Every big
Speaker 1: place had a big house. And in those big houses
Speaker 1: you had libraries that were filled with Shakespeare, pros Keats,
Speaker 1: all of these literary volume from all over the world
Speaker 1: to teach people we used to having around, used to reading.
Speaker 1: Most of those houses had music rooms filled with grand pianos, cellos, harpsichords.
Speaker 1: The music that would be played in those during party time,
Speaker 1: during social seasons was unbelievable. And because of that influence,
Speaker 1: so to speak, there was a literary and artistic cultural
Speaker 1: whether it was a revolution or just a happening that
Speaker 1: was here. And the Percy family in Greenville, William Alexander
Speaker 1: Percy was a poet, a world traveler, and his house
Speaker 1: was filled with people from all over the world as
Speaker 1: they traveled and knew him and would come in here
Speaker 1: and visit with him, and sometimes they'd stay for a
Speaker 1: year at a time. Some folks would come in and
Speaker 1: stay and write whole books while they stayed at the
Speaker 1: Percy matching which we called it in Greenville, Langston Hughes,
Speaker 1: Carl Sandberg, Malvina Hoffman, who studied under all ghost re dain.
Speaker 1: You had Walker Percy, Shelby foot hiding carters. You had
Speaker 1: people from everywhere that gravitated in here that William Faulkner
Speaker 1: would come stay. And from that influence, so to speak,
Speaker 1: came an aura of literature, culture and all of this
Speaker 1: artistic stuff that was being held right there. And at
Speaker 1: one point in time, because of that, Greenville, Mississippi was
Speaker 1: known to have more writers per capita than anywhere else
Speaker 1: in America. Right out of the middle of Mississippi Delta.
Speaker 1: These folks wouldn't be the owners of the planations and
Speaker 1: all they wouldn't say all the time.
Speaker 4: They couldn't.
Speaker 1: It's too hot form, it was too full of mosquitoes,
Speaker 1: the humidity. So they'd go back up Monteagle, Tennessee. They
Speaker 1: go back up, can tell they go back home. No,
Speaker 1: it were cool, and then they'd come back down. In
Speaker 1: one time. They hunt a lot of them hunted.
Speaker 2: Greenville, Mississippi, has been called the most southern place on Earth.
Speaker 2: It was called the queen city of the Delta, and
Speaker 2: in the first half of the twentieth century it had
Speaker 2: more writers per capita than anywhere in the United States. Honestly,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of writers in Mississippi today. Every
Speaker 2: Turkey Hunter I know down there has published a book
Speaker 2: that's a bit hyperbolic, but you get the point, and
Speaker 2: I think it's really interesting. Hank mentioned a man by
Speaker 2: the name of William Alexander Percy from Greenville. John Barry
Speaker 2: actually devoted multiple chapters in this book. Rising tied to
Speaker 2: the Percy family because of their influence in the Delta.
Speaker 2: Charles Percy was known as the Gray Eagle. He was
Speaker 2: a Civil War hero, and for just a minute, I
Speaker 2: want to talk about the Civil War as we're building
Speaker 2: up beside the of who these Percies were. They were important.
Speaker 2: John Barry wrote chapters in this book about them. This
Speaker 2: is important stuff. Grant and the Union Army blew up
Speaker 2: the levees to defeat Vicksburg, flooding the town, and which
Speaker 2: in big river country is a really low, almost unforgivable blow.
Speaker 2: Many people in Vicksburg still talk about this today like
Speaker 2: it happened yesterday. In Mark Twain's book Life on the Mississippi,
Speaker 2: written in eighteen eighty three.
Speaker 3: He talks about this very thing.
Speaker 2: And I think all these little pieces of information give
Speaker 2: us data points on understanding the South and this river.
Speaker 3: Here's Mark Twain in the north one.
Speaker 2: Here's the war mentioned in social conversation once a month,
Speaker 2: sometimes as often as once a week. But the case
Speaker 2: is very different in the South. There, every man you
Speaker 2: meet was in the war, and every lady you met
Speaker 2: saw the war. The war is a great chief topic
Speaker 2: of conversation. The interest in it is vivid and constant.
Speaker 2: The interest in other topics is fleeting. Mention of the
Speaker 2: war will wake up a dull company and set their
Speaker 2: tongues going when nearly any other topic would fail. In
Speaker 2: the South, the war is what ad is. Elsewhere, they
Speaker 2: date from it. All day long. You hear things placed
Speaker 2: as having happened since the Wall and the Wall, or
Speaker 2: before the war, or right after the war, or about
Speaker 2: two years before the wall. It shows how intimately every
Speaker 2: individual was visited in his own person by that tremendous episode.
Speaker 2: It gives the inexperienced stranger a better idea of what
Speaker 2: a vast and comprehensive calamity invasion is than he can
Speaker 2: ever get by reading books. At the fireside at a
Speaker 2: club one evening, a gentleman turned to me and said,
Speaker 2: in an aside, you notice, of course, that we are
Speaker 2: nearly always talking about the war. It isn't because we
Speaker 2: haven't anything else to talk about, but because nothing else
Speaker 2: has so strong an interest for us.
Speaker 3: And there is another reason. In the war.
Speaker 2: Each of us, in his own person seems to have
Speaker 2: sampled all the different varieties of the human experience. And
Speaker 2: as a consequence, you can't mention an outside matter of
Speaker 2: any sort, but it will certainly remind some listener of
Speaker 2: something that happened during the war, and out he comes
Speaker 2: with it. This gives some insight into the South's interest
Speaker 2: in the war. And I think what Mark Twain said
Speaker 2: is still accurate to some degree.
Speaker 3: Today.
Speaker 2: At a high level, wars are fought for economics, policy,
Speaker 2: and ideology on the ground and in the trenches, though
Speaker 2: war is very personal, and most who are fighting are
Speaker 2: disconnected from the high level reasons of the bloodshed. Remember
Speaker 2: what William Faulkner said, To understand the world, you must
Speaker 2: understand a place like Mississippi. We're in pursuit on this here,
Speaker 2: bear grease poda cast to understand the world. Anyway, I
Speaker 2: want to get back to the Percy family, you know,
Speaker 2: that powerful family. And I want to say too that
Speaker 2: I'm going to pronounce Leroy Percy's name the same way
Speaker 2: that Hank Burdine does. You might read it and call
Speaker 2: him Leroy Percy. Anyway, Leroy Percy reorganized the levee system
Speaker 2: after the Civil War, which was a noble job, and
Speaker 2: with it came power. But also what gave him power
Speaker 2: was cotton. Here is an excerpt from John Berry's book
Speaker 2: Rising Tide. You should really check this book out. Two
Speaker 2: thirds of the world's cotton supply came from the American South.
Speaker 2: The river had made the Delta soil so lush that
Speaker 2: without fertilizer, it produced far more than any other land did.
Speaker 3: With fertilizer.
Speaker 2: Even the black loam of Alabama often Delta yields doubled
Speaker 2: and tripled that of other soils. Delta cotton for seas
Speaker 2: of climate and soil even had some resistance to the
Speaker 2: bowl weavil, which had entered Texas from Mexico in eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety two and spread east at forty to seventy miles
Speaker 2: a year, and was devastating the rest of the southern crop.
Speaker 2: In the early nineteen hundreds, world textile manufacturers began to
Speaker 2: fear a cotton famine. British and Northern investors poured evermore
Speaker 2: cash into the Delta. Development required three things. Protection from
Speaker 2: the river, transportation into the interior, and labor. Increasingly, labor
Speaker 2: shortages were limiting the Delta's growth. No area of the
Speaker 2: South was more short of labor than it in the South.
Speaker 2: Of course, the issue of labor is inextricably bound up
Speaker 2: with race. It was also inextricably linked to the society
Speaker 2: the Percys intended to create. On the issue of labor,
Speaker 2: the Percy family would play more of a role than
Speaker 2: any other. Percy reorganized both the economic problems and the
Speaker 2: need to accept a new order, and advocated a solution.
Speaker 2: Planners had land but no cash. Blacks had labor but
Speaker 2: no land. They resisted working in gangs under a foreman,
Speaker 2: which smacked of slavery and overseers. So Percy, who understood
Speaker 2: both the capital shortage and the importance of making labor
Speaker 2: content in order to maximize efficiency, advocated sharecropping. One man
Speaker 2: even credited Percy with inventing the system. In contemporaneous reports
Speaker 2: in other states did attribute the system's beginnings to Mississippi.
Speaker 2: Planners supplied the land, Blacks supplied the labor and gained
Speaker 2: some independence. Profits were theoretically split fifty to fifty.
Speaker 3: The cropper got more.
Speaker 2: If he had his own mules, making blacks and white's
Speaker 2: partners and, by implication, comparable, if not equal. However, abusive
Speaker 2: sharecropping later became because of the systems implied partnership of
Speaker 2: white and black. Acially, whites resisted it while blacks welcomed it.
Speaker 2: The advocacy of sharecropping was not the only reflection of
Speaker 2: Percy's sensitivity to the inefficiencies of racial animosity. As reconstruction
Speaker 2: dragged on, as the federal government became less and less
Speaker 2: willing to support black rights with Army bayonets, Percy, like
Speaker 2: most Southern white leaders, became increasingly aggressive in his efforts
Speaker 2: to seize back power from the Republicans and Negroes, but
Speaker 2: he did not want to frighten away either labor nor
Speaker 2: northern investors. Elsewhere, across the South, Democrats took power by
Speaker 2: murdering hundreds of blacks, including dozens in the Delta intimidating
Speaker 2: thousands away from the poles and perpetrating massive vote fraud.
Speaker 2: But Percy prevented the klu Klux Klan from operating in
Speaker 2: his own Washington County, and no murders were reported there.
Speaker 2: On one occasion, Percy waded into a crowd to stop
Speaker 2: the lynching of a black man accused of murdering white
Speaker 2: Charles Percy, the Gray Eagle was attributed by some to
Speaker 2: creating this idea of sharecropping, which became a big part
Speaker 2: of the post Civil War South.
Speaker 3: Here's Hank Berdin.
Speaker 1: As the Delta was being cleared and begun to be farmed.
Speaker 1: This was after the Civil War, after emancipation. There was
Speaker 1: no slavery, and there was labor. But who's gonna pay
Speaker 1: the labor? How they gonna pay the label? You don't
Speaker 1: have money in the cotton crop till you pick your cotton.
Speaker 1: So there was a system that came up called sharecropping,
Speaker 1: where and this black and white people would come in
Speaker 1: and the owner of the place would give him a
Speaker 1: house to live in, give him bout twenty seven acres
Speaker 1: of land to farm of that which had a little
Speaker 1: garden on it. In the house area, they farmed normally
Speaker 1: about twenty four twenty five acres. He and his family
Speaker 1: was apply with the mule supply, with all the influence supplied,
Speaker 1: with all the seed, fertilizers, whatever he needed, and he
Speaker 1: had credit at the company's store at the commissary, so
Speaker 1: all during the year he could get what he wanted,
Speaker 1: what he needed to subside on. But he grew that
Speaker 1: crop and he was in charge of that. And then
Speaker 1: at the end of the year when it came down
Speaker 1: picked cotton, and the cotton was picked and sold. Then
Speaker 1: was didvy of day when you came in and the
Speaker 1: bottle man gonna get his shef first, his cut, whatever
Speaker 1: percentage that was. Then you took the indebtedness at the
Speaker 1: store out and the rest of the debt on everything else,
Speaker 1: and whatever was left over went to the sharecropping family. Now,
Speaker 1: some years it wasn't bad. You had a good crop,
Speaker 1: price of cotton was high. Mankind family could get by,
Speaker 1: you know, and he had a place to live and
Speaker 1: uh food to eat the whole time, wood to cut
Speaker 1: for his one time heat. Then there was an instance
Speaker 1: where that system could be abused by the guy sitting
Speaker 1: behind the disc, you know, with his pencil I don't
Speaker 1: think that happened as much as a lot of people
Speaker 1: assume it may have, because you wanted good people on
Speaker 1: your place, and you wanted them happy. You didn't want
Speaker 1: them to get upset and leave, and then you hadn't
Speaker 1: got anybody to play farm your cotton.
Speaker 2: No matter which way you shake it, sharecropping was tough.
Speaker 2: It certainly was abused, and other times it worked as
Speaker 2: it was supposed to. In eighteen eighty eight, Charles the
Speaker 2: Great Eagle died at the age of fifty three, but
Speaker 2: his son le Roy Percy orn in eighteen sixty took
Speaker 2: up the family's empire building Mantle. The Roy Percy owned
Speaker 2: the twenty thousand acre Trail Lake Plantation near Greenville. This
Speaker 2: is complicated, but he grew up with and would be
Speaker 2: a lifelong friend of the bear hunter Hulk Collier, who
Speaker 2: was the former slave of his foll Leroy became a
Speaker 2: friend of President Theodore Roosevelt after becoming the Mississippi Senator
Speaker 2: and invited Roosevelt to bear hunt and Mississippi with Holt.
Speaker 2: You guys, remember that that's when the Teddy Bear was created.
Speaker 3: That's a wild story.
Speaker 2: Le Roy once gave his eleven year old son a
Speaker 2: rifle as a gift. Tragically, in nineteen oh two, another
Speaker 2: child accidentally shot and killed the boy. The Percys weren't
Speaker 2: immune to the tragedy that strikes all men. Here's an
Speaker 2: excerpt about le Roy Percy from Rising Tide. Le Roy
Speaker 2: Percy had a clear conception of the society he intended
Speaker 2: to build.
Speaker 3: It would be a.
Speaker 2: Great agricultural factory that chested its way into the forefront
Speaker 2: of the New South, more humane than in every bit
Speaker 2: as efficient as the textile mills in North Carolina or
Speaker 2: the coal mines in Alabama. It would have rich and
Speaker 2: poor and little middle but it would provide opportunity. It
Speaker 2: would be a place in which a superior civilization might flourish.
Speaker 2: And although Percy was not burdened by sentimentality, he expected
Speaker 2: the society to adhere to a code of honor. If
Speaker 2: ruled by an elite, that elite would take care of
Speaker 2: its less fortunate members. This is kind of hard to
Speaker 2: believe based upon the general frequency coming out of the
Speaker 2: South in this era, but for a period of time,
Speaker 2: the Mississippi side of the Delta was a kind of
Speaker 2: oasis for blacks, and much of it had to do
Speaker 2: with Leroy Percy, who would advocate for blacks in the
Speaker 2: height of the Jim Crow era. This isn't historical revision
Speaker 2: written by those wanting to smooth over the past. This
Speaker 2: is from John Berry's book, and I've read it in
Speaker 2: many other places. Leroy made sure blacks in Greenville were policemen, mailmen,
Speaker 2: and justices of the peace. He advocated for them getting
Speaker 2: loans and owning land. On March first, nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 2: Leroy Percy had a public debate with organizers of the
Speaker 2: KKK who wished to legally enter Washington County, Mississippi. He
Speaker 2: was quoted in newspapers across the country saying, friends, let
Speaker 2: this clan go somewhere else where. It will not do
Speaker 2: the harm that it will in this community. Let them
Speaker 2: sow dissension in some community less united than ours. I
Speaker 2: want to read another section from Rising Tide.
Speaker 3: You gotta get this book.
Speaker 2: The Delta did offer blacks at least relative promise.
Speaker 3: Judge Robert R.
Speaker 2: Taylor of Indiana, a member of the Mississippi River Commission,
Speaker 2: pointed out that levies, by allowing the mining of the
Speaker 2: river's wealth, also allowed quote the Negro to better his
Speaker 2: condition in considerable and increasing numbers. He is buying land
Speaker 2: and becoming an independent cultivator. Nowhere else in the South
Speaker 2: are as favorable opportunities offered to the black man as
Speaker 2: in the reclaimed Mississippi Lowlands, and nowhere else is he
Speaker 2: doing as much for his own uplifting. Percy and the
Speaker 2: men with him whom he dominated the region in particularly
Speaker 2: Washington County, did create something special, at least given the times.
Speaker 2: Largely because of Percy, who was on the board of
Speaker 2: one bank and influence others. Lenders did not hesitate to
Speaker 2: offer black's mortgages, and nineteen hundred blacks owned two thirds
Speaker 2: of all Delta farms, probably the highest proportion of black
Speaker 2: land ownership in the country. Also largely because of Percy,
Speaker 2: Greenville had black policeman, a black Justice of the Peace,
Speaker 2: and every mailman in the city was black. In nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 2: the Census Bureau concluded that the plantation organization was quote
Speaker 2: more firmly fixed in the Yazoo Mississippi Delta than any
Speaker 2: other area of the South, but even sharecropping could offer opportunity.
Speaker 2: Alfred Stone founded an agricultural experiment station to develop a
Speaker 2: better cot and as a social scientist, kept meticulous records
Speaker 2: of his settlements with his sharecroppers. In nineteen oh one,
Speaker 2: the average family on his plantation cleared one thousand dollars
Speaker 2: after all expenses were deducted, and in nineteen oh three
Speaker 2: they cleared roughly seven hundred dollars. The Mississippi outside the
Speaker 2: Delta was contrasted sharply with this picture. There whites were
Speaker 2: driving blacks off the land, burning their barns, whipping them,
Speaker 2: forcing them to sell at a loss, murdering them, and
Speaker 2: one Mississippi county, three hundred and nine men, including the sheriff,
Speaker 2: were indicted. Some towns bragged that they were inward free.
Speaker 2: More important was an outbreak of lynchings of almost incomprehensible viciousness.
Speaker 2: What Percy created in his Washington County and much of
Speaker 2: the wider Delta was kind of wild. But then in
Speaker 2: other parts of the South, all the stuff that a
Speaker 2: lot of us have heard about was absolutely going on.
Speaker 2: But Percy and his motivations, however, were more pragmatic than
Speaker 2: one might hope. In a speech, he also stated that
Speaker 2: if all the blacks left, the economy would plummet. Charles
Speaker 2: Percy LeRoy's father had distributed tens of thousands of a
Speaker 2: pamphlet titled The Call of an Alluvial Empire, which spoke
Speaker 2: of the potential prosperity of the Delta. The Percys were
Speaker 2: ruthless pragmatists, and they were set on building this alluvial empire,
Speaker 2: and it required labor. One governor, who was advised to
Speaker 2: put the Percys in their place, said quote, you cannot
Speaker 2: conciliate them and retain your self respect. They demand nothing
Speaker 2: short of the earth. These guys knew how to wild power,
Speaker 2: and this labor thing had been a problem since.
Speaker 3: The Civil War.
Speaker 2: Leroy Percy was dead set on not recruiting the poor
Speaker 2: whites from the hill country of Georgia and Alabama, who
Speaker 2: were problematic and prone to make racial issues worse. It's
Speaker 2: interesting that the KKK was primarily lower income, marginalized whites.
Speaker 2: The Klan did well with this group because they rallied
Speaker 2: around two common enemies, one below them the blacks, and
Speaker 2: an enemy above them, the Establishment, which they perceived to
Speaker 2: be run by wealthy Jews. In nineteen twenty, the KKK
Speaker 2: had three million members and they called themselves the Invisible
Speaker 2: Empire and they weren't even primarily based in the South.
Speaker 2: Between nineteen fifteen and nineteen forty four, here are the
Speaker 2: top ten states with the highest KKK membership Indiana, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: New York, Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey, and Florida.
Speaker 3: That's wild.
Speaker 2: Prior to Leroy Percy, delta planters had recruited even Chinese
Speaker 2: laborers from Hong Kong, and at one time there were
Speaker 2: over fifty Chinese grocery store in Greenville, Mississippi alone. Do
Speaker 2: you remember when Holt Collier used to make the kids
Speaker 2: go buy them an orange pop and a plug a
Speaker 2: tobacco from the Chinese store before he would tell them
Speaker 2: a story that was in Greenville. The Chinese didn't work out,
Speaker 2: so around nineteen hundred, Percy himself went to Italy to
Speaker 2: recruit workers and hire labor agents. They would bring over
Speaker 2: thousands of Italians and have them work as sharecroppers on
Speaker 2: delta plantations. The experiment failed miserably. The people felt cheated
Speaker 2: and misled, and the Italian government even got involved, warning
Speaker 2: their citizens not to go to Mississippi or Arkansas. I
Speaker 2: think I'm beginning to understand Faulkner's quote about the complex
Speaker 2: social issues of this place. Here's another excerpt from John
Speaker 2: Berry's book Rising Tide about Lebroy Percy. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: his views on race were as progressive as those of
Speaker 2: any mainstream figure in the nation. Percy began his speech
Speaker 2: with the observation quote the statement is daily heard that
Speaker 2: education ruins the negro. I denied that any man is
Speaker 2: rendered worse by having his intelligence quickened.
Speaker 3: End of quote. It was a long speech.
Speaker 2: It affirmed the moral reasons for educating blacks and treating
Speaker 2: them fairly and honestly, including the fact that abusing blacks
Speaker 2: corrupted whites. Percy was an interesting character. When we apply
Speaker 2: the values of today to his life, you could find
Speaker 2: much error in his doctrine. But he was doing more
Speaker 2: than anybody else in the region at the time. In
Speaker 2: summarizing the story in the most simplistic way, the Roy
Speaker 2: Percy would never see his alluvial empire come to fruition,
Speaker 2: john Berry said. In nineteen oh three, Mississippi elected James K. Vardemann,
Speaker 2: the great White Chief Governor. He was the first man
Speaker 2: in Mississippi to realize, in the sense of making real
Speaker 2: the politics of race hatred.
Speaker 3: End of quote.
Speaker 2: Percy viewed Vardaman as pure evil who was going to
Speaker 2: drive blacks out of the South. Vardaman would help set
Speaker 2: the tone for the next seventy years of politics in
Speaker 2: the state and in the South. Huge amounts of Blacks
Speaker 2: would leave the South for good. The Roy Percy would
Speaker 2: be engaged in this fight his entire life, and his
Speaker 2: son William Alexander Percy or will Percy, would inherit it.
Speaker 2: Will's name will come up later when we talk about
Speaker 2: the flood of nineteen twenty seven. This series is going
Speaker 2: to wind like an alluvial river, but in the end
Speaker 2: we'll have a greater understanding of the river its influence
Speaker 2: in the people of the Delta. I want to introduce
Speaker 2: you to a dear friend of the Newcombe family, mister
Speaker 2: Earl Jasper, who was born in Pine Bluff on the
Speaker 2: Arkansas side of the Delta in nineteen fifty two. I
Speaker 2: want to hear his story of groy up as a
Speaker 2: black man in the Delta. It's one thing to read
Speaker 2: about it in a book. It's another thing to hear
Speaker 2: the voice of a man, the ultimate primary source, a
Speaker 2: man who lived there. Meet mister Earl.
Speaker 4: My grandfather, Avery Jasper. He should have been born right
Speaker 4: after slavery ended. His father Sanders. Yeah, I'm naming the
Speaker 4: name because I keep up with the family history stuff.
Speaker 4: Sanders Sanders Jasper was into slavery. In other words, the
Speaker 4: Jaspers that come to Southeast Arkansas came from South Carolina
Speaker 4: in Virginia and came right after slavery. That's when our
Speaker 4: family patriarch migrated to Arkansas, Southeast Arkansas, and it was
Speaker 4: not a good experience.
Speaker 2: Why didn't they come here?
Speaker 4: They wanted to get out of the South Carolina in Virginia,
Speaker 4: moving west, hoping for something better.
Speaker 2: The universal reason for human migration is hoping for something better.
Speaker 2: It's in our DNA. It's what made people cross the
Speaker 2: Bury in land Bridge. It's what made the Pilgrims cross
Speaker 2: the Atlantic. It's what made Boone go into Kentucky. It's
Speaker 2: what made Crockett go to Texas. I want to learn
Speaker 2: about mister Earle's early life.
Speaker 4: Okay. I was born August twelfth, nineteen fifty two, in
Speaker 4: Lincoln County. It's between Pine Bluff and Dumas, are between
Speaker 4: Dumas and Star City in that particular area. And I
Speaker 4: was born on the plantation because it wasn't an incorporated area.
Speaker 4: It was out in the country and my parents were
Speaker 4: sharecroppers and then became just plantation workers after the farming
Speaker 4: went south and everything, and my childhood in Southeast Arkansas.
Speaker 4: In the South during the fifties, it was a lot
Speaker 4: of outdoor time.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Now people pay guides and whatnot to go find game
Speaker 4: and look for sports. It was existence. The grown ups
Speaker 4: went tons for food.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So you remember your dad going hunting.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, well, my uncle and a big brother and
Speaker 4: whatnot that they went hunting, and you know, it was
Speaker 4: unusual for them to bring home a rabbit. I know
Speaker 4: this may sound so dreadful to the twenty twenty three crowd.
Speaker 4: You know, I get it. I get it, but you
Speaker 4: have to be there to understand it. And yeah, they
Speaker 4: went hunting and all type of games, ducks, raccoon, squirrels,
Speaker 4: all us stuff that people hunt now. And it was
Speaker 4: for a meal. I mean, I know, it's unbelievable that
Speaker 4: someone really had to get their next meal from going
Speaker 4: out and hunting. I know that some of the older
Speaker 4: ones that looked at the Beaverly Hillbillies and saw Granny
Speaker 4: and Jed and them and all that funny stuff. That
Speaker 4: was a sort of like it wasn't as funny, but
Speaker 4: it was. That's the way it was. That's the way
Speaker 4: it was in the delta. You worked all the time
Speaker 4: until it got where the crop was in and whatnot,
Speaker 4: and then you had to survive so many months until
Speaker 4: work time come again.
Speaker 2: These people were truly connected to the land through farming
Speaker 2: and hunting.
Speaker 3: This was a way of life.
Speaker 4: When I was a child, my parents they were farmers themselves.
Speaker 4: They had for the acres they had the land or
Speaker 4: amount of land. They would have to borrow money from
Speaker 4: certain larger farmers and whatnot, and to make a crop.
Speaker 4: And then after a certain length of time, so many
Speaker 4: crops you failed, you would lose it and you would
Speaker 4: have to start working for someone else. And that's how
Speaker 4: the sharecropper went down to just general or labor on
Speaker 4: a farm. You have so many bad crops and you
Speaker 4: can't repay your loan, and they call in alone and
Speaker 4: and so they'll take the land and and you you'll
Speaker 4: stay there, but you won't own it anymore. You'll be
Speaker 4: working for the people that loan you the money for
Speaker 4: so many years to do that and when I was small,
Speaker 4: I was born in the country out from a hospital,
Speaker 4: and that's all I knew growing up was farming. They
Speaker 4: wasn't sharecropping necessarily. Once I got to be in high school.
Speaker 4: They were just general farm hand.
Speaker 2: To understand the economic progression of mister Earle's family when
Speaker 2: he was young, they were sharecropping, which offered some independence
Speaker 2: and in a favorable year, some income.
Speaker 3: This was good.
Speaker 2: However, they lost their farm and had to work on
Speaker 2: a plantation as laborers, which had little economic future other
Speaker 2: than subsistence.
Speaker 4: Growing up, like I said, during the spring, when you know,
Speaker 4: it was cotten keen cotton. You know in the South
Speaker 4: when we got out of school, they called it horn cotten,
Speaker 4: but we called it chopping cotten, you know, grassing it
Speaker 4: and whatnot. That was a regular routine, just like kids
Speaker 4: now going get a job at McDonald's whatnot. We was
Speaker 4: going to the fields when school was out in May
Speaker 4: that Friday. We would go to the field that Monday
Speaker 4: and we would work it on tea when the kitten
Speaker 4: got to a certain height. They wouldn't have to do
Speaker 4: certain things. They didn't have all the chemicals and big
Speaker 4: equipment to spread and stuff like they do now. So
Speaker 4: once about around July the fourth, the kind be too
Speaker 4: big to chop and then that's when we'll take a break.
Speaker 2: Did your family sing in the fields like you hear
Speaker 2: people talk about a.
Speaker 4: Lot of that stuff is Hollywood dramatic, But they wasn't
Speaker 4: moaning and groaning and complaining because that's just the way
Speaker 4: it was. And it was some singing, but all the time,
Speaker 4: not in the field I was in, and I went
Speaker 4: to a lot of fields during the time, But you
Speaker 4: didn't have people full of anger about what was going
Speaker 4: on because of their faith, faith, family and community. That's
Speaker 4: what kept stuff moving forward.
Speaker 2: So you were raised on a farm, went to school
Speaker 2: at a public school.
Speaker 4: Gated school until about my sophomore year.
Speaker 2: What happened then.
Speaker 4: They integrated graded school system.
Speaker 2: Had did your school move? Where did did new students
Speaker 2: come into your school?
Speaker 4: The way that worked? They had freedom of choice as
Speaker 4: they called it, and uh, in Lincoln County you had well,
Speaker 4: I think you had four different schools. When you had
Speaker 4: the freedom of choice, the parents had the choice to
Speaker 4: let their black student go to the white school. And yeah,
Speaker 4: the white kids could have went to the black but
Speaker 4: we know that wasn't going to happen, and that's what
Speaker 4: did it was. It was freedom of choice, I think
Speaker 4: for a couple of years. And then when it went
Speaker 4: force integration as they called it, when they just combine
Speaker 4: the two schools together. I think when I was a
Speaker 4: senior in high school, that was the first year it
Speaker 4: went all the way just graded the black and the
Speaker 4: white school went together as one. I think I was
Speaker 4: a senior in high school.
Speaker 3: What was that like for you?
Speaker 2: Oh? Boy?
Speaker 4: What was that like? It was fights every day. It
Speaker 4: wasn't a good atmosphere. It wasn't good. But for the
Speaker 4: most part, a lot of kids taking it in it
Speaker 4: strive because that's just the way it was. It wasn't
Speaker 4: It wasn't good at all, not for a lot of kids.
Speaker 4: And you had white flight, which was not unusual. And
Speaker 4: the ones who stayed had to endure attitudes of certain
Speaker 4: teachers that did not want to teach you. And so
Speaker 4: it was an experience that I would not want my
Speaker 4: child to go through.
Speaker 2: How did you How did you handle that, Cheryl? Did
Speaker 2: it cause you to become more insulated? Did it cause
Speaker 2: you to become more vocal and outspoken? Did it cause
Speaker 2: you to kind of retreat advance, or like, how did
Speaker 2: you serve? How did you survive that?
Speaker 4: All the above? You had to You couldn't be one dimensional.
Speaker 4: You had to adjust to what was going on and
Speaker 4: being respectful. You had to be respectful or else. That
Speaker 4: was sort of difficult being respectful for people who really
Speaker 4: didn't have your best interest at heart. But your parents said,
Speaker 4: I don't want to have to come to the school
Speaker 4: for any reason because of your attitude, and we knew
Speaker 4: they meant business. Deal with it. It's going to work out, okay.
Speaker 4: Once again, faith, family and community help keep you grounded,
Speaker 4: help keep your mind straight, and kept you to the
Speaker 4: point where you said, Okay, this is where there is
Speaker 4: right now, and you won't have to deal with this
Speaker 4: always just stay focused.
Speaker 2: Just stay focused. I knew mister Earle was involved in
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement, and I asked him when he
Speaker 2: first knew that he had to take action. This is
Speaker 2: what he said.
Speaker 4: As soon as MLK was assassinated and and whatnot. That
Speaker 4: had a traumatic effect on us. That we were seniors
Speaker 4: at the time in high school and.
Speaker 3: You remember the remember where were you at?
Speaker 4: If I'm not mistaken, I was at home with my
Speaker 4: mother because it was a news flash. They don't call
Speaker 4: a new flash back then, with the breaking news that
Speaker 4: Martin Luther King Jr. Was just shot in Memphis, Tennessee,
Speaker 4: and you talking about shockwave in the black community. It
Speaker 4: was pouring down of emotions, all kind of emotions at
Speaker 4: the time. And the adults, you know, back then, you
Speaker 4: didn't go into present of adults listening what the conversation
Speaker 4: were because you were a child.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: So they was talking and talking. But I was a
Speaker 4: teenager at the time, so I was pretty much knew
Speaker 4: what were going on. And so fast forwarded when they
Speaker 4: wanna make MLK a legal holiday, and of course the
Speaker 4: administration that our school wasn't g gonna be supportive of
Speaker 4: us wanna stay out of school to honor that day.
Speaker 4: And so the seniors, all of us, we said, Okay,
Speaker 4: this is the day they they are doing it, and
Speaker 4: this is the day we're not gonna come to school.
Speaker 4: They can just do what they have to do forever
Speaker 4: for that day, cause we were gonna graduate anyway. So, uh,
Speaker 4: they would let you out of deer hunting, but they
Speaker 4: wouldn't honor what we was tryna do. So we said
Speaker 4: we'd take a deer day but that wasn't too good
Speaker 4: because they knew what we were trying to do. Anyway,
Speaker 4: that's what we gonna do, cause that's how important it
Speaker 4: is to us to honor his legacy by trying to
Speaker 4: show that we support that it need to be a
Speaker 4: national holiday, and at that particular time, it's sort of
Speaker 4: spring boarder from there. I was the president of the PTA,
Speaker 4: and I was the president of the local NAACP for
Speaker 4: Lincoln County for years, and we had a lot of
Speaker 4: different issues and whatnot in the Southeast as well as
Speaker 4: the state of Arkansas. That's just some of the things
Speaker 4: in the NOMI National Alliance, Mental Illness that I little rock,
Speaker 4: and disability to rights. I was the president of the
Speaker 4: board of both of those because those issues was important
Speaker 4: to my community. Important to me also everything that affected
Speaker 4: my family and my community in my church, I wanted
Speaker 4: to be a part of it.
Speaker 3: Mister Earl is a man of action.
Speaker 2: To give a short summary of his personal history, he
Speaker 2: graduated from high school in nineteen seventy, went to college
Speaker 2: for a year, and then went to work for the
Speaker 2: railroad in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, in nineteen seventy two, and
Speaker 2: he worked there until he retired in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 2: I asked mister Earle how he could best help someone
Speaker 2: understand what it was like growing up in the Delta.
Speaker 4: He had an answer, it's hard for if you haven't
Speaker 4: to answer your question, mister Nukelem. It's like males trying
Speaker 4: to understand what it is to have a baby. You
Speaker 4: really have to be all in it to understand it.
Speaker 4: So to really understand, what I'm trying to say is
Speaker 4: you have to be black to really understand it. And
Speaker 4: that's not in a backhand way of trying to do
Speaker 4: anything except just it's hard to understand because when you
Speaker 4: try to understand, you going to run across somebody who
Speaker 4: might say, man, you can't believe that. But if I've
Speaker 4: never been white, so I can't understand how it is
Speaker 4: to be white when it comes to certain things in society.
Speaker 4: But when it comes to being a human being, we
Speaker 4: right on time. If you need oxygen, so do I.
Speaker 4: If your hard beat so many times a minute, so
Speaker 4: do minds. So human beings we together. Now when this
Speaker 4: different treatment come, that's when we start losing one another.
Speaker 4: But in general, your listeners, the Arkansas Delta is a
Speaker 4: great place to live. What I would like for your listeners,
Speaker 4: the ones that are trying to wrap their mind around
Speaker 4: growing up in the Delta back in the fifties, is
Speaker 4: that the black kids wanted the same thing that the
Speaker 4: white kids wanted. They wanted opportunity. They wanted to be free,
Speaker 4: They wanted to not be looked and watch everywhere they
Speaker 4: went with a different perspective of mindset about who's doing
Speaker 4: the watching. All the black kids wanted was to have fun,
Speaker 4: like or everyone else. We had white friends down there,
Speaker 4: We did until integration came and they got with their friends,
Speaker 4: and then we saw whom Something changed when integration came
Speaker 4: and you got around your white friends, and we understood it.
Speaker 4: We wasn't being out of shape about it because we
Speaker 4: knew that's the way it worked. You okay to play
Speaker 4: with us when we away from school, but when you
Speaker 4: come to school, I'm not gonna even speak to you
Speaker 4: the same kids we've been playing with all the time,
Speaker 4: because every plantation had just about white kids, white fans
Speaker 4: and whatnot. But growing up, that's one of the things
Speaker 4: that I would like for your viewers, your listeners to
Speaker 4: understand is that there wasn't the only difference in the
Speaker 4: white kids in the black kids. Was their skin color
Speaker 4: both you cut them. They believe red blood. They may
Speaker 4: have different ethnic values when they come to religious belief
Speaker 4: and whatnot. And they wanted to have something in life.
Speaker 4: Those kids did not want to have to leave the
Speaker 4: state of Arkansas to be able to get a job
Speaker 4: or to be able to get a loan to buy
Speaker 4: a house or buy a car. And we wanted to
Speaker 4: be treated just like everybody else, no special, but no less.
Speaker 2: What do you think the answer is to the problems
Speaker 2: that are in the depth of the day.
Speaker 4: Collaboration, commitment by the power to be the help and
Speaker 4: really trying to help everyone. Equal treatment to all citizens
Speaker 4: from the one that's supposed to be doing it would
Speaker 4: change the delta physical dynamics and loving as we say
Speaker 4: we are as Christians, would change the spiritual. That would
Speaker 4: change it because you dealing every day with the physical
Speaker 4: delta person and the spiritual delta person. And believe me,
Speaker 4: that spiritual has to be strong to survive with the
Speaker 4: physical dynamics. That's what's going on. And that's the reason
Speaker 4: why I keep going back to the church, the family
Speaker 4: in the community, because those three they make one complete family. Dynamics.
Speaker 2: I think those are wise words, maybe wiser than the
Speaker 2: academics and politicians and high dollar think tanks who set
Speaker 2: out to solve the problems of the Delta.
Speaker 3: And there are many of those, many many.
Speaker 2: I counted a great privilege to sit with mister Earle
Speaker 2: and hear the story of his life.
Speaker 3: I had a.
Speaker 2: Feeling that the story of this great river would be surprising, enlightening,
Speaker 2: and humbling, all in the same current, and I think
Speaker 2: that's what's happening. We've got a lot of topics yet
Speaker 2: to cover, like the river's fishery, the history of taming
Speaker 2: this river, and even the blues. We've got a long
Speaker 2: ways to go. I can't thank you enough for listening
Speaker 2: to Bear Greas. We're putting our heart and soul into
Speaker 2: these episodes, and I.
Speaker 3: Really appreciate you listening.
Speaker 2: Please share our podcast with a friend this week, and
Speaker 2: I look forward to talking with everyone on the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease Ring