In Greenwood, many blacks lived on plantations as sharecroppers. They lived on the property for free in homes that often didn't have running water or indoor plumbing. Most of these homes had crooked walls, tin roofs and wooden floors with planks spaced so far apart you could see the ground below. The deal was that you picked cotton from the time the sun came up until it went down. Your children, your pets, your everything accompanied you to the fields.
My paternal grandmother was a single mom for a number of years. This put her in a tough spot because most plantation owners required a man to be in the house. They also often required all of the males, as young as five years old, to pick cotton. This meant that as recently as the 1950's, many black boys in the South were not allowed to go to school for part of the year because they had to work the fields.
In 1972, my father was playing football at Norfolk State University when his stepfather died. His mother, who was still living in Greenwood at the time, was forced to leave her plantation because there was no longer a man in the house. 1972. 1972. Most people think that the plantation society that defined the South during slave times was over the minute an emancipation was signed.
The story of my family is the story of a system that lingered long past the headlines.
Do I think that black kids today should get a leg up because their ancestors, (not hundreds of years ago, but yesterday) couldn't read stories to their own children because they missed school and were barely literate? I don't know. What I do know is that anyone who wants to shout from the rooftops about what blacks do and do not deserve had better make sure that they know a little history, not just headlines.
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