Memories of Sharecropping
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Segment from the powerful documentary: Goin’ to Chicago – Interview subjects recall their lives in the South as members of sharecropping families. Sharecropping was a system by which landowners rented land to farmers in exchange for a percentage of their crop. The life of an African American sharecropper in the South was one of constant hard labor, hunger, and debt.
I am not ashame that my mother was a share crooper,the fact that she was and servied it with out any or very little book learning made it very clear why i had to try harded, for some without much formal education she raised 6 childen, only 4 alive now.
This true stories of what it felt like to live in these type of conditions need to be talked about, My mother and grandmother uncles and aunts worked under this conditions,my mother never talks about it to us childern,all these years,I know it was hard for her ,her mother finally left her at age 13years to migrate to the city of Philadelphia,my mother use to pick cotton and tobbacoo, while she pull my eledst sister in a card board box, my eldest sister now dead,my grandmother died,uncle dead my mother and her mother were never vey close, it was ony after my stepfather convined her it to let her mother visit us and her as well,I love my mother and am eveything I am because of her, I am an building maintenance engineer, for the US Department Of The Interior,National Park Service.If it not be for my grand mothe and my mother Sheva I would’nt be here.