BB KING & A PERSONAL ALLUSION

As I sit here watching a television documentary on the life and music of B.B. King, the late great R&B singer said something with which, as a child of southern segregation, I can, at some level, relate.

“When I was a boy I worked in the fields from ‘can to can’t;’ (from the time we can see to the time we can’t see.”)

(and)

“Way back when, when they were lynching black folks, there was a saying among white folks.

‘If you can kill a mule, you can buy another one. If you kill a n _ _ _ _ _, you can hire another one.”

Tonight’s documentary reminds me of something I previously wrote on the topic:

I was just listening to an old radio broadcast from 1996 on National Public Radio. Terri Gross was involved in an interview with the famous blues singer and guitarist, B.B. (“Blues Boy”) King. The occasion for the re-broadcast was yesterday’s death of the great musician.

Since I have an especial interest in sharecropping, and since BB grew up in this environment, I thought I would attempt to paraphrase one particular segment of the interview, related to Mr. King’s childhood years; minus Ms. Gross’ questions.

To provide a small disclaimer it is important for me to say that my father and mother grew up around sharecroppers, and as I recall my grandfather not only owned his own farm, but sharecropped at one time, himself.

To make the subject of sharecropping even more “there there” for me, I am in possession of a photograph taken in the early 20th century which depicts my great grandparents, John & Carolyn McDonald standing in front of their Georgia homestead, along with several of their adolescent children, including my own grandfather, Webster McDonald. 

Well over to the right we immediately notice a small black man standing under a tree. It has been thought by the family that the anonymous Negro was a former slave of William McDonald, John’s father, and my great great grandfather. And since the photo was snapped a good fifty years after the end of the institution of slavery, it has been conjectured that the black man chose to remain on the property as a sharecropper.

But to return to our interview with BB King...

“I grew up on the Mississippi Delta in the town of Indianola. By the age of 7, I was planting and harvesting cotton. It wasn’t unusual for children of that age who lived on the plantation to do adult work. We all had to pitch in, and do our part.

My parents were sharecroppers. I had a lot of experience with cotton, and went on to work peanuts, and eventually soybeans. You ask what sharecropping is. Well, it is what it sounds like it is. Share Cropping. We shared the crops we worked. Mr. ________, the owner, was the CPA. He did all the paperwork. Around December of each year, we ‘settled up,’ as we called it.

The property owner would sit down with my daddy, and he might say something like, 'Well, Mr. King, you managed to make 25 bales of cotton this year. Each bale brought $200. That’s $5,000. I advanced you $3,200 this year for rent and groceries, and other miscellaneous stuff. I owe you $1,800.'

And at this point, Mr. _________ would hand my father the money. And so the cycle would begin all over again.

(In regard to a question about whether BB wanted to get off the plantation as quickly as possible), "No, it wasn't like that at all. The plantation was home; with a capital H. It was what we knew and loved. It was all we knew. It was our life.

However, one day it began to change for me. You see, I was driving the plantation owner’s tractor one day, and suddenly the tailpipe backfired, and fell off. Well, you can imagine my consternation! You have to understand, the trouble with the tractor was like cutting a slice out of your mother’s newly baked chocolate cake, only to have it fall on the floor, and finding yourself in the dreadful position to try to explain it to her.

Well, I wasn’t all that keen about explaining the broken tailpipe to my parent’s benefactor, so I cut outta there. Headed off to Memphis. It was a 'whole nother country.' A different place. I ran into my cousin in the big city, and he told me I needed to go back to Indianola, and explain myself to Mr. __________; that I’d never be able to go forward ‘til I took care of the past. So I went back home, and 'paid the piper.'

As stern as I had remembered the man, he was actually very decent about it all; actually very kind, and all that was soon put behind us.”

BB King lived an interesting, and rather amorous life, it seems, since he admits having fathered 15 children by 15 women! His unsavory morals aside, he was an icon of the Blues music industry, and no one would ever deny it.

My father was an amateur genealogist, and a few decades before his death he decided to visit what remained of his great Grandfather William’s goldmine in Dahlonega, Georgia. The defunct mine is on the present site of a carpet mill. The manager of the mill agreed to walk my dad back to what was left of it.

While my father was in the area, he met some black men who happened to possess the “McDonald” surname. Comparing notes, my dad discovered that they were descendants of the slaves once “owned” by William, and who worked in the very gold mine my dad visited earlier that day. (Freed slaves often took the last name of their former owners as their own.)

And so it comes “full circle,” for you see, these present day African-American men are, without doubt, the grandchildren of that shy little black sharecropper in that old black & white picture; standing by himself under a tree.

Yes, and now it’s plain why I’m a bit keen on the topic of sharecropping.

It’s more than a random radio interview featuring BB King.

                                                Much more than that


William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary, Vol. 40. Copyright Pending.

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