BB King & a Personal Allusion, Part 1

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. (See photo, May 16th blog)

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.

(See Part 2)


By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 15. Copyright Vol. 1-15

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