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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.
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…
“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.
No, it wasn’t like that
at all, (in regard to a question about whether BB wanted to get off the
plantation as quickly as possible.) 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 other country. A different
place. I ran into my cousin Headed off to Memphis. It was a whole other
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. 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 the
previously described photo; standing by himself under a tree.
Yes, and now it’s plain
why I’m a bit keen on the topic of sharecropping. Its more than a random radio
interview featuring BB King.
Much
more than that
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By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 20. Copyright pending
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