Henry Blake Talks About Sharecropping after the Civil War. In some ways, emancipation and Reconstruction broke the power of white southern planters over their labor force. Freedpeople negotiated with planters over how the land would be cultivated and how they would be compensated. African- American families worked small plots independently, sometimes obtaining land for cash or, more commonly, for a fixed share of the year’s crop; this latter practice was known as sharecropping. By 1. 87. 0, sharecropping was the dominant means by which African Americans could gain access to land in the South. Still, freedpeople desired independent proprietorship. In this interview, African- American farmer Henry Blake recalls how black land ownership became an elusive goal as unequal power relations between white and black hardened and the Ku Klux Klan’s terrorist campaigns increased. Blake’s narrative and many others were recorded during an ambitious New Deal (1. Despite unfamiliar interviewers and distant memories, these first person accounts are an unparalleled resource. The years from 1932 to 1935 were the foundation of Alan Turing's serious scientific life. The atmosphere at King's College, Cambridge, was highly. The Third Man Novak Djokovic has emerged from the shadow of Federer and Nadal, but can he learn to act like a champion? In some ways, emancipation and Reconstruction. I was born in Arkansas right down here on Tenth and Spring Streets in Little Rock.. My father was a skiffman. He used to cross the Arkansas river in a ferry- boat. My father’s name was Doc Blake. And my mother’s name was Hannah Williams before she married.. My father was a slavery man. I used to drive a horsepower gin wagon in slavery time. That was at Pastoria just this. Pine Bluff, about three or four miles this side. Paty had two. places, one about four miles from Pine Bluff and the other about four miles. England on the river. Just hitch the mules to one another’s tail and. There wasn’t no lines. Just hitch them to one. We ginned two or three bales of cotton a day. We ginned all the summer. It would be June before we got that cotton all ginned. Cotton brought thirty- five or forty cents a pound then. My father and mother were too. The Tenth Man (1985) is a short novel by the British novelist Graham Greene. Adolf Hitler's Olympic Village of 1936: Conservationists race to save the forgotten relic of the infamous 'Nazi Games' By Daily Mail Reporter. Published manuscript transcripts . A Darwin manuscript on Hobart. Slaughter on Tenth Avenue is a ballet with music by Richard Rodgers and choreography by George Balanchine. It occurs near the end of Rodgers and Hart's 1936 Broadway. Others were not treated so well. But you know how Negroes is. They would slip off and go out. If they caught them, he would put them in a log hut they had for a jail. If you wanted to be with a woman, you would have to go to your boss and ask him and he would let you go. I forget the name of the man he was sold to, Watts, I think it was. If you didn’t, Ku Klux would drive you in. They would come and visit you anyway. They had something on that they could pour a lot of water in. They would seem to be drinking the water and it would all be going in this thing, They was gittin' it to water the horses with, and when they got away from you they would stop and give it to the horses, When he got you good and scared he would drive on away. They would whip you if they would catch you out in the night time. It would run right away. My daddy trained it so that it would run away from any one who would. He would take me up on that horse and we would sail away. Those Ku. Klux couldn’t catch his. They never did catch him. They caught many. My daddy was a pretty mean man. He carried a gun. I got scared to go out. I hated that business. But directly it got over with. It got over with. Ku Klux was killed up. It was just a business. But it was better than the county farm. They didn’t whip you if. Out there at the county farm, they bust you open. They bust you up. There’s a lot of people down at the state farm. Cummins, that’s where the farm is ain’t it, that' a raw. They wouldn’t let you come down there and write no history. One half the world don’t know how the other half. I’ll tell you one thing if those Catholics could get control there. The Catholics are good. It was all the same. They kept up that business for about ten years after the. They kept it up till folks began to kill up a lot of ’em. My daddy used to make his own. Somebody. come and told us we’re free now. I done forgot who it was. You know Jim Lawson’s place. He stayed on it twenty years. He. stayed at the Ferguson place about ten years. They’re adjoining places. He. stayed at the Churchill place. Widow Scott place, the Bojean place. Have you been down in Argenta to the Roundhouse? Churchill’s place. It wasn’t nothing but farms in Little Rock then. It would take a day to come. Clear Lake with the cotton. You would start 'round about. Argenta at nine o’clock the next morning. When we worked. on shares, we couldn’t make nothing, just overalls and something to. Half went to the other man and you would destroy your half if you. A man that didn’t know how to count would always. They didn’t give no itemized statement. No. you just had to take their word. They never give you no details. They just say. you owe so much. No matter how good account you kept, you had to go by their. Brother, I’m tellin. You had to take the white man’s. Anything you wanted, you could git if you were a. You could git anything you wanted as long as you worked. If you. didn’t make no money, that’s all right; they would advance you more. But. you better not leave him, you better not try to leave and get caught. Christmas come, you could take. Anything that kept you a slave because he was. If there was an. argument, he would get mad and there would be a shooting take place. Long as they could git somethin', they. You see, if the white man came out behind, he would feed you. He’d just keep you on, help you get on your. But if you weren’t a good. A good hand could. A good. hand could git clothes, food, whiskey, whenever be wanted it.
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