{"id":9265,"date":"2023-04-19T22:02:06","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T22:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/?page_id=9265"},"modified":"2023-06-19T20:12:03","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T20:12:03","slug":"charles-f-reid-oral-history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/charles-f-reid-oral-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles F. Reid Oral History"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][divider line_type=”No Line”][vc_column_text]\n

Charles F. Reid Oral History<\/span><\/h1>\n[\/vc_column_text][divider line_type=”No Line”][page_submenu alignment=”center” sticky=”true” bg_color=”#008542″ link_color=”#ffffff”][page_link link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/manuscripts-and-guides\/” title=”Manuscripts & Subject Guides<\/strong>” id=”1681941566504-8″ tab_id=”1681941566505-7″] [\/page_link][page_link link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/guides-to-the-collection-page\/” title=”Collections Portal<\/strong>” id=”1681941566511-10″ tab_id=”1681941566512-0″] [\/page_link][page_link title=”Visit<\/strong>” id=”1681941574381-7″ tab_id=”1681941574381-8″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments\/archives-museum\/visit\/”][\/page_link][page_link title=”Make a Request<\/strong>” id=”1681941575033-5″ tab_id=”1681941575034-7″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments\/archives-museum\/requests\/”][\/page_link][page_link title=”About Us<\/strong>” id=”1681941576306-6″ tab_id=”1681941576307-5″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments-archives-museum-about-us\/”][\/page_link][page_link title=”Yearbooks Online<\/strong>” id=”1681941576930-7″ tab_id=”1681941576930-0″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments\/archives-museum\/yearbooks-alumni-magazines-delta-state-histories\/”][\/page_link][\/page_submenu][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]Interviewee:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Reid, Charles\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interviewer:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Green, Eleanor<\/strong><\/p>\n

Date:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 4\/28\/2006<\/strong><\/p>\n

Processed by:\u00a0 W. Ray<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Charles do you understand that this interview is being recorded and do you consent?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Yes, I totally consent<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Can you tell me your full name?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Charles F. Reid, I use F. but my middle name is really Francis, but I never use it, and my signature is just Charles F. Reid<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Can you tell me about when you were born?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: I was born in Sherard, MS, it\u2019s about six miles southwest of Clarksdale, at the intersection of Hwy 322 and number 1, and I was born in 1935 on a farm in Sherard.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: How much land then or does your family own?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Currently the acreage is 200, it\u2019s approximately 156 in cultivation and the remainder of it is in wooded or non farming portions of the property. About six acres of it consist of what was a railroad that ran through our property. And when the railroad was abandoned, the company allowed the owners of the land that it ran through to purchase that, and so six acres is an old railroad bed and was formerly the railroad that ran through our property<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Is the railroad or the railroad track still there?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: No, they took all of that up, just the bed, on our land just the bed is still there, most of the farmers and landowners leveled everything. We did not do that, my father when he was living said he didn\u2019t want to because he didn\u2019t want to sell that to someone who wanted to\u00a0 put into development or something he had several reasons for not. But, he never leveled his so it just grown up really<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: How much land did your family start with?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: 40 acres<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: 40 acres, do you know when they got their 40 acres?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Okay, I have some information that I can share with you from our family history that can give you some insight into when it was originally purchased. Do you mind me doing that?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 No that will be fine<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Okay, our farm is located in a farming community located in Coahoma County in MS Delta. It\u2019s 8 miles southwest of Clarksdale, and approximately 75 miles south of Memphis, TN. Sherard, MS became a mail stock along a section of the Illinois Central railroad that lead from Memphis to Greenville, MS. After the railroad was established they sold the excess land to settlers in that area, in parcels of 40 acres. See that was the originally purchase, I don\u2019t have the cost of it at that time, it probably was not that much money involved in it, but the originally 40 acres was bought from the railroad. It was through this program that Frank and Rosie Lee Reid, who were my grandparents, purchased their first 40 acres of land in Sherard in the late 1890\u2019s. They later acquired additional land and eventually a total of total 200 acres, this became known as the Reid family farm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: And those 200 acres are still there, we don\u2019t farm it, we lease it out, we are leasing out to farmers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: All of it is leased out now?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Yes, even the wooded area is leased out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Is there still a home there?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Yes, the old home site that I was born in is still there, my mother who is, if she makes it next week she will be 98 years old on May 1st<\/sup>, and she still lives there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 She lives alone?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: No, I have a sister who spent most of her adult life living there with her, and little over a year ago she had a stroke and she can not walk, she is paralyzed on her left side. So I have another older sister who lives off and on with them currently. So the three of them are there together. And I have to visit them everyday to look after them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: What was produced on the farm, when it first started out? Do you know?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: In the beginning, it was a variety of crops. Mostly cotton was the primary crop. But there was corn, grain such as wheat. Then we raised our own vegetables, soybeans was not raised at that time. But later on it became one of the primary crops that was raised later on. And currently the person who we lease the land to now, rotate the crop between soybeans and cotton.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Is it leased to a black farmer?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: No, white, the adjacent land owners who was the initial settlers of the Sherard family, it\u2019s leased to them, the 4th<\/sup> generation of their family is still there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Did your family farm anywhere else before they moved here?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: My grandfather, which is stated in our family history, came to MS from Alabama, and I can tell you a little about that that is in our family history.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: That will be good<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: My grandfather was Frank Samuel Reid, was born May 10th<\/sup>, 1860 on a plantation near Livingston, AL. He was the son of Alice Whitehead, a 15 year old slave, and Salone Sherard. So his parents were mixed, white and black. Salone Sherard was one of the sons of the plantation owner. Salone Sherard was born in 1840 and died in 1873. He was the son of John Holmes Sherard, and that\u2019s the person that settled the land in Sherard.\u00a0 John Holmes Sherard was the original settler. He was born in North Carolina in 1798. Now this is interesting in our history, John Holmes Sherard was the grandson of Gabriel Holmes who was the governor of North Carolina in 1821-1824.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: So Alice Whitehead was the 15 year old slave of John Holmes?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: No, she was of the Sherard family in Alabama.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: And Salone was the father of Frank?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Of Frank, Right<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: When did Frank come to Mississippi?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: He, in 1874 at the age of 14, Frank and his mother, the Whitehead I just mentioned to you, traveled by wagon train from Livingston to Ms. They were accompanied by a number of people from the plantation and John Holmes Sherard, the youngest son of the Sherard family. He was the one they came to Miss. With. They settled in Mississippi Delta, on what became the first section of the Sherard plantation. This section was called Fairview, and was a plantation that eventually grew to become 6,000 acres in size. And that constituted the Sherard plantation. After a while, arriving in Mississippi, 14 year old Frank decided that he liked the Miss. Delta and what he had to offer.. So he and his relative, Robert Lowe, walked all the way back to Livingston got their cows, then walked all the way back to the Fairview plantation in Mississippi. They had left their cows in Alabama, because they was not sure the find Mississippi to their liking.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EA: So they owned the cows?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Yes in Alabama.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Now was Frank a slave?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: No he was not born a slave, but his mother was.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Right, so he had cows in Alabama and brought them here<\/p>\n

CR: Right, after he decided to sell them in the Mississippi Delta, he and his friend, walked back to Livingston, Alabama and brought their cows, walked them back, all the way back to the Mississippi Delta.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Has the land been divided all over time or just added too?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: It was added too, in the history later on it will tell you how the additional..the first 40 acres was totally undeveloped. They had to clear it in the beginning to make it farmable. But when it was purchased from the railroad it was not in any condition to farm at all. Now you ask about the division of the land? Frank Reid, my grandfather, had 3 children, well he had 4, but he had 1 from a first marriage who left and moved to St. Louis and never really associated himself with his father. His second marriage had 3 children; one of them was my father, Miram M. Reid. Then Frank Reid moved to Washington, DC in 1911, and never moved back to Mississippi. A daughter named Operlin Reid stayed here, eventually built a home in Clarksdale. But she never lived on a farm. The only person who lived on the farm was my father; he was a very educated individual. He went to Jackson State, Jackson College at that time. He finished with all A\u2019s, I have a silver cup in which he was awarded at graduation for having a straight A average in college. He was offered a job at Jackson Colleg ewhen he finished, but he decided he wanted to farm and take over the family farm. So he came back from Jackson to Sherard to take over the farming. And my grandfather died in 1937, so he took over the farm until he passed in 1971. Now there are three children involved. Frank Reid who lives in Washington, DC, the oldest son.\u00a0 \u00a0Opulene Dorsey, his daughter, and then my father. So it\u2019s a three family estate that\u2019s involved in the 200 acres.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: 3 families.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: The land was never divided up into any, the reason my grandfather stated, if the land was ever sold, it needed to be sold all together, because it was different kinds of land. Some of it sandy land, some buck shot and if you divided it up it would never have equal value. So he said if it was ever sold, it needed to be sold totally and not in sections.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: How is technology and what was produced on the farm changed over time?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Okay, let me tell you about the farming in the early years late 1800s to early 1900s. When my grandfather acquired the land, as the total acreage increased, he had living on the what we call, sharecroppers and tenants. There is a difference between a sharecropper and tenants. I don\u2019t know if ya\u2019ll are familiar with it. A tenant is a person who lives on the farm and you provide a house for them, and they work for you. You pay them, and they borrow stuff from you, and at the end of the year if you owe them anything, you do what they call a settlement with them, but most of the time you don\u2019t owe them anything, so they don\u2019t have anything at the end of the year. Then a sharecropper is an individual is who you furnish their home, and furnish their farming supplies to raise their crops and farm the land. At the end of the farming season, they share half of the value of their crop with you. That\u2019s why it is called sharecropper. So on our farmer we had tenant and sharecropper. This lasted until the 1940s, that kind of farming took place. Now on large plantations, we did not, we had a small farm.\u00a0 On the large plantation you had a general store or a commissary, \u00a0where the plantation owner kept everything. Where during the year, they didn\u2019t call it credit, \u00a0you got things, and he wrote down in the book what you got. You didn\u2019t have any record of what you got, he kept the books, at the end of the year when you get ready to settle up, he had the records; he always told you that you were always in debt. You still owed them, so you got nothing at the end of the year. You had people who lived on the farms like that, at the end of the year if they were in deep debt with the plantation owner, at the end of the year, they left overnight, they went somewhere else. To another plantation, north or whatever, because they knew they would never get ahead. And you had individual owners of the land who got in debt also, and left, that is why the land now is owed by a few people, because they just left the land and couldn\u2019t pay the taxes. So then the plantation owners near there would come and pay the taxes, and own the land. That\u2019s how the land is owned by a few people and not small farms and what have you. But we kept our land.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Does the Sherard still have land there too?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Yes, there were several, at least 2 families involved in that land, and it has been divided up. The fourth generation of the Sherard family is still there farming it<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Now do ya\u2019ll se each other as relatives?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Artificially, it\u2019s known, but it is not out just spoken about out with like that. Because when we started leasing our land my father did back in the early 50s. He stopped farming because it got too expensive and he was getting up in age. He decided to lease the land out, and leased it to a white family the Stribling family. They farmed it until up in the 80s from 50s to 80s. They decided to get out of farming, and when they ..I guess it\u2019s safe for me to say this, well when they decided to get out of farming we were looking for somewhere, I am the administrator of the land now. I look over it and take care of the taxes. And when we got ready to lease it to someone else. There were two farming entities interested in leasing it from us. Jack Sherard\u00a0 has it now, John Holmes Sherard IV, but we call him Jack. He came to me, and he said he would like to lease it and it is adjacent to his land anyways. Also we have another big plantation ownera adjacent to us who wanted to lease it also, he came to me about leasing the family land, and I said I was consider leasing it to Jack. And he said I can understand why, and left it at that. So he knew the relationship there, the history there. He got angry with me about, stop speaking to me for a while, but it got to be okay.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: S until this day is still leased to Jack?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Jack Sherard yes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: What would you tell a young person who is interested in agriculture? Say one of your grandchildren?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: At this day and time, with the cost of farming, in agriculture, unless you have a lot of money in the beginning to invest in it, I would not recommend it. Because it is too mechanized and it\u2019s too expensive, especially the equipment you need. The insecticides, the weed control, the insect control. All of that is very expensive. Now you have a lot of government regulations concerning what you can do and can\u2019t do in the use of various chemicals. And it\u2019s just really too expensive. And the farmers that are doing it now, tell you, they just barely making it. In the early years when they were farming,\u00a0 you had people working on the farm who you didn\u2019 t pay social security, you didn\u2019t anything out.\u00a0 You just paid them, whatever they made. The farmer didn\u2019t have to pay social security.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until later years, that the social security administration said, that you have these people hired you got to pay social security and other benefits that come out of their check.. That cut back on the profit that the farmer was making, so with all other expenses involved, the increase and cost of labor went up. Unless you got a lot of money and want to dedicate yourself to it\u2026 \u00a0There are few small African Americans farmers still around it<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Our farmers market is almost completely, farmers from African American farmers. Have any of the young people showed any interest in farming in your family<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: In my family no. Those, there are 3 families involved in the estate, too many people\u2026 at the end of the year when I pay the taxes, get the lease statements, and any expenses involved in it, then I have to divide the profit within the 3 families. The one family in the Washington, DC area, my uncle Frank Reid, he has some children. My fathers\u2019 oldest brother that went to Washington in 1911 and didn\u2019t come back.\u00a0 He had some children.\u00a0 A son and daughter.\u00a0 His son has passed.\u00a0 His daughter had 3 children, a son and 2 daughters. A third of the profit goes to them because their mother died. Then they have to divide that profit into thirds. The further it goes, to almost nothing. Ironically with that family, one of the girl\u2019s husband is an Indian. He thinks the land down here is very, very valuable. I guess reading about the casinos, so he wrote a letter almost 5 years ago, saying they wanted their share of the land, 1\/3 of the 1\/3, they wanted their 1\/3. So I took it to my lawyer, he said don\u2019t worry about it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: They wanted\u00a0 to come down here and farm it?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 No they just wanted to sell it, they would never come down here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Oh, would you have to get signatures from all three families to sell it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR\u201d Yeah, we have to get all kinds of signatures<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: So one person can\u2019t just sell the land<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: NO, My lawyer said don\u2019t worry about it, they did write a second letter, and I just ignored it too. I haven\u2019t heard anything from the husband, I have been sending them money at the end of the year. My mother who still lives here gets a third, no one knows what the land looks like, they just get a check at the end of the year from the profit?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: My mother in law, gets a check for oil that was found in her family land, but by the time it is divided into groups, it leaves her none.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: That\u2019s one thing, if you own land make sure you maintain your mineral rights. If you sell it without mineral rights, so if oil or gas is found you won\u2019t get any royalties on it<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: So nobody in the family can just sell the land? Ya\u2019ll would have to make a group decision?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Right, well all three families have to be in agreement to sell. Whoever is this administrator for that part of the estate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: From you father and your mother, there is you and how many siblings?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: There are seven of us<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: So you and six others?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Right<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: You\u2019ve got the brother in New York.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: I have 2 brothers in California, a sister in Jackson, Mississippi.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG What is the brother in New York\u2019s name?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Frank.\u00a0 His name is Frank.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG Frank Reid<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR Yes<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG And the sister in Jackson, what is her name?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Myrtle. M-y-r-t-l-e.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Is her last name Reid?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: No, she is Sheilds.\u00a0 S-h-i-e-l-d-s.\u00a0 She worked at Jackson State, she is retired now.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: And the California brothers?\u00a0 Two brothers\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: Yeah, one is named John and one after my father, Marion.\u00a0 Since you asked me about my sisters and brothers, my siblings.\u00a0 With the money from our farm, and then my mother owned land in Sunflower County.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know whether you are interested in that or not, it is another whole story.\u00a0 Her father bought land similar to the way land was bought here, in Sunflower County.\u00a0 And there was three of them.\u00a0 When he died he did divide the land up among the three of them.\u00a0 So she owned, I believe 90 acres in Sunflower County, she sold it now.\u00a0 But between that land and the land here, they sent us all to college.\u00a0 Well we worked some ourselves, and we had to come home each summer to work on the farm when we were in college.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 \u2026?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I went to college in Atlanta, Georgia.\u00a0 Morehouse College.\u00a0 At the end of the academic year, I had to rush home to work on the farm.\u00a0 And let me give you a little background at the beginning of farming.\u00a0 When we first started farming when I was old enough to be involved in the work, we had mules that we used for farming.\u00a0 We had the implements that we used called, I don\u2019t know if you ever heard of these implements, called a gang plow, that\u2019s what a mule pulls, a double shovel, a middle buster, all those kinds of things, and we had to put all these things on our mules and everything so they could pull the implements on the farm.\u00a0 So that\u2019s how I first got involved in farming, using mules to farm.\u00a0 All our mules had names and stuff that we called by name.\u00a0 Then later on when it became mechanical, my father bought the first tractor, I\u2019m not sure what year that was.\u00a0 A little Ford tractor that we used.\u00a0 That tractor, during the farming season nearly went 24 hours a day.\u00a0 I took the night shift mostly.\u00a0 During the spring season when you planted crops and everything.\u00a0 I even did this in high school.\u00a0 Breaking the land up and planting the crops and everything.\u00a0 So we did begin to become mechanical with a tractor to replace the mules.\u00a0 When I came home from college that would be my job.\u00a0 We chopped cotton, we cut the weeds out of the cotton.\u00a0 We plowed the cotton.\u00a0 Do the plowing down the middle to kill all the weeds.\u00a0 You removed all the weeds with hand and used the tractor down the middle.\u00a0 So we had to do all that.\u00a0 In the fall of the year we picked it, picked the cotton.\u00a0 My father hauled it off to the gin on the truck.\u00a0 He had a pickup with a little bed on it to haul it to the gin and sell it. \u00a0And that is what we did on the farm. \u00a0In the early years we raised everything we had.\u00a0 Everything, we grew hogs for meat.\u00a0 Chickens, all kind of fowl, duck, guineas, all kind of fowl on the farm.\u00a0 We grew all our vegetables.\u00a0 Even we grew, not sugar cane, but sorghum.\u00a0 Something similar to sugar cane.\u00a0 We grew that and that is what they made molasses out of.\u00a0 We had one person in the community that had this mill where you could get all the juice out of the sorghum and then cook it where it would form the molasses.\u00a0 And we would take all this to his place and he had a mule that would pull the thing around to squeeze the juice out of the sorghum and cook it and make molasses.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t pay him, you just gave him part of the molasses that came from it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 You\u2019ve mentioned Frank, Myrtle, John and Marion and yourself\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I have two older sisters, the ones that I mentioned that are staying with my mother now.\u00a0 They are older than I am.\u00a0 My oldest sister went to college but she didn\u2019t finish.\u00a0 The next oldest\u2026My oldest name is Henrene.\u00a0 The next oldest Operlin.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 How many kids went to college from the college?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 All of us.\u00a0 Well the oldest sister went for a short time, did not complete.\u00a0 But the rest of us completed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 What role would you say that race has effecting the farmer?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Now or back then?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Both.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Back then it very much affected race.\u00a0 You were looked down on by the white community as much lower class than they were.\u00a0 The N word was used quite frequently, whites talking about blacks.\u00a0 There was really no tension, but you knew where your place was.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Did anyone ever try to get your land?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 Not successfully.\u00a0 I can\u2019t pinpoint any incidences.\u00a0 But yeah they tried to\u2026.but my grandfather was so smart and he worked closely with the whites.\u00a0 To tell you how smart he was, he didn\u2019t finish high school but he learned a lot of trades and he learned how to deal with people.\u00a0 When he was farming back in the early \u201820\u2019s he knew that the Negroes, as they were called then, needed some education, some kind of way to take care of their land, earn money and save it.\u00a0 He went about in the community talking to them about these kinds of things.\u00a0 He also convinced the, I guess, the powerful white population that they needed an educational institution for the Negroes, at that time we were called.\u00a0 So that they would be a better help for them on the farm.\u00a0 That\u2019s the approach that he used.\u00a0 Cause the only schools they had were elementary schools and they only went three months a year, in school during that time. So he kept pushing the issue, pushing the issue, until they decided to go ahead and do that.\u00a0 So the Coahoma Agricultural High School located on the campus of Coahoma Junior College, now Community College.\u00a0 He helped to found that, to get that started.\u00a0 By him telling the plantation owners and other business and industry people at that time they you needed an institution for the Negroes.\u00a0 The school was built in 1924.\u00a0 It was the first high school for Negroes in this area.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Do you know if they encountered problems trying to sell the cotton at the gin, did they get different prices or anything?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I don\u2019t know about it.\u00a0 My father, Frank, might know this.\u00a0 Cause he is a historian\u00a0\u00a0 My father never told me about it.\u00a0 I know when he took the cotton to the gin.\u00a0 Sometimes we would have to load the cotton up on the gin at night\u00a0 —I mean on the truck at night.\u00a0 And then in going to school, we went to school here in Clarksdale after we left the elementary schools in the rural area.\u00a0 We came to high school in Clarksdale.\u00a0 We had to load the cotton up on the truck at night after picking it.\u00a0 Then in the morning on our way to school, he would drive the load of cotton on the truck and drop us off at school and go on to the cotton gin to have the cotton ginned.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know any discrepancies in the pricing of the cotton.\u00a0 Frank may know a little more about that than I do.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if they discriminated against you.\u00a0\u00a0 You had to wait behind somebody else to get our cotton ginned.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 What would you say is the most memorable moment in life in growing up on the farm?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 With my brothers and sisters, being with them and doing the different chores.\u00a0 We knew what we had to do and we worked together.\u00a0 Just being around them.\u00a0 We would work all during the week.\u00a0 Most of the time we didn\u2019t have Saturday off.\u00a0\u00a0 We would go to Sunday School\u00a0 We had to walk about a mile away to go to Sunday School on\u00a0 Sunday.\u00a0 I guess one of the most memorable occasions I had, my father bought his first pickup truck.\u00a0 It was a standard shift pickup.\u00a0 I learned how to drive when I was fourteen years old driving across the fields.\u00a0 I got my license when I was fifteen.\u00a0 Fifteen years old.\u00a0 When I went to the examining station to get my license,\u00a0 my daddy took me.\u00a0 I took the written test and I guess I passed it.\u00a0 And the examining officer asked me father, can he drive?\u00a0 My father said, he can drive for me.\u00a0 Well if he can drive for you he can drive for me too.\u00a0 So I\u2019m going giving him his license.\u00a0 The only thing is we had to get a reflector to put on the truck and my daddy went and got that and put on and I didn\u2019t have to drive and I was fifteen years old.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Do you know if your family utilized any assistance to continue farming such as coops or USDA agencies?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: I\u2019m not familiar with any.\u00a0 My father may have taken out some loans in the beginning to help.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not sure of any.\u00a0 My brother Frank would know more of that than I would.\u00a0 But the land is paid for, it\u2019s not in debt at all, no debts against it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: What is your value of your land to your family, not necessarily the monetary value?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 It has a lot of sentimental value to it.\u00a0 We were born and grew up on the land.\u00a0 If it is ever sold\u2026I would hate to go back and visit that cause I wouldn\u2019t want to see.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG: Do you think you would ever sell it?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 Cause I\u2019m discussing it now about it.\u00a0 Cause there are too many people involved in now with the three families in estate and their families and offspring and they don\u2019t know anything about it, all they want is the monetary value from it.\u00a0 So, it will eventually be sold.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 That\u2019s the end of my official list of questions, but is there anything else that you would like to add, or anything else that I haven\u2019t that you thought I should have?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure of anything else.\u00a0 You have asked me about the names\u2026 I\u2019d like to show you some history.\u00a0 This is a marriage certificate.\u00a0 My grandfather, Frank Reid, got married to Rosie Reid, in see the date on this, in 1891, at Macedonia Church at Sherard, Mississippi.<\/p>\n

EG: What year was that?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR: 1891.\u00a0 I do have pictures.\u00a0 Not a real good picture, but one of my grandfather dated in the late 1870\u2019s, this was his mother.\u00a0 Now, this is later in 1890, his wife in 1890.\u00a0 She was a mixed background, so.\u00a0 These are the three children, that was the oldest son, the daughter, and here is my father.\u00a0 This is some more pictures of \u2026.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Are there any photos of your grandfather\u2019s father?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 No.\u00a0 ..?\u00a0 These are my siblings here.\u00a0 That\u2019s Frank.\u00a0 Sister Myrtle.\u00a0 My brother John, my mother, sister, sister, older brother.\u00a0 But that was my grandmother.\u00a0 This is Frank when he?\u00a0 I just wanted to show you this map.\u00a0 We are in Clarksdale and this is Sherard going out this way.\u00a0 This is the way he walked from Livingston, Alabama to Sherard.\u00a0 All across the\u2026right near the state line, the Mississippi state line.\u00a0 All across the state of Mississippi to Sherard.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Fulton?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 That\u2019s where my grandmother was born.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Okay.\u00a0 So Rosa Lee was from Fulton?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0\u00a0 Fulton, um hmm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 ?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 What structures existed on the farm in the past?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Okay, I told you on this farm, as the acreage grew we had houses built on the farm to house the tenants and sharecroppers.\u00a0 We may have had as many as eight houses on the farm at one time.\u00a0 And in addition to the houses, they had what we call cotton houses.\u00a0 As you would pick the cotton you would load it, pick it in sacks, and you would dump it into, and we didn\u2019t have trailers or anything like we do now to load the cotton into.\u00a0 You would put in cotton houses, and they were placed strategically all across the farmland and put cotton into those houses.\u00a0 When you got what you thought you had a bale, then you would load it in a truck or a wagon and you would carry it to the gin.\u00a0 But they would store it in a cotton house.\u00a0 Then each of the residents houses \u2013 they had little houses \u2013 we had a smoke house out back where you cured your meat and everything.\u00a0 Many of the houses had those kind of things there.\u00a0 Some of the early houses on the farm were built like, they had the \u2013 I know your history know about the slave quarters \u2013 where they separated the kitchen from the living quarters.\u00a0 It was a little walk breezeway between the kitchen and living quarters of the house.\u00a0 We had houses that were built like that also.\u00a0 Then you had the outhouses.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t have an indoor bathroom.\u00a0 Then you had a pump to drill a pump into the ground far enough for you to pump water out of the ground for drinking or washing or whatever you wanted to do.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t filtered or anything, it was just hard water that was pumped out of the ground for you to use.<\/p>\n

EG: Was it a well?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t really a well.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have wells back then.\u00a0 We just drilled a pipe into the ground.\u00a0 It had a little filter on the end of it, the pipe did to help filter out\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Was it a long skinny thing that you stick\u2026and kind of tapers toward the end and you put it down there and pull it up and it was full of water?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Not on our place, but there was some places that had what you call well water.\u00a0 It had a big top thing that you let down with a bucket and lift it up.\u00a0 But we didn\u2019t have that.on our land.\u00a0 We just had the pumps.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 What structures are still there and what have been added?\u00a0 Are there any original structures there?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 No.\u00a0 You travel across the Delta and you don\u2019t see any houses that have any farm houses.\u00a0 Other than the ones that have been built for the farmers.\u00a0 Some of them have brick houses out on the farm for their people that work for them.\u00a0 But very few people live on farms now.\u00a0 When the machines came on there was no work for them to do and the farmers begin to tear down the houses and they moved to the small towns and moved to the cities.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 But there is a house out there right?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 My mother\u2019s house. That\u2019s the only house that is there.\u00a0 All the rest of them are torn down.\u00a0 Even the barn is torn down.\u00a0 This area is just all grown up now.\u00a0 My grandmother\u2019s house was here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 You said when the land was bought, was there a reason, was that because it was a railroad?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 No, it was all wooded.\u00a0 It was not cleared for farming or anything.\u00a0 The people that are selling are the ones that clear it up.\u00a0 When the Sherard\u2019s first moved here they had to clear, my grandfather helped the Sherard\u2019s clear some of their land.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Did your grandfather choose which land they wanted to buy, or was it assigned what he wanted to buy?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I think when the railroad sold the land that they did not want then whatever you wanted.\u00a0 You had a choice to pick what you wanted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Is there anything else that you would like to add?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I guess I could think of a lot of things, but I am not sure right now.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 We can come back.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I could see if my brother Frank is at home now, it\u2019s twenty minutes till twelve up there where he is, he may be back.\u00a0 Let me give him a call.\u00a0 If he\u2019s in you may want to speak to him and set up a thing that\u2026.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Yeah, I would like to but I don\u2019t have the phone recording equipment and I would like to record when I talk to him.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t have it with me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 ?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Right and maybe he can make some copies of pictures.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 He gave me a lot of people names of farmland that farmed land around here at one time. I mentioned about my father discontinuing with farming and about him being a educator.\u00a0 He went to Jackson State and finished at the top of his class and everything.\u00a0 He decided not to pursue but they wanted him to stay there and teach at Jackson College when he finished but he chose not to.\u00a0 To take care of the family farm.\u00a0 He did that until the mid 1950\u2019s.\u00a0 Up until he decided not to continue the farm.\u00a0 The president of Coahoma Junior College, Mr. McLaurin, Mr. B.F. McLaurin, asked him to consider coming out to the college and teach.\u00a0 After some deliberation about it, he decided to go ahead and do it.\u00a0 He taught History – Western Civilization for a number of years.\u00a0 And the students that went through there, those that I ran across every now and then, would tell you that was the best teacher that they ever had.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t use a book, or talk from lecture papers, he just talked about what he knew, but everything he talked about was in the book.\u00a0 And they really loved his class.\u00a0 And then later years at the college he became the registrar.\u00a0 He passed in 1971 he was the registrar at the college.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 You said we could go look \u2026.?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 It is going to be different from what I told you about.\u00a0 I can tell you the boundaries, where it starts and where it ends.\u00a0 Where the Sherard\u2019s lived.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EG:\u00a0 Thank you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I hope I was some help to you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

END OF DOCUMENT<\/strong><\/p>\n

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