My grandparents were a young couple during Reconstruction. Having come into this world into relatively comfortable lives, they entered young adulthood not having learned skills necessary to survive post-war conditions. They made life-changing decisions using the following logic: (1) We need food. (2) We don't know to provide our own food - we can't milk cows or even grow turnip greens. (3) Who knows how to do those things? The freed slaves, that's who. (4) Therefore to survive, we will become sharecroppers along side our black friends and learn from them. That was their beginning of a life of hard labor and lifelong friendships with persons "of color."
About 1906 they moved with their youngest children to Northeast Louisiana. The "public" reason was that the soil around Hazlehurst had been farmed so much that it was no longer fertile and that they hoped to have more success in the less developed land west of the Mississippi. After learning about the numbers of white persons lynched in the Hazlehurst area for being sympathizers with the black community, I have wondered if perhaps it was for their safety. My grandmother's best friend was black and perhaps some of their white counterparts were growing more and more tired of their "unseemly" friendship. The ladies' friendship probably survived all possible criticism, though, because my grandmother's dear life-long friend traveled from Mississippi to Louisiana attended her funeral in 1954.
My father was born in 1903 in Hazlehurst and made the trip across the Mississippi with his parents and siblings. Growing up in a family who was accustomed to congenial relationships with black persons he was probably granted more freedom to be around blacks than the typical white child of the era. One of Daddy's favorite weekly events were the Saturday night dances at a nearby black church. The pews would be pushed against the walls and instruments, particularly harmonicas (called mouth harps) were brought out. Then there would be singing and dancing until very late. This was certainly more interesting than sitting around with a dull white family to a young boy! Of course Daddy could not actually go inside - he was the wrong color. But he could hear and watch from windows or open doors and in the warm Louisiana nights imitate their singing and dancing in the shadows of the lit and lively church.
