Doorbells and tenant farming

The doorbell rang yesterday afternoon. I was home reading and writing, and our elderly neighbor dropped by with a curious question: "Do you have somebody to pick your pecans?"

My first thought was, "Of course not, we'll pick them ourselves." It was his next sentence that caught my attention: "We'll pick them on the halves and shell them as well."

See, we have this huge pecan tree on the west side of the house, and this year it is loaded with huge pecans. They are dropping, ripe and ready to eat. I've tried them, and they're good, but just haven't had the time or the energy to pick them.

Without checking with my wife, I agreed to the deal. Oops.

It was his "on the halves" comment that struck me. It harkened me back to the days of what I think is America's second plantation. Black farmers and White farmers alike worked the land as part of the tenant farmer, or the sharecropping system. The wealthy landowners purchased seed, implements, and all, and they provided a place for the farmer and his family to live. Some tenant farmers worked on the half and others on the quarter, all depending upon contractual arrangements and the will of the landowner. The system did not work well for the tenant farmer, generally speaking. The deck was stacked in favor of the landowner. Some landowners were on the up and up while other landowners were full of greed.

Debra Reid and numerous others explain the complications of the system. Even during the era of the New Deal, economic benefits which should have been passed on to the tenant farmer went into the pocket of the landowner. At the end of the harvest season, when all was settled, the tenant farmer had either broken even or was in the hole. Either way, the farmer and family had to stay on to farm another season under the same oppressive system, or move out in the middle of the night.

This was a dangerous time for Black farmers especially. They had to move far enough away to escape the wrath of the former landowner having a relationship with the new landowner so as to endanger the farmer and his family. And, those Jim Crow laws were a terror all of their own.

It's no wonder that many African American farmers and families chose to move to the city.