Satchel Paige: Graphic Novel

There are several comic book readers in my family. Comics got me onto the path of reading.  My youngest son gifted me recently with a 1955 Classic comic about Davy Crockett.  It brought back a lot of memories.  Those were the days of Archie,  Batman and Robin, the Green Lantern, and Superman.  In my personal collection are the Book of Genesis Illustrated, word for word from the King James text, and Miller's Holy Terror, and a couple of others, along with a few others.   Rumor has it that justice oriented graphic comics are here somewhere, gifts of my oldest son, but I can't find them.  Maybe they've been misplaced in our moves over the last few years.

While my sons and grandsons still read and collect those comics, my reading interests have changed.  I enjoy keeping up with the old favorites via them. My interests lean toward social justice themes.  One overlap popped up recently.

Satchel Paige:  Striking Out Jim Crow, written by James Sturm and Rich Tommaso with an introduction by Gerald Early, and published by The Center for Cartoon Studies, is a wonderful graphic novel.  Written through the lense of Emmet Wilson, sharecropper and former baseball player, the story gives the historical background of farming while black on someone else's land and how it was simply another version of slavery and the plantation days.  It was dangerous to speak out against the white landowners. You might wind up wounded or dead.  Ask Mr. Wilson.

Against this story of pain, suffering, and humiliation arises Satchel Paige, one of the most notable players from the Negro Leagues, a rookie for the Cleveland Indians in `1942, and an inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971.  His story is remarkable.  He helped change history. Though he came across as the consummate showman, he was a serious and gifted athlete.

I'll not rob you of the pleasure of reading the entire book.  I hope you'll purchase it and read it to the children so that our future can be different from our past.  One quote though. Long after Emmet had retired from baseball due to an injury, and during the hard days of working the land, he also had a son,  Emmet, Jr. One day he pulls out a souvenir from his baseball days, the day he got a hit off Satchel and got an autographed baseball from him.  As he gave the ball to his son, he said, "For the first time, I told Emmet, Jr. the story of how his daddy went head-to-head with Satchel Paige. And unlike them Tuckwilla boys, his daddy came out on top. For the first time since I played ball, since Emmet, Jr. was a baby, I felt somethin' on the inside. I remembered the type of man I am. I gave Emmet, Jr. that ball....I hope it reminds him of who he can be."

Here are some links.  Here is the book.  Here is a review of the book.  Here is the official Satchel Paige web page.

"The Great Debaters"

It's a stirring movie based on a true story.

By day Melvin Tolson was an English professor and coach of the debate team at Wiley College, a small Black school in Marshall, Texas, during the mid-1930s. By night he was an activist for the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union. He lived in two worlds, and both were important.

As a debate coach he was demanding. As an activist he was purposeful and deliberate. The worlds were kept separate until the local sheriff's department sniffed him out as a threat to the local separate but unequal worlds of the times.

His students are edgy, smart, articulate, precocious, and vulnerable. The tenant farmers are defeated and afraid, yet they are determined to step out from beneath the heal of the boot of the plantation system known as tenant farming where the advantages were to the owners.

The story of his students will move you as they begin to grasp a vision for what they can do in the days of Jim Crow as they defeat one Black school after another to eventually face Harvard, the best of the best among prestigious White schools. You will see their internal strivings and relationships, and you will see them horrified (and you will be horrified yourself) at the sight of a lynching as they try to find their way to a campus for another debate. "What did he do wrong?" is a question that is asked. Eventually, the answer, "He did nothing wrong." They barely escape, and whatever naivete they lived with was now shattered.

You'll admire the work of Tolson's secret life and his public life. You'll be amazed at the great things his students go on to do with their lives.

You'll cry.

You'll feel like you're in that great hall in Cambridge the night of the great debate.

You'll want to stand up and applaud.

It's a great story of people, education, community, and facing the odds of the Jim Crow South.

It's a must see movie. Check this link out for more historical background to the movie.

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.