Appalachian History

"I lived down in Beulah Land, and times were hard on black people back then," said John Easter. "A lot of times we had to quit school to chop cotton while the white man's children kept going. It hurts me to talk about it, but I tell people bygones should be bygones."

Easter was born Aug. 7, 1914, in the Limestone (AL) County community of Coxey near the Elk River, but spent most of his life close to Tanner. He recalls that they could hardly get through the dirt roads, because the wagons would mire down and get stuck in the mud.

He attended a country school through the sixth grade, and then the closest school for upper grades was in Athens. "I didn't have no way of going and no place to stay." Some students boarded, and some lived close enough to walk, but he didn't have any money to pay the tuition.
From his cotton-chopping days, he recalls that the field workers "couldn't get nothing unless you went to the white boss man; you couldn't see a doctor unless the boss man said you could."

He chopped cotton many days for 50 cents a day. "Now it's gone to $50 a day, and stuff's high now. Back then nothing was that high; you could get a cold drink for a nickel."

Bologna sausage used to come in a waxed paper bag, and there were no refrigerators, he said. "You'd buy a nickel's worth of bologna and they'd give you the crackers and a 'big lunch cake' that had five small cakes in chocolate and vanilla flavors." The soft drink — a strong Double Cola — was another nickel.

He and other country boys played on baseball teams; his was the Beulah Land team. While they couldn't play baseball with whites, they did play a little unofficial basketball together.

In the 1930s, when he had a break between chopping cotton and picking cotton, he'd head to Evansville, Ind., or Louisville, Ky.

"They'd hire Alabama boys when they saw them coming down the street, because they knew they'd work hard," Easter said.

interviewed in The Decatur Daily
Sept 10, 2004
http://tinyurl.com/2k7cpz

appalachian+history appalachian+culture appalachia history+of+appalachia