COTTON PICKIN'


Daddy came to me and the boys

and said he would appreciate it

if we would pick cotton

to help buy our schoolclothes.


He had already made all the arrangements.


A big stake-bed truck

came along and picked us up

while it was still dark


and there were a lot of us

colored people and white

jammed in the back of that truck.


When we got to the field

the colored people picked on the left side

and all us white people picked on the right side.


Boy was it hot when the sun came up!

We had canvas sacks

coated on the bottom with black tar

that strapped over our shoulders


and the cotton bolls

made our fingers bleed.


They were sharp.



Right away me and the boys hated it.

We tried to talk to Daddy about how hard it was

and hot

and painful


and while he sympathized with us

we were given to understand that

if we wanted to look nice in school

we had to pick cotton.



The days passed in a haze of heat

and dust

and cotton.


The nights passed in misery.

Back pain.

Neck pain.

Dread of the morning.



The only thing that kept us going was the colored people.

They picked on their side of the field

and sang.


It sounded so beautiful

rising up from a field of misery.



One day Jimmy fainted

in the row next to mine

and a colored woman

who was picking close to us

rushed over and picked him up

and hollered

"Somebody come help this baby!"


The cotton farmer's wife came running to us

and took Jimmy away from the colored lady

and told me and Wes to come, too

so we shucked our sacks

and ran behind her

up to the house

where the kitchen was cool


and they laid Jimmy on the enamel table

and put wet cloths on him

and he came around

but he didn't know where he was

and he kept calling for Mom.



After a while Daddy came

and the farmer's wife said Jimmy had heat stroke

so Daddy took the three of us home.


Jimmy got a whole week off from picking.


The next day one of the colored ladies

jammed into the truck

with us

asked me

"How's the chile?"

and I said to her

"He gets a whole week off from pickin'"


and she laughed

and said

"Well, then, he's better off than us!"




I asked Daddy why the colored people didn't pick with us

and why they lived in tar-paper shacks on a dirt road

and he said

that's just the way it is.


At the end of summer I had made $35.00

I ordered five dresses

from the Sears catalog

with the songs of the colored people still ringing in my ears.




I had come to love them

for their singing in the heat

for the way they watched over us



and because they could work hard all day long

and still laugh

in that flatbed truck

swaying shoulder to shoulder

going home

in the hot Louisiana night.









Music playing: Swing Low Sweet Chariot

This page contains copyrighted material

Story taken from my actual diaries

Go to Page 44

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