By Ray Sprigle
Under a blazing Georgia sun we begin our journey of 3,400 miles through the black
South. Cotton is greening the blood-red soil of the endless fields. Its cotton
chopping time, when the cotton plants must be thinned out. Family by family the Negro
share-croppers are in the fields, children of seven or eight and grandmothers and
grandfathers who totter when they walk but still are able to swing a hoe.
Not all of the women are in the fields, though. This is Monday, wash day in the South
as in the North. All along the highway and the little side roads the iron kettles are
steaming over fires in the yards dirty clothes boiling clean.
We stop off for a drink of water and a bite of corn pone in the kitchen of Hannah
Ingram. Hannah is one of the hundreds of Negro homesteaders on the Flint River project In
Macon county. Its a tract of some 12,000 acres bought by the federal government
eight years ago and divided into tracts running from 50 to 200 acres. These were parcelled
out to Negro share-croppers who could make a small down payment. Theyve got 40 years
to pay out.
Hannah Keeps Going
Hannah Ingram is somebody. She and her husband were coming along fine, working from
sunup to sundown, each of them behind a mule and plow, when Henry Ingram went down with a
paralytic stroke four years ago. He hasnt walked or used his arms since. He
cant talk. But Hannah kept the mules and the plows going. Two years she raised a
crop. Then she played out. But the Ingrams are still going strong. Between them they had
the land in such good shape that they were able to rent it for enough to feed them and
make the required quarterly payments. Come 30 years and theyll own their own land --
as Hannah smiling said, "Down here or up there."
Nothing would do but we must sit down and share supper greens and a slab of corn pone
and plain water from the pump outside. Hannah was really hurt when I wanted to leave some
money. I wonder what she thought when she picked up my plate after wed gone. Bet
thats the first time corn pone sold for a dollar a slice in Macon county, Georgia.
This Flint River project is just a drop in an ocean, a bright clear drop in a dark and
bitter ocean. A couple of hundred Negroes have quit their noisome, windowless
share-croppers shanties to come out here to neat, substantial five-room houses, a
well, a barn and a smoke house with each. Each house had its quota of solid plain
furniture when the government sold it to the cropper.
Half Me Making Good
Young John Robinson is principal of the excellent school that boasts eight teachers. He
judges that about half of the dwellers on the project are making good. One man paid out in
four years instead of 40. The other half are just holding their own or falling back. Only
a handful picked up and quit.
This Flint River project is fine but it would take 10,000 such projects to make even a
dent in the evil share-cropping system.
By now I was getting pretty hungry. Wed had nothing to eat all day except Hannah
Ingrams corn pone. It was getting on toward seven, too, and what about a lodging for
the night? Not a word from my mentor and companion except, "If we can make Americus
tonight well have a place to stay." And what, I wondered, if we dont make
Americus?
But at long last we roll into Americus. And then I get another installment of the facts
of life when youre black and in the South.
We present ourselves at a fine, beautifully furnished home and are received with a
welcome that warms your heart. In an hour we are making away with a bountiful meal. A
comfortable room is awaiting us. So I learn how Negroes travel in the South. Only in the
larger Southern cities are there hotels for them. Since I wanted to live my life as a
Negro in the little towns and in the plantation country I didnt get to stop in any
of the big towns. But my friends tell me that life is pretty rugged in most Negro hotels.
Travelers Are Guests
So in every Southern town there are doctors, lawyers, undertakers, insurance men, who
maintain open house for Negroes who are traveling. Its a kind of reciprocal affair.
When they travel, they are guests at the homes of friends whom they have sheltered. There
is no question of payment but it is etiquette when leaving in the morning to press upon
your hostess a contribution for her church or missionary society. Or if shes an
ardent member of the NAACP, then a donation to that organization. Through the years, this
system of Negro travel in the South must add a good many thousands to the treasuries of
Negro churches and other organizations.
As always, when Negroes gather in the South there is one thing they always talk about
the relations between the races what are the white folks going to do next?
And why not? That one thing overshadows all else in the life of the black man.
Here in Sumter county the white man has bowed his back and set himself to roll back the
rising tide of franchise that is sweeping Georgia. The courthouse gang has
"purged" the registration lists of 800 names of Negro voters. A bare 80 are
left.
Defense Fund Raised
So the Negro leaders of the community -- the men and women Im talking about
tonight -- raised a defense fund of $600 to take the matter to the courts. They hired a
lawyer and paid him $100. He made one trip to the courthouse. The committee hasnt
seen him since. But the "word went out" thats the expression when
the white folks grapevine their warnings that Sumter county Negroes had better drop
their plans for a court fight.
It was effective too. The $600 war chest was quietly returned to the contributors and
therell be no fight to restore the purged names to the registration lists. A teacher
in the Negro schools who had headed up the NAACP branch in Americus was called in and told
to quit teaching or quit the national Negro organization. She quit her job. Maybe the
Supreme Court did outlaw the white primary, but the white folks of Sumter county have
overruled the high tribunal. And as between the Supreme Court of the United States and the
white folks, Sumter county Negroes are in no doubt as to which to obey.
Theyll live longer that way.