Listening to Crickets

“Well any way Junie, when I was about 14 or 15 I was the last boy left at home to help run the farm with Mama after Daddy Balas died.  We were sharecroppers”

“What’s a sharecropper grandpa?”

“Junie I knew you didn’t know what one was so I’m going to explain it to you.”  “Ain’t no other way to explain it.  A sharecropper is a slave.”

“But Grandpa, you’re not that old; slavery ended before you were born.”

“Junie, I’m about tired of your back talk.  You want me to make you get a switch for me from the chinaberry tree?”

“No sir.”

“I know what they tell y’all in those fancy history books that you read in those fancy schools up North.  And if you didn’t read it, I suppose some big shot teacher told you that slavery ended in 1865.”

“Yes sir, that’s what they told us.”

“Jobena, come on out here dear and explain to Junie how they ended slavery in 1865.”

My Grandma came outside and talked to us.  “Junie, they say Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 and that the Civil War was over in April 1865.  Well apparently nobody bothered to send a telegram to the good white folks in Texas, cause mama and lem was still working as slaves until June 19th, 1865.  That’s why we celebrate Juneteenth Day.

After the celebration we didn’t have any money, we didn’t own any property and the only thing most of us knew was farming and cooking.  Many people just kept right on working for the plantation owners cause they didn’t know how to fend for themselves.  So they stayed in the same slave cabins and just worked for food.  It’s 1968 and there’s still people living like this today.