Across the Horizon

Grady is a small town in Lincoln County, Arkansas. The majority of its citizens are farm workers. In Grady there was a very strong and close-knit African American community.

Many African Americans living in Lincoln County in the 1930s had not been born there. Most had come to the area seeking work and then found work on the large farms surrounding Grady.

A case in point was the Grice Family who came to Arkansas from Mississippi around the turn of the twentieth century. Charlie Grice had come to Arkansas just before 1900 and met his future wife, Dora, in Jefferson County, Arkansas. Eventually, Grice found work on one of the farms in Grady.

Grice, in addition to working the farm, felt himself drawn to the ministry. He preached in the Baptist Church in Grady. The Grices married in 1903 and had six children, three boys and three girls. To support the growing family, the Grices raised chickens, turkeys, dairy cows, and hogs.

During the Great Depression, families often found it difficult to survive, but these families were resourceful.

Frugality meant making what little they had last. They turned to quilting to keep warm during the cold Arkansas winters. Although quilting is an American art form, it was an art form that developed out of necessity. Cloth was expensive, especially for farm families and if blankets tore, it would be foolish to throw out the blanket. Scraps of cloth could be reused and bits could be sewn together to make a quilt, often heavier and warmer than a simple blanket. Families would gather to sew quilts, in what was called a "quilting bee". Here, two women work together to make quilts for their families.

Farming was the primary profession in Grady. The nutrient rich land produced cotton. Also grown in large quantities was sorghum, which would be processed to make molasses.

By 1938, Arkansas's farmers had been largely ruined by the Great Depression as farms across the state failed to pay debts. Lincoln County was no exception. The loss of these farms left many in Lincoln County unemployed with little opportunity to find jobs. The Works Progress Administration established public works programs to assist those in need of jobs.

Home Demonstration clubs also helped train families on canning, clothes making, and other home remedies in order to help families survive the hard times.

Many black-owned farms failed during the farm crisis of the 1930s. Farmers were forced by necessity to turn to the system of farm tenancy, or sharecropping, to make ends meet. During the Great Depression, farm tenancy, a system where farmers would lease land and farm it in return for a share of the harvest, rose dramatically throughout Arkansas. In 1930, sixty-three percent of Arkansas farms were worked by tenant farmers. The Arkansas Delta, in particular, had large percentages of farm tenancy.

Under the system, tenant farmers often made little for their efforts. Land owners often required payment for seed at exorbitant prices, or would simply underpay for the harvest. The system was inefficient as a means for farmers to provide for their families and most eked a meager living.

Officials such as Governor Junius Marion Futrell highlighted the problem by lobbying the federal government to help end the farm tenancy problem. He organized a Farm Tenancy Commission to tackle the ongoing crisis. The commission proposed programs that would assist farmers to purchase farms with low interest federal loans. C.O. Brannon, a professor of rural economics at the University of Arkansas argued to the commission, "The only method of attack on the problem is to bring about less tenancy and more ownership for farmers who cultivated land." Harry Malcolm, deputy state labor commissioner was even more direct: "The sharecropping system is wrong, rotten from top to bottom, and there is only one remedy for it - quit sharecropping."

Despite the hardships, families in Grady could survive by living frugally. A typical July Saturday for a farming family in Grady would begin at dawn when the family, including children, would go into the fields and begin a long day in the hot sun.

Lunch would often include cornbread as well as peas,okra, and tomatoes, which came from the family garden. Until harvest, money would be tight for a tenant farming family. They would still be living off of the preious year's money until the landlord could pay them for their share of the harvest.

For the women in the family, the work was not finished at the end of the harvesting day. When they returned to home, they would need to cook the evening meal, wash clothes, and bathe children.

Once the work at the house was finished, families would get dressed in their best clothes and go into Grady to see friends and family and relax after a hard day of work. Families that lived from miles around would come into town. This was often the only time that friends could visit and enjoy each other's company.

Since money was still tight until the landlord paid for the crop, families would buy little unless it was groceries.

Grady on a Saturday during the summer was a lively meeting place for old friends.

In 1938, schools in Arkansas were segregated. African American students in Grady attended poorly financed schools. Despite the lack of financial support for the schools, students received a good education, even though the highest grade in Grady was eighth grade.

The first teachers in Grady's African American schools were Rufus Swayze and his wife Cordelia. Mr. Swayze taught the upper grades and Mrs. Swayze taught the younger children. Mr. Swayze was known to be a tough disciplinarian, often making children who did not behave in class stand on one leg in the corner.

Mr. Swayze also operated a general store in Grady, which sold school supplies to his students.

In 1938, the principal of Grady School, was C.F. West. West was born in Hinds County, Mississippi, in 1880. His education began at the age of eight when he attended the public community school in Bolton, Mississippi.

Upon graduating from the school in 1896, West enrolled in the Industrial Arts department at Alcorn State in Mississippi, graduating in 1901. He continued with his education at Alcorn and finished a second degree from the Literary Normal Department in 1903.

West did not immediately become an educator. After finishing his studies, West became the manager of a farm and remained in that position for the next twelve years.

In 1912, West left the farm for the opportunity to return to his birthplace to teach. In 1920, West became a teacher at the Cady School in Varner, Arkansas. Small rural schools such as the one in Varner usually had a faculty of one. West was required to teach all grades and all subjects. Despite the relatively large enrollment, 120 students, West remained the sole teacher at the school for a number of years.

Recognizing his abilities to run a school with a large student body, the Lincoln County school board appointed West to be principal of the Grady Colored Junior High School in 1936.

Grady did not have a high school for African American students. Those who wanted advanced education were required to look outside of Lincoln County for opportunities. Some went to Pine Bluff, where there was a high school or as far away as Chicago, Illinois.

Often, teachers in small rural areas traveled from school to school. Althea Calhound had teaching in her blood. After finishing high school in Pine Bluff, she went to college to study home economics and art. After completing her junior year in college, she taught in a small one-room schoolhouse in Douglas. She was a dedicated teacher who drove fifty miles round trip from her home to the school.

Other African American schools near Grady educated the rest of Lincoln County's children. On the Pinchback Plantation, the Pinchback School served 191 children. The school held a summer term that ran from July until September and a winter term that ran from November to March. Most students attended the summer term. Wet weather and impassible muddy roads prevented most students from attending the winter session.

The classes were taught by two dedicated teachers, Jewel Turner and Annie Mae Nicholson. Classes started at 9 a.m. each day. The two women taught a variety of subjects including history, reading, geography, and agriculture, among others.

Children were not the only students in Grady. By 1938, the Works Progress Administration, a federal program designed to alleviate the worst effects of the Great Depression, established adult schools in order to remedy the lack of educational opportunities that plagued many of the adults in the black community. Students met daily to study reading, writing, arithmetic, and English. By the end of the first year of the program many adults who were previous illiterate could read and write.

The classes also served as a place where adults could discuss problems in the community. A woman's class taught sewing and canning, among other home making techniques.

Religion was a bedrock in Grady. In addition to being a place to hear the gospel, Grady's churches were a center for the community. Reverend John Thompkins Marshall was pastor at the Grady Baptist Church. His congregation baptized new converts on the banks of Choctaw Bayou or in Round Lake near Grady. Baptizing services would often last hours as more people became inspired to be baptized following the testimony of friends or family.

Leading the music at the Mt. Pisgah A.M.E. Church was Anderson Berry. Berry was born in 1863 and moved to Arkansas as an adult. He met his wife, Carrie, while the two were living in Moon, Mississippi. Carrie, a gifted singer, taught Anderson how to sing, which became his lifelong love. The couple settled in Pine Bluff and then in Grady where Berry involved himself in the music ministry to the Mt. Pisgah AME Church.

Berry was also a talented songwriter. One of his popular songs was "Shine for Jesus," with the rousing chorus "Shine when troubles shake you, /Shine when friends forsake you, All the way ev'ry day, / There's a crown awaiting;"

His son, James, also had musical talent. Much to his father's dismay, James's interest was in secular blues music.

Weddings were often a community affair, sometimes held in church or sometimes at home. People from throughout Grady would gather a community bouquet full of flowers for the bride to carry. The flowers came from the yards of all attendees. After the wedding, the family of the bride provided a meal to those who came. The meal, consisting of chicken, peas, fruit salad, cake, and ice cream, would complement a full wedding reception complete with dancing until the evening.

One of the few professions open to women outside the home was that of hair dresser. Women wanting to become hairdressers in Grady would take a training course in Pine Bluff. After completing the course, they were eligible to apply for a state barber's license.

Doing so was lucrative. Hair dressers often charged twenty five cents a person. Saturdays and Sundays were busiest as people got ready for Sunday church or for a night on the town.

A source for civic pride in Grady was its baseball team. The team, when it was playing a home game, played in a vacant field and had an official advertiser who stood near the entrance gate and advertised upcoming games in order to entice fans to come.

Those who did come to see the team play paid fifteen cents each to watch the action.

The money raised from these games went toward buying new equipment, like bats, balls, and uniforms. The only other expenses were transportation costs for out of town games and bringing in other teams as opponents.

As the Depression worsened, many families left Lincoln County for better opportunities. The decline in farming as well as the racism inherent in Arkansas's Jim Crow Laws led families to head north to Illinois, New York, or to California. Between 1930 and 1980, Lincoln County lost almost seven thousand residents, many of them African American.

Grady also suffered from the decline in farming. These photographs are a testament, however, to the vibrancy of a small rural community, one that survived despite the Great Depression.