El Segundo. James Newton
Sally’s preaching.
It was one those Old Brush Arbor meeting evenings that I suggested to my brother Hamp that we would try something level the score by harassing and scaring the “Big Man” land owners who traveled freely on our broad, Slough road. It was time to exact a “toll” from these “landed gentry” who would often take a short cut on “Our Slough” road as a short cut to and from their “parties.
Making these party going big plantation owners drive that extra twenty extra miles was a victory. Additionally, we could always spoil the hot action and passion of the down town upper class church goers who would use our road as their lover’s lane. Dennis, my older brother was a handsome and intelligent young man, even though he was a share cropper, he had his share of attention from the supposed better class girls. But the taunting and the mistreatment got to be to much for him.
So, Dennis devised another plan. He asked our younger brother Hamp and I, “You boys ready to learn something new?" Hamp and I responded, “You know we are ready!" “Let's have some fun tonight”. he said. Dennis had us make a corpse dummy with a white mans face, make it look like a dead white man as realistically an possible, and lay it on the side of the road. Big Daddy land owners thought that the share croppers were surely after them. The lovers would come down the road heading to their lover's lane and would frightened so badly that the last this on their mind was "making whoopy" in the lane.
We felt nothing but contempt for these more advantaged socialites. Not because of what they had but because of what they did.
Mack was my brother older than Hamp and me, but he was younger than Dennis. Dennis was our Hero. But my sister, Mary Jane, was the most beloved of the siblings. She was both beautiful and educated. But, Mary Jane was a bit of a Tom Boy and always game to join into our war on the wealthy antics. She was popular in our Holler Roller group.
The first car to fall victim to our attack was a brand new Model A Ford that was driven by a ped legged store owner. When he saw what he thought was a white body laying on the side of the road, he pulled over to investigate. Had he thought it had been a black man, he would have kept on going. Slowly, he got out of his car using a cane and lantern, and very, very slowly approached the subject on the side of the road. As we watched hidden in the cotton fields trying our best not to giggle or laugh, he saw the bloody make-shift man dimly illuminated by a lantern. He threw his cane down and broke into a sprint with that wooden leg lifting high into the sir as he catapulted back to his Model A. Letting out what sounded like a yelp, he hit it the gas and roared.
Oh my Lord, how we laugh as that luxurious car screeched away. We quickly removed the dummy, brushed away all the wet dirt, and removed all the evidence.
Soon, we heard cars coming from Sumner with a bunch of white men and the new town marshal. This posse was primed and ready to find them a nigger.
Surely, they thought they must defend the rights of whites and the cultural apartheid of the South. When they found no body and no evidence, they all thought that Mr. Worley was either drunk or crazy. They left laughing and cursing at the same time.
Dennis told the rest of us to get back to the Brush Arbor. After running back, the meeting was still in full swing. The congregation was still shouting and speaking in tongues. Grand Mother Sally Scallions was still handling fire. We entered back under the Arbor never missed. We had the best fun night in Tallahatchie County Mississippi.
Brother Dennis drinking from the water pump next to the cotton fields with sisters Peggy, Polly and Ann in 1949.
Chapter Six
The Cotton Wars
During the beginning of World War II, things were going badly with Japan, but it didn’t compare to the struggles of the share cropper.
Senator Jim Eastland had won his election and officially made prisoners of share croppers. While we weren’t prisoners of war, we were prisoners of cotton.
Exercising his rights as Share cropper King, Greenwood, Mississippi was designated as the cotton capital of the whole world. I heard Daddy tell my Mom, “Things are going from bad to worse”. We could all see it. The increased pressure on my dad fueled his taste for drinking moonshine whiskey which instead of easing his pressure and pain, just increased his anger and agony. In fact, the more my father suffered the more our family suffered.
Even though he was able to not let his drinking interfere with his farming and share cropping duties, Dad’s drinking was a constant source of conflict between my Mom and Dad.
Nonetheless, Mom stayed devoted to him. She recognized his strength and saw past the liquor into his family dedicated soul.
For the next 3 years, the hell that was our life in that insect infested Deep Slough swamp never changed. Listening from behind the doors, we could hear our parents talking about how exhausted Dad was. Mom was extremely troubled regarding our living conditions. She would say to my father, “Bryan, you need the Lord”. She would remind him of her Mother Ma Sally's Scallions preaching and the “Old Brush Arbor” Meeting.
But my Dad was a stubborn man who would make up his own mind. Dad would push back. Although he knew in his heart she was right, the more she counseled and prodded, the more Dad resisted. My brother and I were all too quick to follow our father’s way of thinking and example.
On Brush Arbor nights of worship, which occurred go on for a week or two at a time, and lasted until about midnight each night of the revival campaign, we looked for other methods of expressing our pain and anger at our situation.
Even though every night my Grandmother, “Ma Sally” would minster by using her God gifts of handling fire and rubbing her self with hot flames from hot oil. It was quite a carnival like spectacle, and in some ways felt as exciting as the carnival that came to Sumner once a year. But here you had God performing these ministry miracles through “Ma Sally” for free.
Of course, my brother and I wanted no part of the revivals by now. We were looking for ways to “get even” or at the very least do something that would agitate the Boss Man and Big Land Owners. We had learned how to make a bomb out of Carbide using a quart fruit jars.
So, off we went with our bomb. We walked south back to the main road. Then east about 500 hundred yards or so, and hid under the dredge ditch bridge that crossed the road.
Soon enough, we saw a car coming from Sumner or from the State Penitentiary. We could tell the car belonged to a Boss Man or Big Land because the car was bigger and newer and even the lights were brighter. We wanted revenge. And revenge we would have that night. Timing it perfectly, our bomb hit the car just as it crossed over the dredge ditch, the unexpected blast must caused the driver to think that Japan was attacking the U.S. Main Land.
This was the first of many of private war against King Cotton. We carried on our attacks night after night, until you couldn't get Plantation Land Owners car to cross that bridge. We were like a special and highly trained combat unit changing our tactics and locations. Using the cover and concealment, hiding in the underbrush and altering our times and positions, we would always leave time to scat back to the Brush Arbor before the meetings ended.
We were never missed. The believers were still praying, shouting, speaking in Holy Spirit Tongues, and enjoying the freedom from the torture of the share cropping fields. Most importantly, they were in the comfort and company of friends and family.
In due course, the news of the carbide bombings got out, the Big Man, the Antebellum Home owners thought it was the share croppers retaliating.
The road we guarded from Sumner to the penitentiary was a short cut. The Boss Man, The Big Man, these Plantation Land owners opted to take a longer route