Aug 2, 2016

Fri, Aug 2, 1946: spillway

“Morgan from East Prairie took us to the spillway.  It seems the Mississippi cuts up every so often, so they built levees & paid the people ¾ land value who lived in the spillway.  At flood time they break the levee & save Cairo that way.  It’s all share cropper country, mostly Negroes.  They look like the Southern picture.  We passed one cotton field full of Negroes chopping.... Since I seem to have sleepy companions, I’ll just try to get ready to wind up this week now.  I told you about the illiterate girl.  This Taysley family used to live in the spillway.  Annie Bell is 18 & in the 2nd grade.  Ellie May is 21 and in the 1st grade.  They never went to school or church until they moved out here...”

--Letter from my mother, Dogwood, Missouri, to her family, [Hutchinson, Kans.], Friday, August 2, 1946.  She was on a Methodist youth caravan trip in rural Missouri.

No comments:

Post a Comment