“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.
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