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My Grandparents And Great Grandparents

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Pouring rain on the lush green foliage of Southwestern Mississippi marked my birthday; born April 3, 1938, on Poplar Hill Plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi, the eighth of thirteen children. My parents, Willie Jackson and Sarah Whitney Jackson spent their entire lives in Jefferson County, born, baptized, married in 1926, died and their final resting place, the Poplar Hill Cemetery behind the church. Family stories of the experiences during the Civil War and reconstruction, seldom talked about, the guilt of beatings, the shame of miscegenation, the humiliation of these events became the secrets to keep. Consequently, families who suffered through those ugly times, did not speak of them and did not want the children to hear those …show more content…

Farming was our life, generation to generation, once a farmer always a farmer, what we knew was working in the fields of Poplar Hill, working from sun up until dark, we knew little else. In the spring, planting and then you go to school, the fall harvesting first and then school. My school was a small building of about 900 square feet, a two-room school house, with a moveable wall in the center, it divided the grades first through fourth and grades fifth through eighth. Along the outer wall, to stave off the winter chill was a wood-burning stove, collecting wood to burn a task for the younger children, the older students oversaw keeping the fire going during class time. Homespun benches, no desks, no books (from first grade through fourth grade) pencils, paper, we had none, we did have an hour for lunch (that’s if you had one), and then back inside to learn. Comfort at school was not paramount, we sat on benches made of hard wood, of course a desk was out of the question. Lunch time was great, except for the students who did not have a lunch, my older siblings remembered having little or nothing for their lunches. Lunch for me was a biscuit with preserved fruit or a boiled sweet potato, maybe a hard-boiled egg, once we finished eating there was time for play, recess in the front yard of the school, if you had a ball we played catch, hide-n-seek, tag, if you had a piece of rope we jumped rope, maybe a game of tag, and we made up

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