School Days

My Dad, Tom Latham, was a single-minded man, with an even temper. He was red-faced, a little short, thin guy. Weighed about 165. He was just like a cricket, though. Everything he did was just like snap, snap, snap! He was always in a hurry. And I don't believe he ever did finish a day's work. He planned his day and he never finished.
Like his brothers Henry and Edgar, he taught school. It was a little one-room school. And I can remember the first day I went to school. My mother didn't let me go that morning when the school first started. A little later in the morning, she brought me up there, dressed in little rompers, red and white striped with a little jacket, and she told me to go up to the door and say, "Mr. Latham, do you need a new student?" There I went, just like Mama said. I think the whole school just roared when they realized I was standing there.
He'd start the classes with this little bell he had. And he'd ring it when the classes was over, when it was time for lunch. He'd just pick up the bell, "Ding-a-ling!" Time for class to come back in. He'd usually take the bell and step to the door, because everyone was on the playground playing. He'd ring it several times.
He taught everything from primary to the ninth grade. I was in a class with Roy Lee McClung, P.J. Dalton, Odell Stubblefield, Clarence Sloman, Tailey Goldman, Little John Eaves, Russel Carter, Troy Summerfield, and plenty of others. They went to school the same time I did, but they had all different grades in the same room.
He'd have this class of geography to come up to the front benches, and he'd lecture them or he'd quiz them to find out how they studied their lesson. He'd let them back to their seats, then he'd call up the math class up to the front row. He'd lecture them and let them go back. When he called us up, he had a little box. He'd sit down right in front of us, on that little box. "All right, T.J., come right over here now. Let's see," he'd say as he'd turn the pages in that little primer. "Suppose you read this to me right here?"
In spelling, we'd all line up in a line, right up against the blackboard. He'd give out the words as he'd go down the line. And if this guy missed it then the next guy had a chance. He'd come on down, down the line. And if some of them missed all the words, if they couldn't spell anything, he'd have them go over and sit at the end of the bench at the side of the room. And he'd take that primer and he'd show them the words and he'd sound the letters to them. I remember he did that with me, when I first started.
I think he treated everyone alike. He wasn't any stricter on me or my sister Eloise than he was on anybody else in the class.
But in teaching school, I noticed this about him. Albert and John Previtt went to school to him. And Albert Previtt was hare-lipped. And of course, you know, somebody would talk to Albert and try to get him to talk back. And he couldn't whisper. He had to talk pretty loud, you know, because of that hare-lip. My Daddy was at the blackboard with some of his students. I think he was working math or something or other. And somebody said something to Albert, and Albert answered him. And Dad said, "Albert Previtt, come to the front!" Albert got up and went up there. Said, "Albert, you know you're not supposed to whisper when you're in school."
Albert said, "How did you know I was whispering?" Dad said, "Don't you know I got eyes in the back of my head?" I'll never forget that. I was just a kid. I believed him.
--T.J. Latham

'They Made Over 5 Million of Them'

The Calendar Year

From March through June, while the cotton is being cultivated, they live on the rations money.
From July to late August, while the cotton is making, they live however they can.
From late August through October or into November, during the picking and ginning season, they live on the money from their share of the cottonseed.
From then on until March, they live on whatever they have earned in the year, or however they can.
During six to seven months of each year, then -- that is, during exactly such time as their labor with the cotton is of absolute necessity to the landlord -- they can be sure of whatever living is possible in rations advances and in cottonseed money.
During five to six months of the year, of which three are the hardest months of any year, with the worst of weather, the least adequacy of shelter, the worst and least of food, the worst of health, quite normal and inevitable, they can count on nothing except that they may hope least of all for any help from their landlords.
--James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, p. 102-103

'Actually Lost Three Dollars'

The loan companies were the sharpest people he had ever had anything to do with. Once he had secured a two-hundred-dollar loan from one of them, but he swore it was the last time he would ever bind himself to such an agreement. To begin with, they came out to see him two or three times a week; some of them from the company’s office would come out to the farm and try to tell him how to plant the cotton and how much guano to put in to the acre. Then on the first day of every month they came back to collect interest on him. He could never pay it, and they added the interest to the principal, and charged him interest on that, too.
By the time he sold his cotton in the fall, there was only seven dollars coming to him. The interest on the loan amounted to three per cent a month to start with, and at the end of ten months he had been charged thirty per cent, and on top of that another thirty per cent on the unpaid interest. Then to make sure that the loan was fully protected, Jeeter had to pay the sum of fifty dollars. He could never understand why he had to pay that, and the company did not undertake to explain it to him. When he had asked what the fifty dollars was meant to cover, he was told that it was merely the fee for making the loan.
When the final settlement was made, Jeeter found that he had paid out more than three hundred dollars, and was receiving seven dollars for his share. Seven dollars for a year’s labour did not seem to him a fair portion of the proceeds from the cotton, especially as he had done all the work, and he had furnished the land and mule, too. He was even then still in debt, because he owed ten dollars for the hire of the mule he had used to raise the cotton. With Lov and Ada’s help, he discovered that he had actually lost three dollars. The man who had rented him the mule insisted on being paid, and Jeeter had given him the seven dollars, and he was still trying to get the other three to pay the balance.
--Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road

Picking Cotton

Corn Harvest

How Do We Farm?

"How do we farm? Well, dey's sev'ul diff'unt ways. Dare is de cash rentuh, but we has always sharecropped, on a third and a four -- he furnish de house en de land en credicks you enough to live on, en den you settles at de end of de year. In de cotton we gives him a fourth, in de cawn he gits a third -- ...when you raise four bales of cotton de landlord gits one en you get three, and if you raise three wagonloads of cawn he gits de first one en you git the other two.
"Landlord's got a store on de place, en he 'low you so much a week on de books -- dey wuz four in my family and he didn' 'low us but a twenty-four-poun' sack of flouah, en a twenty-four-poun' sack of meal, en eight poun's of lard, en maybe a bar of soap. Ef you got molasses you didn't git no sugah, en ef you got bakin' powdah you didn' git no sody -- Meat? Whooo! We didn' git no meat, but we'd ketch a mess of fish now en den..."
--Walter Rowland, from Such As Us: Southern Voices of the Thirties, edited by Tom E. Terrill and Jerrold Hirsch, p. 55

Oxen

Duet

'You'll Need a Pot to Boil Your Clothing In'

'Essential, Elemental Information'

'A Plow Hand in the Field When I was 8 Years Old'

"My daddy, Oscar Bishop, moved back to Haralson County and rented a crop, because the only way to come back to Haralson County was to come and rent a crop, to sharecrop. I remember where we lived, over near the Corinth Church. We made one crop there, then we moved down to the Tallapoosa River and rented another crop, and that was when my older brother Preston got married. We sharecropped for several years.
"All the boys worked in the fields. As long as they lived at home, everybody worked. I was one of the younger ones. In my earlier days, I was a water boy. I had to tote water to them, and a snack between meals. They'd get up early in the morning and plow cotton and corn all day long. About mid-morning I'd carry them a snack to eat and kept them in fresh water. That was my job.
"Nathaniel, my older brother, married when I was eight years old. My Dad had a pair of mules, and these mules had to stay at work, to make the crop. So after this happened, I had to go to school part time, and that's what hindered me at school, that I had to take the place as a plow hand in the field when I was eight years old." --Denver Bishop

Hoover Hog Hunt

Vinegar Beans

4 gallon snap beans, strung and snapped
Mix them and cover in water.

Add:
1 cup vinegar
1 cup sugar
½ cup salt

Cook for one hour. Makes 14 quarts.
--Bishop family recipe

Haralson County Courthouse, ca. 1930

'Of Little Value'

The history of mining in Haralson County pivots on three major operations which were located here: The Tallapoosa (Waldrop) Copper Mine near Draketown, The Reed's Mountain Pyrite Mine near Bremen, and the Tallapoosa Gold Mine just south of that city. A few other minor prospects were scattered throughout the county, but there three were the largest and most important in Haralson County.
Part of what was called "Copper excitement" was started by a discovery made by Elisha Brooks while plowing on property ... on the western edge of Draketown. At that time Draketown was known by the name of Long Leaf Post Office. Brooks turned up some bright yellow granular material which burned when thrown into the fire.
He took a specimen to Villa Rica where prospecting for copper was being done. A sample was later sent to Tennessee. The immediate result was that an influx of prospectors and promoters from the Tennessee Deposits came to Haralson. Hopes of another Ducktown, Tennessee flourished and the name of the little village where the tall, long-leaf pine grew in front of the post office was changed to Draketown.
...The operation was short-lived...
With the discovery of gold in Dahlonega, interest in mining spread. Searches were made for gold in Haralson County, but few good veins were found. The pyrite deposits were explored for containing significant amounts of gold, but they, too, proved of little value.
--from the History of Haralson County, published by the Haralson County Historical Society in 1983, p. 23

'So We Beat On'

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Boarding House

'I Have Seen Jesus Face-to-Face'

1932 - January 14, Thursday
The Haralson County Tribune
BUCHANAN, GA

A.B. Latham Ends Own Life

Leaves Note Giving Ill Health As Reason

The body of A.B. Latham, known intimately to the people of this section as "Bije" Latham, Saturday morning was found slumped in the seat of his car with almost his entire head blown from his body. Clutched in his arms was a shotgun with which the deed was committed. The car was in the garage at the Latham home in the Mountain View District.
For some time Mr. Latham and his nephew Hoke Latham had lived together, but the nephew was away from home at the time, on a visit.
Mrs. Gaudie Cansler, who lived nearby, and who helped with the housework, on Saturday morning went to the Latham home to milk the cows. All was quiet around the home. A search of the house failed to reveal the whereabouts of Mr. Latham. Mrs. Cansler's young son, going into the garage, discovered his body in the car. Neighbors were quickly notified and officers summoned. Later Coroner Cole held an inquest, the jury returning a verdict that the deceased came to his death by self-inflicted wounds.
The entire neighborhood was shocked, as were people of this section.
In one of Mr. Latham's pockets was a blood-bespattered letter which was written on both sides of legal cap paper. In this letter, which was not addressed to anyone in particular, Mr. Latham dwelt upon the fact that his health was wrecked and at his age he could not expect to build it back.
"I have seen Jesus face-to-face," he wrote, "and feel he will give me life ever-lasting and I will be happy with my loved ones gone before. It might have been better to go 31 years ago, as I started to do with a .32 pistol, but God told me not to. I feel that I have suffered through bad health to pay all dues ahead and I feel God will pardon me for all sins."
The letter went on at length, showing the hardships entailed in farming the past few years.
A considerable portion of the note dwelt upon the condition of his health, which had been gradually failing him. The deceased's health had not been so good during the past few weeks, and close friends were aware of the fact that he had brooded considerably over recent events.
He is survived by four brothers: J.T. Latham and Edgar Latham of Atlanta, and Victor and Virgil Latham of this county. He has numerous other relatives.
Funeral services and internment at Philadelphia Church were attended by a large crowd of sorrowing relatives and friends.

Death to the King

If Southern industry and commerce were sick, King Cotton also was growing continually sicker, and in the end would fall into worse case than had ever been known in the past, even in the 1890s. As the demand for cotton goods over the earth receded and the mills all around the globe slowed down, the demand for the staple of course gradually declined too -- at a time when Southern production was hanging near peak levels, and when foreign production also was growing greater than it had ever been before. In 1929 the Southern crop totaled nearly 15 million bales, and the foreign crop eleven and a half million -- with the result that the price swooped down from twenty to twelve cents. Next year it came down to eight.
Then, in 1931... the quotation on the New York cotton exchange descended to five cents, and on the local Southern markets it went even lower than that.
It was the conclusive disaster for the South. Immediate disaster for farmer, planter, tenant, and sharecropper...
The banks, already tottering, now found themselves with vast stocks of mortgages which were entirely worthless...
And this growing collapse of the banking system meant, of course, a rapid curtailment of credit over and beyond what had already been made necessary by the depression in general... And planters and labor-employing farmers found themselves either unable to secure credit at all or unable to secure sufficient credit to maintain their old scale of operation. The number of acres planted in cotton in 1932 would be eleven million less than in 1929.
Many of the planters abandoned their lands altogether, or turned them over to their tenants to dig a living out of them if they could...Having always gone essentially hungry for a reasonably good diet, the great body of the sharecroppers, white and black, would begin to go hungry in the full sense of the word ... And hordes of these people who had neither employment, means of subsistence, nor any place to go were wandering along every road from county to county and state to state...
Everybody was either ruined beyond his wildest previous fears or stood in peril of such ruin. And the general psychological reaction? First a universal bewilderment and terror ... Men everywhere walked in a kind of daze. They clustered, at first to assure one another that all would shortly be well ... but in the end they fled before the thought in one another's eyes...
And along with this ... a slow wondering and questioning ... a gradually developing bitterness of desperation... they heard from the pulpit that it was a punishment visited upon the people from the hand of God as the penalty of their sins...
--W.J. Cash, The Mind of the South, pp. 369-371