Hughsey Childes And Minnie Whitney Summary

From Hughsey Childes’ and Minnie Whitney’s different stories of the state of sharecropping and farming in the African American communities, we find things that are revealed about the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, as well as the similarities and differences between the two’s experiences.

Hughsey’s oral history tells is a secondary source about a man who had been a sharecropper. His statement tells us that the sharecropper, who “couldn’t read or write”, was given very little to live on, after paying his sharecropping debt. This tells us that the now free African Americans were still extremely discriminated against—to a point where they were not even paid a higher amount to live off of because of these so called “sharecropping debts”. Also unveiled by Hughsey is that white

15. I would ask this because some African Americans did settle and receive the land given to them, but not all of the land was settled by or given to African Americans. My follow up questions would be different for each person. For Hughsey, I’d ask if him or the sharecroppers around him had expected land from the Special Order and if they had turned to sharecropping because it was their only choice, because it seems somewhat logical that the African Americans—if they had heard of the Order—would expect land, and when they saw that none was forthcoming, they’d try to take up something that would make them some money doing what they knew how to do—farming, or rather sharecropping. I would ask Minnie the same, but I’d modify the question a little, into: Was your family expecting land from the Special Order, and when none was given did your parents turn to sharecropping as a last resort, or did your parents readily turn to something that they knew how to do and that would give them some money for living