Overcoming Poverty

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A friend and I have been discussing the book "Cracker Culture" by author Grady McWhiney which has some controversy surrounding it, mostly due to his theory that the Southern states culture before the Civil War was based on the Celtic culture of it's settlers and the Northern states of the English Puritan founders and that these differences were destined to collide. According to some reviews I've read, the author reportedly states the Southerners were more pastoral and did not have the same Protestant work ethic as the Northerners:

"According to Grady McWhiney, the North and the South were destined to develop incompatible lifestyles because of each regions’ unique ethnic roots. Whereas the North came from the stock of industrious hard working Englishmen, the South spawned from the pastoral and primitive society of the British Isle’s Celtic people. Written in 1988, Cracker Culture presented the broadest attempt at surveying the common white man of the Old South since Frank Owsley’s Plain Folk of the Old South published almost forty years before. 

"The book examines the culinary, agricultural, herding, and entertainment activities of the Old South and compares them to McWhiney’s understanding of pre-capitalistic Celtic society. He continually asserts that these practices made Southern lifestyle incompatible with the more Anglo oriented activities of the North, and that the Civil War was almost preordained to happen because the societies must eventually come into “mortal combat” to solve their differences (269)." (Source: http://personal.tcu.edu/swoodworth/McWhineyCracker.html)

I'm not so sure about the lack of industriousness, especially when it comes to my branch of the Somers family.

My earliest memories of grandparents William Henry and Lillian Mae Somers are of them living in a rough built cabin (what I referred to as "a barn" when I was a child). There was no running water in the house: Grandma pumped water on their back porch from a well and we used an out house placed at the back of the home. My grandmother also cooked on a wood stove and they had a pot bellied wood stove for heat. The home had 3 rooms that I remember: a parlor, a bedroom, the kitchen which included a small table, the cook stove, refrigerator, cupboard and a full size bed. I remember they had electricity and a small television, but they mostly listened to the radio. This living condition I describe was in the 1960's, and during the 1970's, an uncle updated their home to include running water and an indoor bathroom for Grandmother. They had a very rough life in Southern Missouri.

My dad tells stories of going to school with their lunch of biscuits in a pail and he and his siblings being laughed at for their meager clothing and food. I don't believe any of  my uncles, aunts or father finished school and the bullying they received over being poor probably caused them to drop out as soon as possible. My father quit school after the sixth grade and worked in the cotton fields alongside his parents and siblings. All of the boys joined the service as soon as they became of age and the girls married young; Grandma had 12 children - 2 died in infancy.

Sharecropper’s family in Washington County; circa 1935.

Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration

Probably the darkest time for the family was when Grandpa moved them to Arkansas and they sharecropped with an unscrupulous landowner; the family couldn't get ahead and the pay they received was soon gone and barely met the family's basic necessities. Out of desperation for his family, Grandfather had to leave without the landowner's knowledge. My grandmother left behind many prized possessions as they fled, including the Family Bible and my father who was 12 years old. Grandfather instructed him to stay behind in order to make it look like the family was still living in the sharecropping shack so the other family members could get away. They were heading back to Missouri where the sharecropper would have no legal jurisdiction over Grandpa. Plus, would he really want the government or law enforcement to see the squalid living conditions he provided for his tenants? Dad was given directions on how to find the family in Missouri and they were successfully reunited.

Grandfather provided for his family by the sweat of his brow and supplemented their food with hunting wild game - they wouldn't take Government "hand-outs." He was a proud man and his strength of enduring adversity still lives in his descendants to this day.

My father and step-mother :
Jess and Peggy Somers

My dad went on to join the Air Force, complete his education and attend college. He served our country as a Master Sargent in the Air National Guard up until his retirement. All of my cousins have gone on to be extremely hard workers and some are even quite successful business men and women.

Praise the LORD for giving the Somers family resiliency and for allowing adversity in our lives. It gave us backbone -there isn't a coward in the family. And while we aren't perfect, we are what helped build America and make it one of the most prosperous nations in His-Story.  That's our legacy.

Additional Resources:

• Life in the poor southern states of America, 1940's - Film 1600 (YouTube)
• "Out Yonder on the Road" (Southern Spaces)
• Slavery by Another Name: Sharecropping (PBS)