It feels strange to look back into the past and feel heartbreak for people's suffering, and all they did without, when they are long gone and there is nothing left to be done about their want or need. But I cannot always help myself, and that is how I felt when I read these words from a tenant farmer in Martin County, N.C. in 1887.
New Hanover County N.C.
What is There to Fear?
When I am giving lectures these days, I am often asked to compare what is happening in America today with the white supremacy movement that rose to power in Wilmington and the rest of North Carolina between 1898 and 1900.
The Woman in the Lettuce Fields of Castle Hayne, 1943
They came there from a hundred places, as close as the Georgia piney woods, as far as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas. Then, early in the spring, when there was no more work in South Florida's fields, some of them came to the lettuce fields of Castle Hayne. (Part 14 of my "Working Lives" series.)
David Cecelski 