WEBVTT

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- [Michelle] Talk to me some
about grandmom and granddad

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being on the plantation.

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Did they tell you stories
about that or that experience?

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- [U. W. Clemon] Well,

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I did not know my grandfather,

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and my grandmother died
when I was three years old.

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My grandmother
was born, I think,

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three years after the Civil War.

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And she, like the other blacks,
who lived in Oxford county,

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basically remained
on the plantations

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of the white plantation owners.

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Pretty much

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worked as their parents had done

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as slaves.

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It was a new form of slavery
called sharecropping,

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in which they rented,

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in a sense,

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land from the plantation.

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The plantation had
its commissary.

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And so they bought items of
food, clothing, and seeds

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from the plantation.

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They grew a crop of cotton.

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And at harvest time,
they'd have to settle up

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with the plantation owner

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and they always ended
up owing the owner.

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And it was forbidden for
them to leave the plantation

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while they still owed
the owner various monies.

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Of course,

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it was highway robbery.

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It was against the
federal constitution.

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But it was Mississippi.

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So that was the system
in which my grandparents

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and parents grew up.