tenant farmer

The Ruffins bring their produce to market.

Chicago Defender, 19 July 1947.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 19 July 1947.

The Ruffins feature prominently in newspaper articles about successful Black Wilson County farm families. This piece highlights not only the “what” of their success, but the “why” — the education of their children.

As the family lived in the Saratoga area close to the county line and their parents were active in Yelverton Farm and Home Demonstration Clubs, the Ruffin children likely attended Yelverton School. That school, however, went only to seventh or eighth grade. In 1947, the only high schools for Black children in Wilson County were Williamson, near Lucama, and Frederick Douglass in Elm City. The Ruffin children may have boarded with friends or relatives in Wilson to attend Darden High School or may have crossed county lines to attend a closer high school in a neighboring county.

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In the 1910 census of Saratoga township, Wilson County: on Howards Path, farmer Jesse Ward, 26; wife Arey, 32; and children William, 14, Walton, 10, Henrietta, 10, Susan, 6, Kizie, 5, and Juanita, 1 month.

In 1918, Charlie James Ruffin registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 22 May 1900; lived at Route #3, Walstonsburg, Greene County, N.C.; farmed for J.R. Eagles; and his nearest relative was Ida Ruffin.

On 25 January 1920, Charlie Ruffin, 21, of Saratoga township, son of Ida Ruffin, married Henretta Moore, 18, of Saratoga township, daughter of Ara Moore. Disciple minister Washington Little performed the ceremony at John Bynum’s residence.

In the 1920 census of Saratoga township, Wilson County: farmer Charles Ruffin, 19; wife Henrietta, 19; mother Ida, 50; sister Daisy, 13; and niece Mary, 12.

In the 1930 census of Saratoga township, Wilson County: farmer Charles Ruffin, 30; wife Henrietta, 28; and children Bertha, 9, Charlie Jr., 8, James R., 6, Juntia, 2, and Gladis L., 10 months.

In the 1940 census of Saratoga township, Wilson County: farmer Charles Ruffin, 39; wife Henrietta, 38; and children Bertha, 19, Charles, 17, James R., 16, Juanita, 12, Gladys Lee, 10, Christine, 8, Bruce, 7, Bertie Mae, 4, and Curtis, 10 months.

In 1942, Charles James Ruffin registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 12 May 1900 in Wilson; lived at Route 1, Fountain, Saratoga township, Wilson County; and farmed for J.B. Eagles.

In the 1950 census of Saratoga township, Wilson County: farmer Charles Ruffin, 49; wife Heneretta, 47; and children James, 25, Juanita, 23, Gladys, 20, Christine, 18, Bruce, 17, Bertha M., 14, and Curtis, 10.

Where we lived: tenant farmhouse.

By mid-twentieth century, as prosperous white farmers moved into town or built modern brick homes on their land, tenant farmers and sharecroppers moved into the wooden dwellings they left behind. By the end of the century, with the disappearance of this way of life, these houses were abandoned, and most have been torn down. 

A chance post on Facebook alerted me to this house off London Church Road. Though now ramshackle, the dwelling and several of its outbuildings still stand. African-American families lived in this house for decades, including that of Sarah Lizzie Woodard Cooper Ward, who was a great-granddaughter of Primitive Baptist preacher London Woodard.

The house, with its broad shed-roof porch.

The rear addition.

The interior — plaster walls with exposed laths.

Outbuildings.

The capped well that supplied water to the farm.

Many thanks to Rodney Richardson for bringing this house to my attention, and Anthony E. Reid Sr. for information on its London Woodard connection.

Recommended reading, no. 22: One Third of a Nation.

 

In the early 1930s, journalist Lorena Hickok traveled across the United States investigating the plight of Americans struggling through the Depression. One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression. is an annotated compilation of Hickok’s contemporaneous letters, composed as she moved from state to state.

Hickok passed through Wilson in February 1934 and duly filed a letter to Harry L. Hopkins, head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the agency charged with doling out relief to millions of unemployed and needy. She arrived in the midst of a farming crisis, as reductions in crop acreage forced hundreds of farm families off the land.

“As they move to town, they apply for direct relief. The intake office in Wilson today was so crowded you could hardly get into the place. Every house, every abandoned shack, is filled with them. They even break the locks off empty houses and move in.

“Members of the relief committee, two clergymen, the administrator, and the case work supervisor in Wilson today told me that 300 of these displaced tenants and their families have moved into Wilson — a town of about 13,000 population — in the last three years, and of that 300 families, 200 have moved in this winter. The case work supervisor told there were AT LEAST FIFTY CASES in which the landlord, to get rid of them, had moved them in himself and had paid their first week’s rent!

“Seventy-five percent of these families that have moved into Wilson, they told me, are Negroes. Most of them are illiterate. They are afflicted with tuberculosis and the social diseases. Of the white families many have pellagra and hookworm, although hookworm isn’t so common up here as it is farther South. They are a dead weight on the community, both from the social and the economic standpoints. They don’t even want to live in town. The administrator and the case work supervisor both said that there is a constant stream of them in and out of their offices, begging for a chance to ‘git a place on some farm.’

“They’re NOT all bums, either. They HAVEN’T come to town to get work in the mills or on CWA. They’ve come because there’s no place for them to live in the country. Every abandoned shack in the countryside is filled up.”

Dew children perish in fire.

Wilson Daily Times, 19 December 1911.

It is difficult to know what to take away from this erratum. Unfortunately, the previous day’s paper is not available for details of the Dew children’s tragedy.

——

  • Oscar Dew — in the 1910 census of Taylor township, Wilson County: farmer Oscar Dew, 32; wife Annie, 24, farm laborer; children George F., 2, and Bettie M., 5 months; sister-in-law Fannie Strickland, 26, widow, farm laborer; and “sister-in-law son” Sydney Woodard, 10, farm laborer. In the 1920 census, Oscar and Annie Dew’s children were George F., 12, Annie Bell, 5, Rita Bell, 2, and James Arthur, 5 months. Presumably, the children killed in the fire were Bettie and a child born after the 1910 census was taken.
  • Nora Woodard — most likely: in the 1900 census of Taylor township, Wilson County: farmer Alfred Woodard, 69; wife Sarah, 59; daughters Nora, 21, and Francis, 17; and servant Bessa Foard, 19. [It appears that Alfred Woodard died 1900-10 — did Nora inherit farmland from him?] In the 1912 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Woodard Norah (c) h s of Cemetery rd nr A C L Ry

Typical tenant farm house.

This early twentieth-century photo shows a typical tenant farm house with one or two rooms and a shed-roofed extension. Most African-American farmers in Wilson County were tenant farmers or sharecroppers and would have lived in a house similar to this one.

Photo courtesy of Stantonsburg Historical Society’s A History of Stantonsburg Circa 1780 to 1980 (1981).

Recommended reading, no. 7.

Published in 1990, Linda Flowers’ Throwed Away: Failures of Progress in Eastern North Carolina is not, strictly, on topic for Black Wide-Awake, but is very much BWA- adjacent. Using memory and experience as a framework, Flowers examines the demise of eastern North Carolina tenant farming and the failures of the limited industrialization that took its place. I do not know economics or sociology well enough to assess the merits of Flowers’ thesis, but the book’s glimpses of this disappeared life, rendered quietly, but devastatingly, offer me invaluable insight into the world of so many of the families I chronicle here. 

A sample:

“The ritual of hiring hands was the same as it had always been. A tenant would pull up in the dirt yard of a black family that had worked for him before, or that he had heard was all right help, and blow the horn, and after a while Eloise or Jessie or Dot — always it would be the mama or a grown girl — would come onto the porch or, if the mama, up to the truck door, and the man, after a bit of pointless jocularity a white person always carried on with a Negro, would get down to business.

“‘You gonna hep me on Tuesdays this year, ain’t you?’ The question would have sounded like the answer was perfectly plain. The woman would look off across the yard, her head and body sideways to the truck, hands on her hips, and, when she was ready, offer a reply.

Coley v. Artis: an introduction.

Though Coley v. Artis arose just over the county line in Wayne County’s Nahunta township, many of the men and women caught up in its scope had close links to Wilson County. The transcript of the trial proceeding is fascinating not only for its glimpses into their lives, but for the portrait it paints of a rural farming community that would have been immediately recognizable by anyone living just north of the line in Wilson County.

Detail, 1904 topographic map of Wilson Quadrangle, which includes northern Wayne County.

At the heart of Wayne County Superior Court proceedings stemming from the suit in J.F. Coley v. Tom Artis (1908) was a dispute over 30 acres of land. Thomas “Tom Pig” Artis began renting the property in 1881 from William J. Exum, a wealthy white farmer. In 1892, Exum’s widow Mary sold the land to Napoleon Hagans. In 1896, after Napoleon’s death, the land passed to his sons Henry and William S. Hagans and, in 1899, Henry sold his interest to his brother. In 1908, William S. Hagans sold the 30 acres to J. Frank Coley, a young white farmer. Tom Artis laid claim to the property, arguing that Napoleon Hagans had sold it to him. Tom claimed that the 800 pounds of cotton he yearly tendered to Napoleon Hagans (and later, his son William) was interest on a mortgage, but William Hagans and other witnesses maintained that the payment was rent. J.F. Coley filed suit and, after hearing the testimony of more than a dozen witnesses, the court decided in his favor.

The trial transcript is replete with testimony revealing the social and familial relationships among witnesses. Tom Artis testified that he rented the “Adam Artis place.” William Hagans testified that his father was in feeble health in 1896 when he called him and Henry together “under the cart shelter” to tell them he would not live long and did not know to whom the land would fall. William testified that Pole asked them to let “Pig” stay on as long as he paid rent, and they promised to do so. Tom Franks testified that “Pole was a first-rate business man.” Jonah Williams, Adam Artis’ brother, testified that he borrowed money from Napoleon to open a brickyard in the spring of 1893 and had preached his funeral. He also noted that “Tom married my sister [Loumiza Williams Artis].  He is not a member of my church. I turned him out. He is a Primitive Baptist. I preached Napoleon Hagans’ funeral.” Jesse Artis, another of Adam Artis’ brothers, testified that he had worked on Hagans’ property as a carpenter for 18 years and noted, “I don’t know that Tom and I are any kin, just by marriage.”  John Rountree testified that he was a tenant renting from Hagans on thirds. Simon Exum testified: “I am no kin to Tom [Artis] as far as I know, except by Adam.  His first wife was my wife [Delilah Artis Exum]’s sister.”  H.S. Reid testified that he was Tom Artis’ son-in-law.

Thomas Artis was a son of a free woman of color, Celia Artis, and her enslaved husband, Simon Pig. Though nearly all free colored Artises were descended from a common ancestor in southside Virginia, by the late 1800s clear understanding of their remote kinship links had faded. There were dozens of Artis families in Wayne County during the antebellum period, and the relationships between them are unknown. Celia Artis was a close neighbor of Adam Artis, but the families apparently did not regard themselves as kin. Still, they were inextricably intertwined. The Artises were also closely linked to other free families of color, including the Haganses and Reids, who had been neighbors in the Eureka area for generations. Celia Artis and Rhoda Reid — grandmother of Elijah L. Reid, J.D. Reid, and other Wilson residents — were the wealthiest free women of color in Wayne County. Adam Artis married Napoleon Hagans’ half-sister Frances Seaberry, whose father hailed from another free family of color. Another of Rhoda Reid’s grandsons, Henry S. Reid, married Tom Artis’ daughter. Henry’s first cousin Henry Reid married Adam Artis’ daughter Georgianna Artis. Adam Artis’ son William Marshall Artis and grandson Leslie Artis married Tom Artis’ nieces, Etta and Minnie Diggs. And on and on.

Documents found in file of the Estate of Thomas Artis (1911), Wayne County, North Carolina Estate Files, 1663-1979, familysearch.org

 

The death of Ben Summerlin.

Wilson Daily Times, 7 November 1932.

Ben Summerlin was 13 years old.

How that fact escaped the person who wrote this article, the person who described a boy as a “negro tenant farmer,” is inconceivable. Per his death certificate, Benjamin Summerlin was born 24 May 1919 in Wilson County to Benjamin Summerlin and Addaliza Rice. He died 5 November 1932. 

——

In the 1920 census of Gardners township, Wilson County: Benjamin Sumerlin, 24; wife Pearl, 22; and sons Harvey, 4, and Benjamin, 6 months.

In the 1930 census of Saratoga township, Wilson County: Analiza Sumerlin, 52, farmer, widow, and children Emma L., 18, Martha J., 15, Harry L., 16, and Bengiman, 10, all farm laborers. [It appears that Ben Summerlin’s death certificate contains a reporting error. Benjamin Summerlin was his father, but his mother was named Pearl. Annaliza Rice Summerlin was his (and Harvey Summerlin’s) grandmother.]

The death of John Henry Evans.

The cause of death on John Henry Evans‘ death certificate is fairly laconic: “brain injury due to auto accident.”

Newspaper accounts detail a more complicated story. About eight o’clock on the evening of April 11, Evans and J.D. O’Neal, on whose land he lived, were driving wagons to fertilizer to O’Neal’s farm near Lamm’s School [today, near the intersection of Interstate 95 and U.S. 264.] The men stopped on the shoulder of the road to talk to O’Neal’s brother. Both wagons were lit with lanterns. Erwin Stewart of Durham smashed into other wagons in a Graham truck and flipped over in a ditch. According to witnesses, Stewart’s truck had only one headlight working and had drifted partly on the shoulder of the road. The wagons were demolished, one mule was badly injured, and John Henry Evans was first thought dead. He was rushed to the “colored hospital.” As his death certificate notes, Evans lingered for five days before succumbing to injuries to his head.

Wilson Daily Times, 12 April 1929.

For all the carelessness hinted at in the initial report, a month later, Stewart was acquitted of a manslaughter charge in Evans’ death.

Wilson Daily Times, 17 May 1929.