A glimpse of the day and the life of a boy named Tom who was twelve years old, who his father was a sharecropper and lived in a small cabin in Alabama with his parents and siblings. “ Tom, the son of a black sharecropper in Alabama…. All of them worked for the landowner, along with other sharecropper families living on the same cotton plantation. “Tom gets up, or is pulled out of bed, at four o’clock in the summer, by his older brother, who is quicker than he to hear the landlord’s bell,” the economist wrote. “Work for the entire plantation force is “from can see to can’t see’ (i.e., from daylight to dark ), …. “Tom is a good steady chopper and can do over half a man’s work. At picking he can do two-thirds. Peter aged 9, does considerably less than that. …Tom had attended part of three grades. The Negro school in his district runs four months ‘normally’ (the white school runs six); but in the year 1932-33 it closed altogether, and since then it has been averaging less than it is often too cold to go to school without shoes. So from January on Tom and Peter have been taking turns in one pair.” (Freeman2005, pg.57)
“African Americans suffered more than whites, since their jobs were often taken away from them and given to whites. “ ("The great depression, np" )
“ Harold Jeffries and five friends rode the rails out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1935. “”As black kids from the North we’d heard of racial discrimination but not one of us had actual experience with harsh prejudice,”” he recalled. “”Our first frightening encounter came at the Union Pacific roundhouse in Kansas City. Some of the kid drank from a ‘Whites Only’ fountain. We were literally run out of the [railroad] yards.” (Freeman 2005, pg.79
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The great depression coupled with segregation seemed to prove a serious struggle for African Americans during the Great Depression and would have affects on those that it impacted. The account of one boy who was living on the railroads, had to endure extra hardships because of his race and had to deal with extra discrimination. Harold Jefferies was a fifteen-year-old boy that had to put up with this harsh reality upon his entrance to the south. “ Harold Jeffries and five friends rode the rails out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1935. “”As black kids from the North we’d heard of racial discrimination but not one of us had actual experience with harsh prejudice,”” he recalled. “”Our first frightening encounter came at the Union Pacific roundhouse in Kansas City. Some of the kid drank from a ‘Whites Only’ fountain. We were literally run out of the [railroad] yards.” (Freeman 2005, pg.79) The great depression coupled with segregation seemed to prove a serious struggle for African Americans during the Great Depression and would have affects on those that it impacted.