I was a high-minded young nigger and was full "I thought I could manage my business better and dat I was gonna be able to own a place o' my own someday. Vowed to break with a bleak past of arduous and mostly unrewarded labor. But as a young man Charlie Holcombe aspired to improve himself and be independent of whites, and he possessed an abundance of confidence about his ability to succeed. Neither Charlie's father nor his grandfather had owned the land they worked. You 'member dat, and you won't have no trouble wid folks when you grows up." As long as he is in his mudhole he is all right, but when he gits out he is in for a passel of trouble. "Son," his grandfather observed, "a catfish is a lot likeĪ nigger. Grandfather suddenly pulled it out on the bank, where it thrashed about until it died. He carefully lifted the fish out of the creek, let it thrash about, then lowered the lineĪnd returned the fish to the water. After catching a large catfish, Grandfather Holcombe toyed with it for a time, admonishing his grandson to watch him.
O' thinkin'." And sometimes he shared his thoughts with Charlie, his youngest grandson, often imparting practical lessons drawn from his own life on how a black boy might hope to survive in the South less than half a centuryĬharlie remembered one lesson in particular. As they sat there, waiting for the fish to bite, Grandfather would "do a heap The fields, helped his grandfather with the chores and often accompanied him to the nearby creek to catch "a mess o' catfish" for supper. Charlie Holcombe, considered too young and frail to work in But he performed other chores, slopping the hogs and feeding the chickens. Grandfather Holcombe did not work in the field he had "de miseries" in his back and walked with a stick. The growing season, as the soil was poor and the labor that much more demanding.
It was important to be in the field at sunup during His father, a tenant tobacco farmer, roseĮach morning at four o'clock, laid the logs for a fire, and roused the children, while Charlie's mother prepared a breakfast consisting of a pot of grits and a slab of salt pork. THE PINE-BOARD SHACK in which Charlie Holcombe spent his childhood in the late nineteenth century rested on top of a red clay hill about a quarter of a mile from the main road in Sampson County, North Carolina. From a song popularized by Louis Armstrong That was the way of life that I was born and raised into. Had to do whatever the white man directed em to do, couldn't voice their heart's desire. Had to act inĪ way just as though everything was all right. They felt like motherless children-they wasn't satisfied but thy had to live under the impression that they were. My grandmother and other people that I knowed grew up in slavery time, they wasn't satisfied with their freedom.
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