It was December 1949; the migrant workers had all left Dutch Neck for the season. As was the custom, each farmer often picked an outstanding family to stay over through the winter and live in a small cottage behind the farmhouse. The family would help with sorting and storing the crop, equipment and building repairs, and other odd jobs. In addition, they would be there for spring planting. Because workers were paid 10 cents per a hundred pound bag for picking potatoes, migrant work was a family affair. After all, it took 100 bags to equal ten dollars! Our back lawn went right up to a 50 acre potato field. On hands and knees in the dirt, their hands moved like lighting –in order to have a chance at life. When migrant children were absent from our second grade class, we all understood they were picking potatoes or tomatoes. Education for migrant children was, at best, “hit and miss.” It was not unusual for businesses with “clean jobs” to post signs saying “No Colored Need Apply.”
Carla’s family was chosen to “stay on” at the Webb farm through the winter of 1949. Even during the harvest season Carla’s parents sent her to school. Carla was one lucky girl! Most black kids didn’t have a chance at making it to the eighth-grade graduation. They were on their knees in the dirt (sometimes mud) picking potatoes. So, Carla got to spend the winter in a Northern school. At Christmas it was the custom for each child to draw a name from a box, then buy and wrap a gift for that person. The gift could cost no more than 25 cents. As it turned out, Carla drew my name. Gifts were opened the day before vacation at our party. When I unwrapped the paper napkin from around the gift Carla had given me, I found three rusty bobby pins. At first, I remember thinking that Carla didn’t like me. Then a group of children came over to compare gifts. The children laughed and made fun of the gift Carla had given me --Carla cried. Later, Carla came to me to explain that she didn’t have the nerve to ask her mother for the 25 cents to buy a gift; then, finally, it was too late --the dreaded party day had arrived.
I wish that I had been courageous enough to have said something to Carla that day. Instead, I became frightened, speechless, and closed off –a tough little boy trying not to cry. The Bible teaches wholeness when it says, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). So, Carla I do want you to know that I am crying with you. Even when I was eight years old, I noticed that my family wasn’t crawling around on our hands and knees in the dirt picking potatoes for 10 cents a 100 pound bag. I was there in 1949; I didn’t forget you. Even as a little girl, you were the strong one in our class.