By Louise Burrell
My parents were sharecroppers in Sunflower, Mississippi, and we lived in an old shack on Mr. Thomas’s land. The place was so cold and the cracks in the ceiling were so wide that when it would rain we had to put buckets down to catch all the water. On clear nights you could see the sky while you lay in bed.
In the 1960s, people in Mississippi couldn’t have slaves anymore, but some people could surely manage to take all your labor and money. You could pick or chop cotton from five thirty in the morning until five thirty in the evening, six days a week. Then you would have to go home and shower and cook for your family and clean your home. As a sharecropper, you had to give half the cotton you grew to the family who owned the land. You also had to use the owner’s scales to weigh your crop and the owner’s cotton gin to clean the cotton—which meant the owner kept the seeds for the next planting. You even had to sell your crop through the owner’s broker. The profit you earned from your work got smaller with each step in the process. The same people who owned the land also rented you the farm equipment and owned all the gas stations and grocery stores. They ended up getting back the little bit of money they paid you when you had to buy necessities.
We weren’t the only family that lived on Mr. Thomas’s land. There were many other families. Everyone we knew was in search of a better way of life. My aunt was the first one to move north to Worcester, Massachusetts. Later, she came back for her sister. From that point on, my whole extended family went north, one small group at a time. Eventually, it was our turn.
One day, my dad said to my mom: “Mary, let’s go. Everyone is ready, and it’s time for us to put the kids in this old truck. We’re heading to Massachusetts! Tell your mama and daddy we’ll be back as soon as we can for the rest of the kids.” Eventually my dad said, “Mary, wake up! We’re here. This is our new apartment for now, but it won’t be long as we’ll be in our own home. We’re going to work hard and make that happen.”
I was just two years old at the time of the move. My younger sister was the baby, and my brother Sam was a year older than me. We are the ones that came with my parents. We were the youngest; the older ones had to stay behind and wait for my parents to return for them. This is how it was for the people coming from the South.
After my other brothers and sisters made it here, we were ready to begin our new lives in Worcester. My parents were hard workers, and just like they said, two years after we had arrived, we were moving into our new home. My dad decided he wanted to be a landlord, so he bought a three-family house and we moved into the first floor.
My dad worked as a special police officer for the Chicago Beef Company, and my mom worked at Brown Shoe. On my dad’s days off he would take us all out to the park or to a fishing hole or the beach. The summers were the best. My dad would make us homemade snow cones and ice cream. Oh, the tastes of those treats still dance in my mind!
You would think a man with fourteen kids wouldn’t have time for anything else besides work and family, but not my dad. He was a Mason, and my mom was an Eastern Star. In addition, he was a deacon in our church, and my mom was a deaconess. And my dad also started a charity called Faith, Hope and Charity, which collected clothes for the less fortunate. Clothing was sent all over the world to those who needed it.
Mom was one of the greatest cooks, and our dinner would be ready every day when we came home from school. The smells that would come from her kitchen! She would always call us into the kitchen when she wanted us to learn how to prepare the meal she was making. That was fun, too. If it was a cake, we got to lick the spoon.
Together, my parents taught us important life lessons. God and family came first. Every Sunday, everybody in the house goes to church. If you date a boy, you first bring him home and introduce him to your father. Dad would say yes or no, and if it was yes, the boy had to come to your living room to have the date. If your parents aren’t at home, you can’t go outside unless you have previous permission. And you keep your room clean.
In 1974 my dad had a stroke that left his left side paralyzed. He was going to have to go to rehab, but the day my dad was leaving the hospital he had a heart attack and didn’t make it.
I still remember sitting on that front seat in the church with tears streaming down my face. So many people came to say their goodbyes to my dad for the last time that I could see he meant a lot to a lot of people.
A year after my dad died, we moved from the home our dad had made for us to a five-bedroom apartment, and there my mom did her best to make sure we had all we needed. I can say the love and lessons that were shared in our home will never be forgotten.
I’ll never forget all the things my father and mother did for others, and I’m glad some of that rubbed off on me. For example, my mother was very involved in doing work for our church. As a deaconess, she had a major role in church affairs, and she had a special place to sit during services every Sunday. Because of her influence, I decided to become a Sunday school teacher when I was only twelve years old. The late Reverend T. Hargrove was so impressed that he arranged for me to receive an award from the city. It made my mother very proud.
Mom was a very soft-spoken woman who always showed her kindness for others. Everywhere she went, everyone loved her. But she also had remarkable strength. With only a ninth-grade education, my mom decided she wanted to get her GED—and she did. She also started her own home daycare and ran it until 2007.
Even without Dad helping, she worked hard to move the family forward. One day Mrs. Betty Price called my mom and said: “Mrs. Burrell, your daughter is turning sixteen, and we would like for her to be a debutante. If you accept, she will be groomed to take her place in society, and she will be introduced to the public at a formal ball.” My mother said yes, and from that point on I had my hands full. I had to pick a role model and write an essay about how she inspired me. My model was Harriet Tubman. We also had to learn how to set a proper table and how to waltz. The best part for me was wearing a long white gown with long white gloves. Because I was so tall I had to wear ballerina slippers instead of heels. It was a night I’ll never forget, nor will I ever forget Mrs. Elizabeth “Betty” Price, who made all this happen. I was only the second black debutante in Worcester.
If my parents hadn’t had the courage to leave their home in Sunflower, Mississippi, all those years earlier, my life would have been very different. After all, Sunflower County was infamous for the way it treated African Americans. It was the home of Parchman State Prison, where the Freedom Riders were jailed. The barn where Emmett Till was killed was also in Sunflower County. My parents never talked to me about Emmett Till—but I’m sure that’s why they never let me or my siblings go south to visit my grandparents. Even though they had been brought up in a place that tried to teach them they were worthless, the members of my family proudly marched with Martin Luther King. And I think the same strength that allowed them to march is what allowed my mother and father to move our family north—get jobs, join organizations, establish a foundation, and help their family and neighbors build better lives.
When my mother died in 2020, my long white debutante dress was still hanging in my mother’s closet. I think it always reminded her of how far we’d come from the sharecropper’s shack in Sunflower, Mississippi.
