Oscar Fendler Discusses Landlords, Tenant Farmers, and Sharecroppers (1992)

I'm talking about here. You have to make a distinction as we've discussed about tenants and sharecroppers. And they, let's just say they provided them with 100% of what they deemed to be necessities. That didn't only include the right to go to the commissary or the company store and buy things, but everything you could think of. Suppose you were sick, they provided you with a doctor. Suppose you had to go to a dentist, there weren't any dentists around that vicinity, they'd take you to Memphis. Or if you had to have a surgeon, they'd take you to the hospital in Memphis. I'm trying to think of, they not only, in Lee Wilson for instance, let's say in the town, proper, they had about 500 houses that were owned. And those houses, they provided them with water, provided them with electricity, provided them with sewage.

That was for the tenants or for the employees that there in Wilson worked for the store or worked in the factories. Out on the farms, it was a narrow, more narrow list. They hadn't gotten electricity there in 1933. That didn't come until they created the rural electrification group. That's under Roosevelt. Later, they all got them there. But they, substantially the same things were provided. Now go to the sharecropper. The sharecropper was a different, you know, species. Sharecropper didn't have anything. The tenant owned his mules, he owned his farm equipment, everything. He was ready to work, he and his family, for, you know produce the crops. The tenant then was hired by -- I mean, the sharecropper was hired by the tenant. He was actually an employer, or employee relationship, so that's really what he was. They didn't own anything except themselves maybe and what clothes they had on or little food in the house.

And it was up to the tenant to provide the sharecropper with his necessities of life. He did that for them. They worked and they got a share of the crop they produced. Kelly: You also said that on the Wilson farm they had recreational facilities, like it