Emma Gant: A Historical Analysis

Pouring rain on the lush green foliage of Southwestern Mississippi marked my birth; April 3, 1938, born on the Poplar Hill Plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi, the eighth of thirteen children. My parents, Willie Jackson and Sarah Whitney Jackson spent their entire lives in Jefferson County, born, baptized, married in 1926, died in Jefferson County and buried at the Poplar Hill Cemetery behind the church. I knew very few of the family stories and was not interested until I was an adult. Questions about the experiences during the Civil War or reconstruction, were seldom spoken of, the guilt of beatings, the shame of miscegenation, cooperation with the slaveholder, the humiliation of these events became the secrets families kept.

Grandmother Emma, died at Poplar Hill Farm in April 1956 and laid to rest at the Poplar Hill Cemetery. My grandfather, Theodore, “Thado”, a man of calm, pleasant disposition, compassionate, sweet-tempered, a man of a gentle demeanor. Though I was very young when he passed away, I always felt that he loved his grandchildren, and my thoughts of him are warm and comforting, and I remember what I said as a child “he was a very nice

I recall an incident that took place when I was quite young, but remember it well. My dad had promised my two older brothers a new suit of clothes, if they had finished some field work and they did just that. Dad took the harvest to the mill after being weighed in, the mill owner determined that he had only enough to break even and would not receive any additional money. So, of course dad could not make the purchase for my brothers. My brothers both knew that they had harvested sufficient crops to exceed what they said my father owed, enough for the suits, and cash for my dad. This disrespect of their father and their hard work not being rewarded with fair compensation, so angered my brothers they left that night, moving to