4:00. To Gordonton (35 minutes from the hotel in Hillsborough) to find the one-half mile along a country road photographed by Dorothea Lange in 1939, where she found a tobacco barn, several houses, and a Baptist church.
Dorothea Lange. “Refer to General Caption No. 11. Looking down country road in Person County.” July 3, 1939
The location as described in a memo written by a guide who accompanied Lange in the field is quite specific; otherwise it would be impossible to find. One of the houses Lange photographed is still here; the house itself seems abandoned, but there is a trailer out back, a white pickup truck parked along side it. The front of the house is in shadow, the sun shining on the back, best to photograph here in the morning. Across the street is a field of white houses, like trailers.
I believe the house is the one Lange refers to as House No. 2; in her report, she describes it thus: “the one and one half story part of this house (a story and a jump) was built fifty to sixty years ago; the two story part was built in 1900. It is owned by a widow whose husband died seventeen years ago. She says, ‘I run the place myself, and it’s a po’ run.’ she has lived here ever since she has married, but her husband’s people came when the big white oaks in the front yard were so small ‘you could drag a wagon over them.’ her sons lived in the houses nearest on either side, and another married son and a widowed daughter live with her. She told us about the Negro church below, and was very interested in our purposes.”
Dorothea Lange. “Refer to general Caption No. 11. House No. 2.” July 3, 1939
The “Negro church” Lange refers to is Young’s Chapel, “a Negro Baptist Church. The corner stone says ‘organized May 1887,’ Rev. C. J. Springfield. A cross in the yard has an inscription, this stone marks the place where J. W. Bradsher professed faith in Christ October 1891.”
Dorothea Lange. “July 3, 1939. Person County, North Carolina. Negro Church called Young’s Chapel, a Negro Baptist Church. The corner stone says “organized May, 1887,” Rev. C. J. Springfield. A cross in the yard has an inscription, this stone marks the place where J. W. Bradsher professed faith in Christ October 1891.”
5:30. A car is parked outside Youngs Chapel, and there are lights on in the lunchroom. A young Black woman is setting up for a revival meeting at 6:00. I show her the 1939 photographs of the old white frame church, which was torn down “before her time.” She thinks there may even have been another church in the meantime. Would folks be interested in a copy of the photograph of the 1939 church? “I would,” she says and gives me here address.
6:00. To Bess Whitt’s for dinner with Susan and Donald Hester (Bess’s husband is in Florida). Bess is a home economist for the North Carolina State Extension Service, so I brought her a 1939 memo by the chief home economist of the Farm Security Administrations Rural Rehabilitation Program, which I quoted from in Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field. “This is our history,” she says.
We eat on a screened porch with a view over the property, a farm Bess’s father, Robert Hester, once bought. Much talk about her father, an “S.O.B.” and a great guy, a perfectionist who insisted that all the children work on the farm. As a girl, Bess worked in the fields and topped tobacco. After dinner, Bess looks at Dorothea Lange’s photos and texts while Donald, Susan, and I review my photos of tobacco fields, bulk barns, and the tobacco warehouse. As Bess pages through the 1939 photographs, she is struck by how much tobacco farming in Lange’s time resembled that of the 1960s and 70s, and how much has changed in the thirty to forty years since. Bess’s father raised a family on 10-12 acres of tobacco: “in the 1960s and early 1970s that was how much he planted to raise a family of six children, and he made a decent living. That’s not many acres in today’s terms.”
Bess’s father cured tobacco in wood barns like those depicted in Lange’s pictures: “That was a wonderful treat to go and spend the night in the barn when daddy was curing.” “I remember your daddy curing tobacco with wood after bulk barns came out (in the 1970s),” says Donald, “One year the tip leaves were as long as my leg. It was so long he had to hang it on every other tier pole. And when he cured that barn of tobacco, it was like mahogany, it was so pretty.”
Dorothea Lange. “Refer to General Caption No. 20.” July 3, 1939
Anne Whiston Spirn. One of Donald Hester’s bulk barns. October 10, 2007.
Dorothea Lange. “Refer to General Caption No. 6 (section on ‘putting in’) and General Caption No. 7. Sam’s son handing up strung tobacco inside the barn.” July 7, 1939
Dorothea Lange. “Refer to General Caption No. 7. Ten year old son of tobacco tenant can do a ‘hands work’ at tobacco harvest time.” July 7, 1939
Bess’s father’s tobacco always commanded top price at the tobacco auctions. Like some farmers today, he’d put the best leaves on top (“putting a face” on the tobacco), the lesser leaves just below the top layer, and excellent leaves down in the center so if a grader reached down into the core, he would pull out leaves that were just as good as those on top.
The whole process of selling and buying tobacco has changed within the last five to ten years. There used to be auctions, with the whole warehouse full of tobacco and five to six buyers, one from every company. Grading tobacco was done by government employees. “A town like Roxboro would have four tobacco graders,” says Donald, “Those four men would come into the house ahead of the buyers, and they’d grade every pile in the warehouse. And then the auctioneer, he’d line those buyers up, and they’d go down through the rows of tobacco, and he’d sell it as fast as they could walk.”
Marion Post Wolcott. “Tobacco auctioneer (in white gloves) and buyers during auction sale in warehouse in Mebane, Orange County, North Carolina.” November 1939
Marion Post Wolcott. “Auction sale in tobacco warehouse, Danville, Virginia.” October 1940
Tobacco auctions came to an end more than five years ago. Today farmers contract to a specific tobacco company, though they may also sell tobacco directly to an independent warehouse. Grading is now done by the tobacco companies (see journal for October 11, Oxford, North Carolina). Seems like a conflict in interest since the lower the grade the less the company pays. “They have the farmer over a barrel,” says Donald. He signs contracts with two companies for 100,000 pounds each, which gives him the flexibility to take one or the other depending on price (he grows between 100-125,000 pounds per year).
At the tobacco warehouse in Oxford on Thursday, two young men were doing most of the grading, but Donald explains that four older men were also overseeing the grading process. They work for the tobacco companies, including a consultant who was once the head tobacco grader in Roxboro for the US Department of Agriculture.
In the past, with price supports for different grades of tobacco, farmers were guaranteed a quota based on acreage. If a farmer didn’t sell all the tobacco, it went into “stabilization’: the federal government would buy the unsold tobacco, process it, and store it. When the “buyout” of the tobacco subsidy took place a few years ago, farmers were compensated $10 for every pound of tobacco quota they were entitled to. A farmer who owned 100,000 pounds of quota and grew the tobacco himself, got $1,000,000 spread out over ten years. Owners who did not grow the tobacco themselves, got $7 per pound and the farmer who grew it got $3 per pound.
Our conversation turns to American agriculture and its future. Are any of your kids going to farm? I ask. “I hope not,” replies Donald. That’s exactly what this farmer in eastern Oregon told me. He said, “If I had a son and he wanted to farm, I’d run him off.” Donald: “Um hmm. He’d do him a favor too.” Bess: “The only way a young person can actually farm is if they step right into their daddy’s business and they don’t have any capital outlay. And they still are gambling.” But what does that say about the future of American agriculture?
“American agriculture has the ability to produce a lot on a small plot. We’re able to produce so well. We’ve got that technique, that research where it needs to be,” says Bess. But American agriculture is becoming larger farms, corporate farms. “And, with that, farm life is not what farm life used to be. We’re losing some family structure with the family working together on the farm, and we’re losing kids knowing the value of getting in there and doing hard work. And that is one of the saddest things about the state of agriculture today. The kids that actually had to do some hands-on work on the farm have a work ethic and they know how to make things work with what you’ve got.”
For me one of the saddest things that has come from visiting all the places Dorothea Lange photographed in 1939 is that I have met so many wonderful farmers, but few who have kids who are farming. One Oregon farmer told me: “The family farm is dead. It’s already lost. My generation is the last.” “That’s right,” says Donald.. And Bess: That’s sad, but it’s true. There were six of us. None of us are farmers. In fact our farm is pretty much stagnant.”
On the photographs:
Dorothea Lange’s black and white photographs were taken in 1939, the color by Anne Whiston Spirn in 2007. Read the stories behind these photographs in Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field.
The black and white photographs of the tobacco auctions were taken by Marion Post Wolcott. Lange’s and Wolcott’s photographs are in the Library of Congress.
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