Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Minton
Remember the movie "Sounder." The movie had the father going to jail for a year because he stole a ham and some sausages to feed his family. The reality in much of the South was that black men were arrested on trumped charges so they could be put to work as virtual slaves. I won't go into details of this practice but the book version of Sounder implied it: the father spent three years as a slave until he was injured such that he was of no further economic use to his captors.
Joe Minton
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I remember Dad reading "Sounder" to me at a very early age. (THANK YOU Joe, for reminding me of the name; I have been searching for years for the title!) The story haunted me for a long time. Almost thirty years later I can remember vividly some of the passages, particularly the dialog of the arresting cops. When I asked my father why the boy's father was taken away to jail just for stealing a ham, I remember the sadness in Dad's face as he stopped reading and explained racism to me. That was a very powerful lesson to learn at a very tender age. I'm glad that Dad didn't "sanitize" that story.