Prairie Girls

 

Callie Mae

 Callie Mae Sullivan is my name, and I am the daughter and granddaughter of former slaves in Mississippi. After the War Between the States, my pappy and two older brothers were sharecroppers for the former master of the plantation, Mr. Sullivan. Pappy grew cotton for the owner, and we grew a few hogs, chickens and raised a vegetable garden behind our cabin. Granny and I took care of them while the men worked in the fields.

My mam died when I was little so I don’t remember much about her. My granny raised my brothers, Tom and Will, and me. She was mighty strict with all of us. She sang songs and talked about life being an adventure. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but agreed I would like an adventure someday too. I will tell you more about my life next time.

 

 

Required Reading

I was in grade school when I first read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. My grandmother and grandfather had the very book shown above in their “library” which consisted of several bookcases filled with books. According to the inscription, the book was a gift to my grandfather from one of his aunts in 1897. My grandfather was eight years old at the time.

My grandparents did not have a television and unless it was planting season or threshing time, read a short time after the noon meal (dinner to them) and again each night before bedtime, which was at sundown. During the summers, I often spent a week with them, and it was during one of those stays Grandma suggested I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I still remember our discussions of both the events in the book and the book’s effect on our nation.

It has been stated upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, President Abraham Lincoln said to her, “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War.” (1) Would America be different today if every child growing up in the 1950’s read Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

1.      David B. Sachsman; S. Kittrell Rushing; Roy Morris (2007). Memory and Myth: The Civil War in Fiction and Film from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Cold Mountain. Purdue University Press. p. 8.