Eating Jim Crow Part 2
Courtesy of the Florida Memory Project
During the Great Depression one of FDR’s New Deal Program was the Works Project Administration (WPA). It hired unemployed writers. America Eats was one of research projects they worked on. Rosa Lee Johnson’s parents moved to Camilla, Georgia where they continued to work as sharecroppers. Rosa Lee fondly recalled hog-killing season in Camilla. Neighbors gathered together to share the extensive labor involved in butchering about a dozen animal and making lard, and preparing and storing hams and sausages in a smoke house. In exchange for their labor they gained access to cracking (pig skin cut up into pieces and deep fried in lard) served with hot corn bread, and buckets of chitlins (intestines) trotters (feet) and hog maws (cheeks) to cook at home.
