How I Learned About the Great Depression
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Civil Rights leader Ralph David Abernathy recalled his childhood during the Great Depression. He was the son of an independent black farmer in Marengo County, Alabama, about ninety miles southwest of Montgomery. The family had a subsistence garden with “corn, beets, tomatoes, black-eyed peas, beans, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, okra, collard greens, turnips, mustard greens,” and an orchard with “peaches, plums, pears, figs, and apples.” Consequently, Ralph Abernathy recalls, “Everything I learned about the Great Depression was from a college textbook.”
