Interac...

[1] [1] Today is my twelfth birthday. When Mama called me for dinner, I found a present waiting for me at the table. It was wrapped in old newspaper, and I wondered what it could be. Mama, Daddy, my fifteen-year-old sister Mary, and my nine-year-old brother Buck sang "Happy Birthday," then urged me to open my gift. I tore off the newspaper to find this very journal that I'm writing in now!

[2] [2] I was surprised to get a present at all because Daddy had told us not to expect anything for our birthdays this year. Our farm is struggling, and money is tight. I don't know how my parents found a way to buy the journal, but I'm so grateful that they did!

[3] [3] After we ate, I went to the room I share with my sister and brother. I opened the journal and wrote my name on the inside cover: Ivy Mitchell. Below that, I added the year: 1942.

[4] [4] Then I pulled out an old shoebox I keep under my bed. It holds all the things I love most in the world: a bright, white pebble, a dried red rose pressed flat, and an old-fashioned hair comb. Beside them was a photograph of me in front of the schoolhouse. For a moment, I stared at the black-and-white image of a brown-skinned girl with braids in pigtails. Then I put some glue on the back of the photo and pressed it inside the journal, below my name. "There," I said to myself, "that's a good start."

[5] [5] Today is the first day of planting season. My family has a small farm in Mississippi, and I spent the day with my parents and siblings plowing the field and planting cotton seeds. By October, the plants will have bloomed and the cotton will be ready to harvest.

[6] [6] We all help out on our farm, even Buck. Days like today, we have to skip school to plant seeds or pick cotton. I don't like skipping school, because if I miss too many classes, it's hard to keep up. But I don't have a choice, because there's no one to work on the farm but us.

[7] [7] That's because we're sharecroppers. A white businessman named Mr. Greenfield owns the land that we live on, and we pay rent by giving him a large percentage of our crop.

[8] [8] Mr. Greenfield also runs a store in town where we get everything we need for the farm, like seeds, fertilizer, and tools. We also owe him for that, and it's hard to grow enough cotton to pay for everything. I once heard Mama whisper to Daddy, "We can never get out from under this debt if he piles on more and more each year." I'm crossing my fingers that we have a good crop this year.

[9] [9] I got soaking wet walking home from school today. I was with my best friend Eve when it started to rain. At first, it was just a few drops, but then buckets of rain began to fall from the sky. Eve and I broke into a run to get home as fast as we could.

[10] [10] But my school is far away, and it's a long walk there and back. There's another school that's much closer; it's only half a mile from home. But Eve and I are not allowed to go there. Only white children can attend that school. We go to a school for Negro children that's another mile and a half away from where we both live.

[11] [11] The school for white children is not only closer, it's also nicer. It doesn't have a hole in the roof like my school does. Each student has his or her own books, too. At my school, we have to share, and Eve and I sit together so we can pass a set of math, science, reading, and history books back and forth or read over each other's shoulders.

[12] [12] That's how the world works here in Mississippi. We live with segregation, which is a system that's set up to keep white people apart from black people. There are separate schools, separate bathrooms, even separate water fountains. At the movies or restaurants, black people have to sit in a separate section. There are some places that we're not allowed to go into at all, like certain hotels or libraries.

[13] [13] It's like that all over the South because of a set of laws that people call "Jim Crow." Mama says that Jim Crow is a way to keep black people from having the same opportunities that white people do. I wish that we didn't have to live this way. I only want to have the same rights as other kids!

[14] [14] Mr. Greenfield stopped by the farm today to see how this year's crop is coming along. He gave Daddy a bill for everything that we owe so far this season. It was added to the money that we still owe from last year. Even though we had a good crop last year, it was not enough to cover the entire debt.

[15] [15] Mr. Greenfield makes me nervous. He frowns a lot and is disrespectful to us. He talks to Mama and Daddy like they are children. I saw Daddy's jaw tighten as Mr. Greenfield said, "You better pay off all your bills this year, boy. I won't stand for any laziness on one of my farms."

[16] [16] It's not right for Mr. Greenfield to say such things. He knows we work hard and are not the least bit lazy. He also knows that my siblings and I miss school to take care of the farm, while his son and daughter get to go to school every day.

[17] [17] I could tell Daddy was trying not to answer angrily because men like Mr. Greenfield sometimes hurt Negroes for "talking back." Last year, a black man in our town was beaten for accidentally bumping into a white man in the street. The South can be a very, very hard place for black people to live.

[18] [18] As I was washing the dishes after dinner, Daddy sat at the kitchen table going over our bills. I know he wishes he could find a job other than being a sharecropper. People who work in stores and factories in our area can make good money, but those places refuse to hire Negro workers. It's another part of the discrimination that we face. So, many black people are stuck working on small farms and facing a mountain of debt. "Everything depends on this new crop," I heard Daddy mutter to himself. "It's the only thing that will save us."

[19] [19] Today, we got a letter from Mama's brother, Uncle Eugene. He used to be a sharecropper like us, but he left Mississippi not long ago when the bills got too high. At the beginning of the year, he took a train all the way out west and moved to a city called Los Angeles in California. I couldn't imagine traveling so far away, or leaving my friends and family behind, but Uncle Eugene felt he had no other choice.

[20] [20] In his letter, he told us that he found a job at a factory that builds airplanes. The planes will help carry supplies and soldiers for the war effort. He says that the factories need a lot of workers, so women and Negroes have the chance to get good jobs.

[21] [21] "Wow, they hire Negroes to work in factories there?" I asked.

[22] [22] "California sure sounds different from Mississippi!" Buck said, and we all chuckled.

[23] [23] Today in school, we talked about people like my Uncle Eugene. I learned that many, many Negroes have been leaving the South for years now. They leave to find better jobs, get a better education, and escape segregation. In the past, they traveled to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and other cities in the North to find work. Today, a lot of people are heading out west to places like Los Angeles. This kind of movement of people from one place to another is called a "migration."