Page 6 - myStory-myJourney (Demo 1)_Neat

myStory-myJourney (Rev 2.1)

PREFACE
I was born on April 26, 1939, in Leflore, Leflore County, Mississippi.
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My family was sharecropped on a farm in Leflore.
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My Mother was Josephine Keys Smith (age 17 at marriage). Born in 1922, she only lived to be
twenty-six.
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My father was JC Smith (age 20 at marriage). He was born in 1919 and lived to be seventh Three.
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They had four kids:
Me, George Henry Smith, was born on the farm in Leflore, Mississippi, in April 1939.
My brother, Charles Henry Smith born on the farm in Leflore, September 1941, when I was one and
a-half years old.
My sister, Jane Yvonne Smith born on the farm in Leflore, June 1942, when I was three years old.
My sister, Dorothy Gene Smith was born in Chicago, in August,1944, when I was 5 years old.
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All except my sister, Dorothy Gene (born in Chicago), lived on a farm in Leflore, the home of my
great great, Sarah Topp Jolliff, (Big Mama), born a slave in 1855, my great grandmother, Jane Jolliff
Sander (Mama Jenny) born 1877, my mother, Josephine Keys Smith.
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Also on the farm with us were her three younger Brothers and 4 younger Sisters.
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I s ll remember ge ng up at five o’clock in the morning, to the smell fatback and coffee, before
going to the co on field, especially riding on the co on sacks of my Aunt Alma (age 13) or one of my
twin uncles, Uncle Lue or Uncle Nudge (ages 16), the youngest sibling of my mother.
• Going to co on gen on Saturday.
• Spending all day Sunday in church.
• Traveling back and forward between Greenwood Mississippi, where my grandmother lived
and Chicago, Illinois where mother and father were living at the me.
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The weekends during the summer were special.
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On Saturday, my uncles hitch up the mules to the wagon, with the co on picked during the week,
and off to the co on gen we went.
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Sundays were also special, there I got to play with kids my age a er Sunday School.
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Sunday School was remarkably interes ng. Especially Bible Study. Regardless how hard I studied, the
Bible that made no sense to me. I ques oned every verse. But answers “don’t ques on God”, and
some mes followed by slap across the mouth. I really wanted to believe and accept what I thought
were nonsense. Because I spent so much the Bible, my family thought that I would grow to be a
perched.
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A er my father was dra ed into the Army in 1942, my mother had moved to Chicago. I, along with
my younger brother and younger sister moved to Greenwood Mississippi, to live with our grand
Parents, my step grandfather, Sam Spanks and my grandmother, Eva Sanders Spink.

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