Question

THE STORY SURFACED in the 1930s, but the realities it depicted mirrored the experiences of scores of black men and women, probably a sizable majority, in the late-nineteenth-century South. A white man and a black man happened upon two boxes at a rural crossroads (where so much seems to happen in southern black lore). Having spotted the boxes first, the black man ran ahead and opted for the larger box. Upon opening it, he found picks, shovels, and hoes. He then turned around to see how the white man had fared. "Well de Wite man he got a little box and when he open hit dar war pens an pencils a paper and big count book wat he keeps wat de blackman owes em in. And its de way hits been ever since. De Blackman just can't outrigger de Wite man for he sure cut yer down."'9 The pens and pencils simply put the finishing touches on the complex arrangements between agricultural labor and capital that emerged after emancipation and persisted until World War II. The system evolved fitfully, and the arrangements varied from place to place, but a recognizable pattern soon emerged. Most plantations were subdivided into individual "farms," ranging usually from ten to thirty acres. The planter rented these "farms" or plots to black families; in many cases, he also furnished the necessary tools, work animals, and seed, and shared the cost of fertilizer. Establishing themselves on their plots, the tenant families worked on "halves," paying the planter one-half of the crop they raised; if the family supplied their own tools and animals, they paid one-fourth to one-third of the crop. In either case, they might have to pledge another portion of the prospective crop to the supplying merchant (often the landowner serving in that capacity) for the food and clothing he "furnished" them. In place of plantations, then, a new system of agricultural labor settled into place in which some blacks worked as share-tenants, paying a share of the crop as rent, and some as individual sharecroppers, exchanging their labor for a share of the profits on the crop they produced, less the deductions for the housing, the provisions, the tools, the seed, and the farm animals advanced ("furnished") to them during the year. Substantial numbers of blacks worked under neither tenantry nor sharecropping but as hired wage hands.

*Question: Explain the meaning of the story of the two boxes.

Answer 1

The story of the two boxes, one which was bigger and had picks, shovels, and hoes, the other which had pens and pencils, an acountbook, and was smaller, depicts the two sections of our society. The black people were made to choose the bigger box deliberately by whites which was meant for labor and hardship for the blacks. While the white people took the smaller box and maintained the supremacy and power over the blacks by keeping the accounts of the blacks.