Witness Docs from Stitcher

Previously on Ernie's Secret

I don't think that my father thought there were communists around every corner.

I think he thought that there could be communists around most any corner.

And I think he saw his job at figuring out which corners to keep track of

and which he didn't need to worry about.

When you think about what was happening, you know, we didn't even have the right to vote.

So who would we tell FBI what to do?

I guess we was in the field when the Rooster was born.

Whatever time that was just break the day, you know, we had to get up and we had to go to the hospital.

It was fall 1960 and it was time to pick cotton.

In Fayette County, Tennessee, everything revolved around cotton season.

Even school, kids went to class in the summer so they could pick cotton in the fall.

You know what, you get used to it.

The cotton would be so fluffy and pretty at times.

It would just like a way of life.

So you just kind of like look forward to being out of school to do those things, you know.

Because you could play in the field.

Pockets were sharecroppers, like pretty much every other black family in Fayette County,

the land that they farmed on belonged to someone else.

And no matter how hard they worked, somehow they were always hiding themselves still in debt to the white landowner.

And you almost broke even so every year it was like, you had to just give it all away.

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