Enduring Years: A Migrant Cotton Picker's Memoir
Listen to the interview with Dr. Griffin:
About this interview
Enduring Years: A Migrant Cotton Picker's Memoir is the story of Mr. Billie G. Griffin. The editor of his memoir is Dr. Gloria Griffin, a noted Oklahoma educator. Dr. Griffin is present to discuss his life and story.
Mr. Griffin's compelling memoir covers the years of his life from the age of 17 in 1915, when he first left his home to strike out on his own, to his eventual settlement in Weatherford, OK in 1953, where he lived the remainder of his life, passing away in September of 1987 at the age of 89. Enduring Years provides a rare glimpse into the life of a sharecropper in Oklahoma and relates how Mr. Griffin and his family endured decades of crushing poverty and discrimination throughout the years of his life, only to emerge triumphant and whole through the support of friends and family.
Learn more
- About Dr. Gloria Griffin
- Black Farmers in America, 1865-2000: The Pursuit of Independent Farming and the Role of Cooperatives (.pdf)
- "Tenant Farming and Sharecropping" from the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture
Credits
- Topic: Enduring Years: A Migrant Cotton Picker's Memoir (ISBN: 1491730927)
- Author(s)/Performer(s): Gloria Griffin
- Interviewee: Gloria Griffin
- Interviewer: Frederic Murray
- Recording Engineer: Doug Reichmann
- Length: 00:27:53 (hh:mm:ss)
- Recorded: September 29, 2014