Part I: Hugs, Hymns, and Corn Bread
Dr. Reatha Clark King’s Journey from Sharecropper’s Daughter to Rocket Scientist
Long before the sun rose, twelve-year-old Reatha Belle Clark sat up in bed, her ears sharply attuned to the sounds of the morning — the creak of the porch shifting from the dampness, the rustle of someone lacing up their shoes, the distant cough of her father.
Then came the growl of the pickup truck, low and familiar, rolling down the dirt road. A cigarette ember flared in the darkness. The driver was smoking, the scent curling through the sticky Georgia air like a signal. Another day had begun.
Reatha slipped off the mattress and stepped onto the porch, bare feet on warm wood. She climbed into the truck bed where three other girls dozed against each other’s shoulders. No one talked. The only sound in the world was the engine roaring to life, the jolt sending dust into the damp air, and the rhythm of soft yawns soon rocking them into a half-sleep.
Only Reatha stayed awake, watching the sky.
Something told her there was more for her out there beyond these fields. But when?
The thought lingered until she began to doze.
The Color of Money
“The more it rained, the heavier the cotton and the more money I made.”
Fieldwork in the South was gut-wrenching. Cotton bolls could be stubborn, their sharp edges tearing at bare fingers on days she forgot to bring her gloves. But if the skies were cloudy, she smiled.
“The more it rained, the heavier the cotton and the more money I made.”
The cotton boll had to be twisted off by turning it clockwise until it broke. Then, it was bagged in a ten-foot sack as you went along. At the end of the day, you sorted through the bag, making sure there were no small branches, placed it onto a sheet, and hoisted it up to the scale. If it was perfect, you got paid.
For six dollars a day — 200 pounds of cotton — Reatha worked from sunup to sundown. It wasn’t much, but it was more than some families earned in a week. In the 1940s and ’50s, the average American household made $3,500 a year, yet six million American families made even less than Reatha.
On dry days, she picked from morning until noon, then ate lunch under the shade of a tree before heading back for the afternoon stretch.
“I would wait for the sun to be directly overhead. You know why? It meant you could take a break to eat and sit under the shade with your packed lunch. I don’t know what the astronomers say, but the sun was hottest around 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. Then you’d go back until about 5:00 p.m.”
By evening, dark sweat stains streaked her jumpsuit, her muscles sore from bending, pulling, and hauling the heavy sack behind her. But this was life in Jim Crow Georgia.
The Georgia weather was your friend one day and your enemy the next. So many things seemed like that to twelve-year-old Reatha Belle.
“But I sure could pick that cotton.”
Our Daily Cornbread
Her father, Willie Clark, was a sharecropper, and her mother, Ola Mae, had a third-grade education, but she found work as a maid in the house of the farmer who owned the tenant’s land.
“My mother was a maid working at the ‘big house,’ as we called it. She would bring us hand-me-down clothes and good-tasting food in addition to what we had gotten out of the field.”
When the post-Civil War system of slavery ended, the work was replaced by sharecropping, but it offered a step up. Tenants could farm their own plots, but in return, they owed a portion of their harvest to the landowner, and what remained was theirs to eat.
“We managed to eat well, even though we were poor. We were allowed to raise as much as we wanted.”
But food wasn’t just sustenance — it was joy and love.
“Our poverty was extreme if not for the fact that we could eat what we raised on the farm. You see, even though you were sharecropping, you could raise as much as you wanted to eat.”
By the end of the week, hunger settled in. After long days in the fields, the cupboard was bare, and there was no money for groceries.
“Now, things could get pretty lean during weekdays.” Reatha would ask, barely containing her glee, “Mama, what did you bring back from up the road?”
Her mother, Ola Mae, worked as a maid at the “big house.” She never came home empty-handed.
“My mother would bring us hand-me-down clothes and good-tasting food in addition to what we had gotten out of the field.”
They lived in a world of black and white, but food gave them a glimpse into an endless fantasy of colors — a lifeline, a comfort in both joy and sorrow.
The Clarks were foodies, though not in the gourmet sense. They loved spicy food, fancy food, as they called it — special meals occasionally brought home by Ola Mae from her employer’s kitchen. Food was an unspoken bond — a shared passion that brought the family together at the dinner table night after night.
Though food was a necessity, it was also one of the greatest joys in post-slavery Black households. After generations of eating only what was rationed to them, freed families, poor as they were, found abundance in what they grew, cooked, and shared. The act of preparing food became a celebration, a moment of joy in an otherwise difficult existence.
The same meals that once symbolized hardship — collard greens, sweet potatoes, pork, cornbread — were now symbols of family, tradition, and resilience. Cooking wasn’t just sustenance — it was love, heritage, and self-expression.
“I would say our nutritional habits were not so healthy. We got tired of collard greens. Tired of watermelon. Tired of fruits and vegetables. They were good for us, but we didn’t learn those things until later. Syrup and cornbread and pork were mainstays.”
Cornbread’s history stretched far beyond Reatha’s dinner table into the history of African Americans and further back to Africa.
Contrary to popular belief that cornbread is an American dish, it was first introduced to Native Americans from Mexico some six thousand years ago. During the colonial period, European traders carried corn to West Africa, where it became a dietary staple. Cornbread dishes like kush in Senegambia and the Sahel reflected the transference of cuisine across the Atlantic Ocean. Enslaved Africans then brought it back and reintroduced it to the American South.
Southern cuisine adapted to corn’s dominance. Unlike white farmers in the Northeast and Midwest, who grew wheat and rye, the heat and humidity of the South made wheat wither and turn rancid. Corn thrived, and cornbread became the backbone of Southern cooking.
“Food was wealth and happiness rolled into one — like being in Las Vegas with money to burn.”
Good food made life pleasurable — something denied to their ancestors. It was morning breakfasts, Sunday dinners, and the warm satisfaction of cornbread and pork in between.
“That was where we would have fried chicken,” she said, laughing. “It was exceptional for the children. Because the preacher would come to our home to join us and have dinner with us. We children got to eat the seconds on those occasions.”
She recalled the warmth of holiday gatherings.
“My mother came from a large family — four sisters and seven brothers. My father, too — eleven sisters and one brother. They were always visiting. We heard about Aunt Dora, Aunt Danna, Uncle Chap, and Uncle Buster all the time. When they came to visit, it was hugs and hugs and hugs. That was the love part. It kept us going. It came from family.”
The Family Business
The Clark family worked hard because they had to. Picking cotton wasn’t a symbol of oppression — it was a task, like making your bed.
“Work was our main theme. Sharecropping, living on the farm, and doing the fieldwork. That dominated my father’s life, for sure, and my mom’s life because they needed to make ends meet. They also needed to please the boss, the people we worked for. But that probably wouldn’t happen because the owners were dependent on us for the work that we did. When I think back on my life now, it was a harsh life. I don’t want to go back, but my gosh, I learned how to work.”
Still, hard labor was not a means to an end — it was the end.
“Now I ask myself, being the optimist I am, what good came from it? I’d say the ability to work hard. Not wanting to go back to that life. I don’t want to, but my gosh — I learned to work hard from that life.”
But the cotton fields of Jim Crow held a secret.
“An ideological view of life wasn’t the goal of the Black families of rural Georgia during the 1950s. Fried chicken at Sunday dinner was.”
Reatha’s family didn’t talk about slavery — there were no records, and its scars were carried in silence. But although its legacy was everywhere, the lesson for the Clarks wasn’t subjugation but strength. And one day, Reatha Belle Clark would take that strength out of the fields and into a world that never expected her to succeed.
“Slavery put people on their own, which was not a good thing,” Reatha reflected. “But at the same time, it made them dependent on one another. It created a greater need for family than ever before. You couldn’t make it without family.”
Even as her family moved north, they never lost that bond.
“Going north — that was the ambition. To go north and send money home. That expression, ‘Send money home,’ was what drove you to leave. It was a signal that you were going to go away and do better, and then send money back to help your family members.”
Her childhood was defined by hard work, resilience, and deep familial bonds. Reatha’s mother, Ola Mae, worked as a maid and had a third-grade education, but she never let her children believe they were limited by their circumstances.
“She only let us work for farm families she trusted,” Reatha recalled.
Even in the harshest times, there was dignity in labor and an unspoken understanding that this was just a step — not a destination.
Her earliest memories were of a close-knit family inspiring everyone to achieve, though at first, success simply meant making money. But what makes her childhood so fascinating is the irony — rather than refuse or resent manual labor that was not so different from slavery, her grandmother would say:
“If anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”
And at the center of it all was the church — the one-room schoolhouse where she first learned to read, the place where elders nurtured the young, the sanctuary where she found hope.
“It carried that symbol of safety,” Reatha said. “It was a place to reflect, to feel encouraged.”
Harbor in the Storm
The 1950s brought post-war prosperity to much of the country, but Jim Crow Georgia still acted like the Depression was never going to end. In Reatha’s world, families found strength in two things that didn’t cost much: food and faith.
Meals brought people together, but the Mt. Zion Baptist Church held them together. It was more than a place of worship — it was the foundation of the Black community, where faith, resilience, and that most important quality, when aligned with talent and ambition, took root.
“Sundays were exceptional for the children,” Reatha recalled. “The preacher would come to our home to join us and have dinner with us. We children got to eat the seconds on those occasions. The first Sunday of the month was special. All the women wore white. All the women wore big fancy hats. I still wear a hat to church. I inherited that habit from my grandmother. Yes, that was a special day.”
For many, faith wasn’t just salvation — it was survival. In an era when few Black families had cars, the church was the center of social life, the one place where people could gather, organize, and inspire one another. It was a constant, a friend that never failed, and a quiet assurance that, somehow, everything would work out.
“On the first Sunday of every month, we called it First Sunday, we would serve a big meal on the church’s grounds. Because the Mount Zion Church preacher would have dinner with us, we children got to eat the seconds on those occasions. That was where we would have fried chicken.”
Church was a place where people saw more in her than society did. It was where she heard that hard work could lead to something better.
“I still am a churchgoer,” Reatha said years later. “And I’m trying to influence my children to think the same way. As you can imagine, that’s pretty hard for the millennials and the latest generations. But I still find churches to be good social spaces. A place to reflect, to think about what happened the week before and what’s coming next. It’s a place to be grateful.”
For Reatha, gratitude began with Mount Zion.
“I still find churches to be good social spaces. A place to reflect, to think about what has happened and what is coming next. It’s a place to be grateful.”
The Peacock That Flew
The town where Reatha was born — Pavo, Georgia — was named after the Latin word for peacock. A fitting symbol for a girl who refused to be caged by circumstance and was ready to show off her plumage.
The Mount Zion Baptist Church gave Reatha more than a way out of poverty and discrimination. It gave her something more powerful — hope. In a world that told her that an African American girl could only hope to be a maid in the big house, her one-room schoolhouse taught her otherwise. Faith challenged limits. Teaching created new goalposts.
The Mount Zion one-room schoolhouse gave Reatha a counterweight to the belief that a Black girl could only hope to be a maid in the big house, that Black meant toiling in the hot sun. But within its walls, faith and ambition were nurtured. It told her she could dream beyond the fields and the kitchen.
And dream she did.
It gave a cotton picker the support, confidence, and self-esteem to become a rocket scientist.
Reatha’s first spark came in the form of Florence Frazier, a teacher who traveled from home to home, teaching Black children of all ages in the community. More than just a teacher, Mrs. Frazier was a force — bold, talkative, and relentless in her belief that education could change lives.
“She was a big talker,” Reatha recalled with a laugh. “She would tell everyone how smart those Clark girls are. When people heard her, they encouraged us to do even more.”
Mrs. Frazier didn’t just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic — she taught self-belief.
She saw something exceptional in Reatha and made sure others saw it, too. As Reatha started bringing home high scores — sometimes perfect ones — Mrs. Frazier sent word to her mother:
“Your daughter is brilliant.”
To Ola Mae Clark, who had only a third-grade education, those words were astonishing. She had always felt too uneducated to be around teachers, but now, someone was telling her that her daughter had a gift worth nurturing.
“That meant something to my mother,” Reatha said. “She was shy, embarrassed even, because she felt her clothes weren’t good enough to be around educated people. To learn that her daughter might become educated — that was like a miracle.”
The peacock from Pavo was ready to fly.
Made in Manhattan
Reatha had grown up hearing stories about abolitionists, about white people who had fought against slavery and discrimination. But in the South, she had never seen them openly.
“In the South, you didn’t see those people openly because they would have been called ugly names.”
Mrs. Dan changed that.
She didn’t just hire Reatha as a maid — she saw her as a young woman with potential. She sent her on sightseeing trips, handed her a Saks Fifth Avenue charge card, and encouraged her to explore.
“She trusted me. You cannot imagine what that meant to me.”
This was the unspoken reality of race in America. Yes, Jim Crow was brutal, but some people quietly pushed against it in their own ways. Some white families didn’t just see Black people as laborers but as people with futures worth investing in.
For many Black Southerners, the reality was more nuanced than simple oppression. Their world was built on bonds — both among themselves as well as with white benefactors who saw a great future beyond their circumstances.
