The Melting Pot, Hot/Cold?

Freddie L. Richards Sr.

Description

There are some parts of life in the United States that are very important for what they are mandated and supposed to do, and this book is written to describe how the life and career of an individual from an agricultural background that goes back to childhood and who was somewhat guided and highly self-motivated to serve within this area interacts with the bureaucracy at all levels of state educational institutions and the richly financially invested programs of the federal government through the US Department of Agriculture.
He did not write this as a negative endeavor but as a viewable summary of worthwhile accomplishments that may or may not have been institutionalized by anyone except the author.
There are family ancestral lineages that are listed that may include the name of any person in the lifetime of the author that will never be told, and maybe if that person hears of or reads this book, he will be motivated to tell the story of his family and his career, and it too will become a part of told USA history.
Additionally, the writer believes this text at personal and professional levels may be of interest to the vast organizations listed above whose staff interact daily with people such as the author but only know their single area of responsibility.
There are also incidents in the author’s life that are listed and implied that would have caused major problems if there had not been the support of people who acted as if they owed my ancestors some type of debt.
However, the author acted in his career like he worked at the “number 1” institution in the USA and performed projects and sent students on global journeys to increase their family and career success.
There were times when the author’s opportunities seemed to be conflicted with general institutional and agency leadership, and most of these times, they were no different from what was being done at other similar locations, but with which way would the recognition start and flow.

Sujets

• Autobiography
• Historically black colleges and universities
• Biography

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 20 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669874003
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE MELTING POT, HOT/COLD?
Freddie L. Richards Sr.

 
Copyright © 2023 by Freddie L. Richards Sr.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023907417
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-7402-7

Softcover
978-1-6698-7401-0

eBook
978-1-6698-7400-3
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 04/20/2023
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
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CONTENTS
Introduction
PART 1
Family and Professional History
My Brother and Sisters
PART 2
Family History, Fixed
INTRODUCTION
December 2, 2022
This detailed summary was created to outline the life and contributions of the ancestors who were the human foundations of me and my siblings. It is also intended to document my professional life. I am in awe of what all my African ancestors were able to accomplish, sometimes with the support of their European relatives, and also leave a trail that I was able to use as a search tool. The Africans were not able to maintain a name and lost almost all but had the strength to continue on. There were times prior to 1900 when some of my previous ancestors decided to cross the color line and they then disappeared completely from the sight and contacts of the family who look like me. Whether planned or unplanned, the system my ancestors provided was the base for me to start my existence. The Native Americans who seemed to inject themselves between the Europeans and the Africans caused the creation, in terms of my family, of a few beings who lived and inherited privileges from the “big house” that they were able to pass on to at least one generation.
I was able to personally know my parents, Wes and Sally Wheeler Richards, and some of their relatives as they lived between 1912 and 2009. I was able to personally know my two grandmothers, Molly Turner Wheeler and Minnie Lee Richards, as they lived between 1871 and 1977 and one great-grandmother, Virginia Grimsley Wheeler Leftwich, as she lived between 1865 and 1955. I was able to personally know only one of my grandfathers, St. Luke Bob Wheeler, as he lived between 1883 and 1965. My parents, grandparents, and one great-grandparent whom I was able to interact with occupy a major space in my list of memories. I was also able to know of my great-granddads Luke Wheeler, Paul Turner, Edwin Cotton, and Mac Lee as they lived between 1821 and 1935. I am also able to know of my great-grandmothers Donie Young Turner, Mary Peacock Richards Powell, and Emma Robison Lee as they lived between 1840 and 1930.
As one can imagine, the people who lived during these times and under the existing conditions must have possessed an untold amount of stamina. The list consists of Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans. There are offspring in the list of relatives who are now accepted as Europeans and Africans.
My parents produced ten children, four boys and six girls. The first three children, two girls and a boy, died between 1936 and 1941. My family lived in a home that was on farmland that our grandparents inherited and another acreage they purchased. We lived with my disabled grandmother and a mentally challenged uncle. We were a farm family producing crops, vegetables, fruit, livestock, timber, and pastures.
Daily duties consisted of milking cows, shucking corn for hogs, and collecting eggs. We toted water as the well went dry and built a pumping system to pump water from the spring to the house and barn. Gathering wood for the fireplace and heater was a major daily chore. Our daily meals were breakfast, dinner, and supper. Some of our best snacks were from berries and fruits, including watermelons and muscadines.
We attended all the churches in the area and went to the Henry County Training School. We had plenty of rich-looking cousins visiting from all over the USA who arrived by fancy cars, the Hummingbird Train in Dothan, and Greyhound Bus. We had visits from cousins who were at wars, and we went to the funerals of others who died in battle. We watched TV that showed civil rights sit-ins and marches and Walt Disney. It also showed the nasty world of political ads, where Negroes were shown to be bad, evil, and un-American. This is something you never forget.
All of us children dreamed of a better life, and the fourth child departed for college in Montgomery, Alabama, and the fifth for the Catskill Mountains in New York State. I, Freddie, the sixth child, attempted twice to leave the farm early by way of art and electronics but remained and worked the fields and missed school almost half the year but was in a band, a choir, the Gopher football team for one season, the New Farmers of America soil judging team, and the 4-H Club. I also spent two summers working at the Walter F. George Lock and Dam construction site.
I left for Alabama A&M in September 1962. I was the last student to pay the first installment fee that was due before the entrance. It was paid in late October. I was able to take my sister, Geneva, the seventh child, in September 1964. I began teaching in January 1966 and graduated in May. In June 1966, I was able to take the eighth child, Wheeler, to Alabama A&M. Geneva graduated in 1968, and Wheeler graduated in 1970. I often returned home to Abbeville, where my dad would ask that I take him to visit others in the county and surrounding communities. I realize now that was his way to kind of show me off as a college graduate.
I was married on May 31 and received a master’s in AGED the next day, the first of June, and began working at Tuskegee Institute in mid-July 1969. In December 1972, I received a PhD from Penn State, and Rhoda received her MA in March 1973. Our son, Freddie Jr., was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on Easter Sunday of 1971.
We have lived and worked with the Elmore County Board of Education at W. B. Doby and the Integrated Wetumpka high schools and at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Kentucky State University in Kentucky, and Prairie View A&M University in Texas. We had two children, Shannon, born in 1977, and Sean, born in 1978, at Park Plaza Hospital in Houston, Texas.
My work at Tuskegee Institute caused me to begin a search for a base at a black university where I could conduct programs that would benefit people who look like me based on improving the conditions that I and the world had observed during my youth. I worked with the renowned rural sociologist Dr. Lewis Wade Jones. He directed me to my area of interest, and I evolved to develop an interest in an area referred to as “the indicators of social and economic well-being.”
The push to do this at Tuskegee Institute caused my supervisor to be uncomfortable with me and caused my departure from a place I admired and really respected. The same happened at Kentucky State University as the dean of agriculture at the University of Kentucky was uncomfortable with the attention I was receiving from the leaders of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and USDA in Washington DC. I was pleased to have the support of such prominent elected and business leaders as Governor Julian Carroll, Commissioner of Agriculture Mr. Butler, and Colonel Harland Sanders but decided to just depart.
We relocated to PVAMU in Texas. I was able to develop a plan for agricultural facilities with a requested funding level of $19 million, which was negotiated down to $9 million because of other 1890 land-grant universities requesting very small amounts. The soil science faculty and agricultural extension specialists were able to conduct a project in Ghana entitled “Testing of a Transfer Model for Small Farmers,” which was successful. The project was reported in the USAID newsletter, which was unheard of in the 1970s. Again, all this success caused the same negative responses that occurred in Alabama and Kentucky, but this time from the president of PVAMU. However, I decided to remain as I had laid the foundation for a career as a professor with a special interest in students, and I would have plenty of opportunities to conduct projects in global and in local economic development and as a university program administrator. I spent two years in Washington DC assigned to the United States Agency for International Development Board for Food and Agricultural Development.
I returned to PVAMU in the fall of 1982 and spent the next thirty-four years doing all I could to increase career opportunities for students enrolled in the food and agricultural sciences in state, federal, and private industries. I designed programs to provide global internship opportunities for students. I designed and executed a program that provided career internship opportunities in the global food marketing industry. I was able to conduct training programs for community leaders and elected officials from Central, South America, and Caribbean countries. I conducted projects in Mexico, Costa Rica, Zimbabw