Life in the South offered few opportunities beyond the cotton fields, and conditions on the plantations were often reminiscent of the nineteenth century. Christine Welch, who was born on a farm and picked cotton as a teenager, summed up her view of race relations in her native Tennessee: "If a white man can't work you like a dog, like slavery times, he hates you." - Charles Denby, Indignant Heart: A Black Worker's Journal (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989).
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