When
I first came back from
California
in 1956, I used local whites and local African Americans.
African American boys from local high schools worked at the farm.
I hire a lot of the ones that are now adults here.
In those days, there were white migrants [who] migrated with the
crops and most of them came from
Florida
.
Before, they had been pickers and share croppers.
There was a time when labor was very difficult to come by, and I
picked the whole crop with high school kids and folks on social security.
I also used Latinos [who] spoke almost entirely in Spanish, from
Mexico
.
I had to learn Spanish in college and I had it in high school and it
helped me. Most of the day, I
spoke Spanish to the migrant workers.