“Even though his pocket's were empty as a banker's soul, even though his family was poor as poor got outside the shanty towns of the depression, he wore his pride like a suit of mail (...) I think it's much more civilized to knock someone on their ass, than the cuss yourself into an embolism, like they do in New York.” Poverty Book:All Over but the Shoutin' Source: All Over but the Shoutin'
“It is true that almost everyone in the foothills farmed and hunted, so there were no breadlines, no men holding signs that begged for work and food, no children going door to door, as they did in Atlanta, asking for table scraps. Here, deep in the woods, was a different agony. Babies, the most tenuous, died from poor diet and simple things, like fevers and dehydration. In Georgia, one in seven babies died before their first birthday, and in Alabama it was worse. You could feed your family catfish and jack salmon, poke salad and possum, but medicine took cash money, and the poorest of the poor, blacks and whites, did not have it. Women, black and white, really did smother their babies to save them from slow death, to give a stronger, sounder child a little more, and stories of it swirled round and round until it became myth, because who can live with that much truth.” PovertyGeorgiaGreat DepressionAlabama Book:Ava's Man Source: Ava's Man
“I know I grew up in the time when a young man in a baggy suit and slicked-down hair stood spraddle-legged in the crossroads of history and talked hot and mean about the colored, giving my poor and desperate people a reason to feel superior to somebody, to anybody. I know that even as the words of George Wallace rang through my Alabama, the black family who lived down the dirt road from our house sent fresh-picked corn and other food to the poor white lady and her three sons, because they knew their daddy had run off, because hungry does not have a color.” PovertyHungerAlabamaGeorge Wallace Book:All Over but the Shoutin' Source: All Over but the Shoutin'
“Every life deserves a certain amount of dignity, no matter how poor or damaged the shell that carries it.” LifeInspirationalMatterCertainPoorPovertyAmountDeserveDignityDamageCarrieShellsDeserving Book:All Over but the Shoutin' Source: All Over but the Shoutin'
“The only thing poverty does is grind down your nerve endings to a point that you can work harder and stoop lower than most people are willing to. It chips away a person's dreams to the point that the hopelessness shows through, and the dreamer accepts that hard work and borrowed houses are all this life will ever be.” PeoplePersonsDoeHardShowsDreamHouseAcceptingPovertyWillingHard WorkHarderThis LifeNervesDreamerHopelessnessChipsGrindBorrowedWork HarderStoops Book:All Over but the Shoutin' Source: All Over but the Shoutin'
