The 'historical silence' of the Black workers who made Phoenix prosperous

[TexasTowelie]

Before he met adoring fans during his European tours; before he performed with Ray Charles, Muddy Waters and B.B. King; before he was inducted into the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame, Big Pete Pearson, Arizona’s King of Blues, writhed in pain every night before collapsing into an unsettled slumber. Markings from cotton burrs pierced his dark, rugged skin and burns from the blistering sun seemed to be tattooed on his hands.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Pearson spent 12 agonizing hours a day picking cotton on fields along Camelback Road in Phoenix and elsewhere in Arizona, and then packing, lifting and loading hundred-pound sacks of it, a mighty part of the engine that shored up a pillar of the state’s economy.

Peering from under the wide brim of his straw hat back then, Pearson saw people like him — African Americans, hundreds of them — toiling in row after row of cotton plants.

“That was regretful days that you wish you didn’t have to be there,” Pearson, 83, said in a February 2020 interview.

Read more: https://www.azmirror.com/2020/06/19/the-historical-silence-of-the-black-workers-who-made-phoenix-prosperous/

[kimbutgar]

1. I drove though this area last year while going to Tombstone

That had a Fort Hurachee (? )where many Africans Americans were stationed for training in WW2 who came back to live In that area and Made it prosperous.

[brush]

2. Do you mean Ft. Huachuca? Next to Sierra Vista on the Mexican border, south of Tucson?

The Tenth Calvary (Buffalo Soldiers) were stationed there in the early 20th century.

[kimbutgar]

3. Yes

I know a man who was a Buffalo soldier.

[Kali]

4. ?

last one died at age 111 in 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Soldier

[kimbutgar]

5. This is the guy I know he was in an Army specialized training program in WW2 with my late Dad

https://www.journalnow.com/opinion/columnists/nigel-alston-learning-from-a-real-buffalo-soldier/article_a0332765-940e-54bd-a6a8-74391e315c1b.html

[Kali]

6. wow - interesting

that also says there are a couple of them still alive, yet I find a number of references that say Mark Mathews was the last. weird. I will take your word for it, since you actually know him.