Christine Walker grew up sharecropping.
On October 1, Christine Walker celebrated her 100th birthday, and her older sister, Annie Lou Harrell, joined in. Sixty friends and family blocked off Spruce Street for the party. Walker has five children, 11 grandchildren, and 68 great grandchildren. Annie Lou lives two blocks from her.
Walker was born in 1925 in Midville, GA. She grew up on a sharecropping farm where they raised corn, peanuts, and cotton. Her stepfather expected her older brother and the sisters to work as family farmhands, milking cows, plowing behind a mule, picking crops, and cutting peanuts and corn. “We would shell the corn, carry a bushel of corn to the gristmill, then sit, and wait while they ground it,” Walker recalled. “We would have our own grits. We had to draw water from a well. We fished in little old ponds. They caught redbelly, pike, and fish eels. They went hunting and killed a lot of rabbits and possums,” all to eat, of course.
“It was three girls and one boy, so they made me a boy,” Walker said. “They put me with my brother. I wanted to take on the challenge of everything. My stepdad would always say he would let us know when we were grown enough to leave, but he never did let us know. When my brother got to be 21, he still wasn’t grown, and my stepdad, he never did tell him. But he left. He was the first one that moved down here. Then all the hard work fell on me. My best memory is leaving that farm.”
When her relatives of her generation got older, they moved away from the farms. When her brother left Georgia, he went to Plant City to live with their aunt, Emma Flournoy. In the mid-1940s Walker and Annie Lou followed. Her parents stayed on the farm in Georgia. After her father died, her mother moved to Plant City, but lived only three more months.
After coming to Plant City, Walker’s first jobs were taking care of people’s children. Then she worked at Ben Hill Griffin Cannery in Bartow, which later became Citrus Hill Cannery. A lot of people from Plant City worked at the facility. She, Annie Lou, and Corinne Davis drove daily to the plant. Operations started at 5:00 a.m. and Walker worked eight-hour days. “There were two departments. The sectionizers, they had to section out the fruit. But I didn’t work there. I worked in the peeling department. At first, you had to peel with your hands. We had to hand peel, and we were working by the piece—piece work. So, we had to peel so many for so much. They paid three-and-a-half cents for every 11 oranges or grapefruits. Then later on, they did away with that and put machines in there, and we had to operate the machines. That was way back in the 1950s. When they put in the machines, we were paid by the hour; 50 cents an hour. But when I retired, pay had got up to $6.25 an hour.” The facility shut down in 1992, and that is when Walker took her retirement after 26 years working there.
When asked how she has lived so long, Walker said, “I worked hard my whole life.” She still gets around on her own. “I walk with my cane. I could walk without it, but I would be hobbling,” she said with a laugh.
She also attributed her longevity to raising several of her grandkids. Walker has a mischievous spark that keeps her young. She likes the taste of turtle, and she would cook it for the kids, smother it in gravy, and tell them it was chicken. After they ate it, then she would tell them what it really was.
“She has always been a good grandmother to us,” granddaughter Majuanna said. “She took care of all the kids; three generations.” Walker has lived with her son, Lorne, and her daughter-in-law, Netta, for three years. She is a good lady,” Netta said. “She has always been the same. She has never changed.”
Walker observed how Plant City has changed since she moved here, “It is more beautiful,” she said. “There is just something about it. It is better. I have been here many years and I love it.” Along with Walker, several of her family are a part of Greater St. Luke Missionary Baptist Church. What are her words of wisdom from her 100 years of life? “Try to do the right thing,” and “Keep God first.”
