T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History Collection

ABSTRACT

INTERVIEWEE: Joseph M. Davis, Jr.

COLLECTION: 4700.0232

IDENTIFICATION: Native of Four Corners; successful owner of trucking company; member of police jury

INTERVIEWER: Adrienne LaCour, graduate student in landscape architecture, LSU

PROJECT: Four Corners Community Center landscape design project.

DATE: 10 March 1993

FOCUS DATES: 1960-1993

ABSTRACT:

Tape 343

Childhood work history; college career; involvement in trucking as family business; federal programs for minorities; involvement in politics; difficulty of breaking into the white monopoly trucking business; family values; work ethic; memories of Four Corners when he was a child (old structures and individual homes); history of South Coast Plantation including early operations and purchase by Goldsby, then Prudential; life on plantation 3-4 decades ago; how his parents came to work on South Coast Plantation; discussion of pesticide Proud used on sugarcane; non-confidence in organic techniques for growing sugarcane; price of sugarcane decades ago when he farmed compared to today (21 cents per pound compared to 224-25); vision for Four Corners

TAPE: 343

TOTAL PLAYING TIME: 45 min.

INDEX: 4

RESTRICTIONS: None