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Scott and Virgie Payne grew up in the same community in Sulphur Springs, Texas. Scott was a sharecropper and Virgie, a home maker. She shared farm chores with her husband as well as her children, when they were old enough or strong enough to do the work. But Scott became disillusioned with sharecropping and decided to move to Arizona with his seven children. He wanted a better life for his family and dreamed of owning his own farm. He had a brother who was retired from the military and always encouraged him to come to Arizona. Finally he contracted with a rancher in Eloy who needed cotton pickers.

In 1942 in the dead of winter, the Paynes and other families from Greenville, Texas, packed into a covered cattle truck. His eldest daughter, Ruth, recalls that her grandmother packed a lot of quilts for the children. Scott made some heat with a coal bucket. They stopped at Amarillo, Texas to buy breakfast. In those days of segregation, they were only allowed to buy food from the back of the grocery store.

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In Eloy, they set up two tents near the Gila River, one for sleeping and one for cooking. Pete “Ocie” Payne recalls that “I was about six years old and I remember that all I could see was cotton and tents. White tents. Cotton everywhere. It was dusty and cold.”  Ruth recalls that the stalks were long and leaves all dried, ready for picking. Everyone had a cotton sack and the children were given gunny sacks. Picking Pima cotton was difficult because the fibers were so fine, but it paid $6 per hundred pounds. Ruth remembers that it took a child all day to pick half of that.

The family picked cotton until April of 1942. The family earned enough money to purchase a 1929 Model A Ford. Compulsory school laws and an aspiration to educate his children brought Scott and his family to the Chandler area. Bill Little, a rancher on Chandler Heights Road, needed laborers for his farm. He hired the Payne family to live at his ranch. Their dwelling was an old adobe store building in front of a canal, divided into two sections, for two families.

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Since there were no schools available for black children in Chandler at that time, Scott enrolled his children in the Booker T. Washington Elementary, an all-black school in Mesa, which went up to 8^thGrade. In 1943 the Payne children began attending the Goodyear school when it opened for African American children. Ruth, the oldest, stayed two years in 8^thgrade because her father didn’t want her to go out in the fields. Ruth, Coy, and Morrie rode the Sun Valley public bus line to George Washington Carver High in Phoenix. In 1944, Scott found an adobe and wood frame house on Saragosa Street which he rented for $10 a month. Ocie remembers, “I don’t think we had any electricity in that adobe section…At night we just went and got in the bed… We didn’t see too much because we had no lights, nothing but a kerosene lamp.”

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Eventually in 1950, they moved to Colorado Street, where Scott and his children built the house block by block. By 1954 his younger children could attend Chandler schools because desegregation had occurred. His daughter, Morrie aspired to be a nurse. The rest of the siblings worked to help provide for her tuition because Scott could only pay for one child to attend college. Ruth and Coy eventually attended college as well. Morrie is now deceased but Ruth, Coy, James, Willie Ruth, Pete, John, Wilmer and Charles are still living. Scott and Virgie Mae’s oldest son, Coy, eventually served as Mayor of Chandler in the 1990s. Looking back at his childhood, he recalls:

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“My mother had culinary expertise that was demonstrated by her being able to going into a kitchen that was often bleak and had little or no resources for meal preparation, but because of her imagination and experience, she could really produce a meal out of nothing, that would be just delectable to the family. My memory of my mother’s expertise is indelible and remains with us even today.”

Scott and Virgie Payne’s oldest daughter, Ruth, provided a poem reflecting on food and her family, and son Coy reflected on his mother’s Sunday dinner, and provided a family recipe.

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Black Eyed Pea Sandwich- Ruth Payne Franklin

For cotton pickers and school lunches.

Mashed cooked peas.

Add other things pickles, pepper and salt.

Chop onions red pepper mixed spread Miracle Whip on bread

It’s filling for hungry folks.

Add a big bottle Barq’s root beer.

Good eating and drinking. If you made enough money to buy the root beer.

Mama’s Sunday Dinner- Coy Payne

It was so delicious; none of the family members can remember how she made it.

She bought a roasting hen. She baked it, basted it in butter, and placed it in the old roasting pan. It was carefully watched and slowly cooked. The giblets, neck, gizzard, and liver were boiled until tender. She added cornbread mixed with chopped onion, celery, and toasted bread. Then added the boiled gizzards, liver, four eggs, and browned butter.  She placed it all in a bowl and mixed it to her liking. It was placed into a pan to bake until nice and brown. Measuring was done by guessing a pinch, a handful of this or that-salt, pepper and sage to taste. It is hard to give Mom’s amount; hers was done on feelings. Lots of love. The best Sunday dinner ever.