PEOPLE: Mississippi Sharecropper

Eddie Forbis, born into a life of sharecropping a small farm in rural Mississippi, taught himself reading, writing and math as a child. Forbis says he figured out how to strap books to the handles of a plow, and was able to read while working the fields during his boyhood. Never having an opportunity to go to school, Forbis fulfilled a lifelong dream by building a library on the same farm he sharecropped, and filled the building with his own collection of books, journals and papers.

Assignment: Los Angeles Times

©Tammy Lechner/STILL Productions Inc

©Photograph by Tammy Lechner

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