Pops has worked the land for generations, but no one seems to remember exactly when he started the garden. His first grandchild, my cousin Tony, says Pops has had the garden since the 1970s at least, when he was a little kid. Pops manages to bring back the garden every year for a new generation to enjoy and admire.
In the garden, he grows tomatoes (green and red), bell peppers, collard greens, snap peas and cucumbers, my favorite. As early spring in Chicago is still too cold to begin the process, he starts turning the soil in May. I remember him doing this when I was a child, but I didn’t know what was happening. I recall being angry when he’d do it because we didn’t have the extra room in the backyard to play anymore.
He says he likes to begin the annual labor in his small field around Mother’s Day each year. I find this to be a bit ironic, as he is tending to Mother Earth. We all celebrate the women we come from, with this year being the first Mother’s Day we’ll celebrate without my great-grandmother Rosie Tolliver, a.k.a Granny.
Although we affectionately call him Pops, my great-grandfather was born Louis Tolliver in 1932. That’s the same year that dozens of Black sharecroppers died of syphilis during the Tuskegee Experiment in Alabama, the neighboring state of Pops’ birthplace of Mississippi. Pops moved to Chicago during the second wave of the Great Migration in search of better opportunities for his wife and children.
He would go on to own property in 1967 when he moved from the West Side to the South Side —eventually growing vegetation for him and his descendants to consume. With his garden, he showcases the resilience of our people in a society whose goal has always been to stifle our progression. If you ask him why he decided to start the garden, he’d tell you because he wanted to watch things grow.