After the war, lots of people, white and colored, moved west looking for a better life, but I don't have to tell you which group life got better for. Even though the land was supposed to be available to whoever claimed it, Old Luke Dayton set up the Knox Plains Land Allocation Council that his family's been running ever since, to make sure that coloreds and Indians and even poor whites stayed on the side of town where the bad farmland is. All of this was true, but his saying it in class annoyed Mrs. Davenport and knocked Barnett's grade on the paper down to a C . Ma always said that nobody get an education in school. School, she said, teaches you how to get an education.
People really educate themselves by reading and by doing.
Ma often told us she preferred Pa to those college boys she met in Nashville because even with his ninth-grade education, he was smarter and more knowledgeable than anyone she knew. Pa read everything he could get his hands on and often amazed far more educated people with his storehouse of information. There are plenty of educated fools out there. She insisted that Barnett and I read when we were small. By the time we were in about fourth grade, she no longer had to insist.