Dry Wells, Dirty Water and the Deep Roots of Segregation: Old Pipes Crumble in Rural California
19 August 2024 at 5:09TEVISTON, Calif. — Bertha Mae Beavers remembers hearing stories as a child about the promises of California, a place so rich with jobs and opportunity that money, she was told, “grew on trees.” So in the summer of 1946, she said goodbye to her family of sharecroppers in Oklahoma and set out for a piece of it. For decades she labored in the Central Valley’s vast cotton and grape fields, where eventually her children joined her. Looking back, Beavers, who turned 90 this year, has sometimes wond...Dry Wells, Dirty Water and the Deep Roots of Segregation: Old Pipes Crumble in Rural California
