The Dark Truth About Elvis' Family: How Poverty and Sharecropping Shaped His Ancestors

The story of Elvis Presley's ancestral families, the Presleys and Smiths, is one of resilience and hope in the face of poverty and hardship. Born out of a system of sharecropping and tenancy, the families struggled to make ends meet, with little chance of escaping the cycle of poverty. Despite their best efforts, they were often trapped in a never-ending battle for survival, with the Presley men frequently drifting from job to job and the Smiths facing challenges in owning their own land. However, the families' strong sense of patriotism and resilience ultimately shone through, as they continued to work towards a brighter future, laying the groundwork for Elvis' later success.

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There were many poor Whites in the American South. During the pre-Civil War era in the South, few Whites owned slaves. The best that most of these poor Whites could hope for was a little farm and often borrowing money to get by from the local slave owners. Some of them also worked as overseers of the slaves. After slavery was ended the poor Whites ended up in direct competition with the former slaves as sharecroppers or tenant farmers. This is one of the reasons why the "Jim Crow" (i.e. anti-Black people) laws were so popular among Whites, in particular poor and lower-class Whites in the South during the post-Civil War, "Reconstruction" period.

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Its not where the start. He finished on top