PEORIA MAGAZINE February 2023

S P O T L I G H T

FROM MISSISSIPPI SHARECROPPER TO PEORIA SCHOOL BOARD PRESIDENT Martha Ross has come a long way in her life, and is committed to helping young Peorians do the same

BY LINDA SMITH BROWN PHOTO BY RON JOHNSON

M artha Ross has always been surrounded by children. She grew up in a three room house with eight siblings, two grandmothers, and her mother and father. Ross recalls a happy childhood: “When you grow up in cramped quarters like that, you’re close.” Shewent on tohave threedaughters of her own—Wondra, Alzebett and Sidney – and now brags nine grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren, two of which she has raised since soon after they were born. They are 14 and 16 years old now. Today, Ross has expanded her efforts on behalf of children to the community at large, as president of the Board of Education for Peoria Public Schools, with more than 12,800 students in its charge. It is a position she pursued because “it’s all about the children.” A HARDSCRABBLE BEGINNING Born Martha Chew and raised in Byhalia, Mississippi, Ross worked in the fields with her sharecropper family. Sharecropping began after the Civil War, when the usually white landlord

sharecroppers had to pay for the farming and living expenses accrued during the previous year. As Ross recalled, “my dad was always told he didn’t break even,” which was often the case, keeping sharecroppers indebted year after year to the landowner or merchants who advanced them credit. The Chew family farmed 40 acres of cotton and 40 acres of corn. Ross recalled the three-room house where she grew up as “really primitive. “There were no inside bathrooms or running water,” she said. “Right after I was born, my mother put me in an orange crate at the end of the row.” Her brother, who was 3 years old at the time, was charged with looking after his baby sister. Ross was 6 when her father decided it was time for her to start picking cotton. “I hated it so bad,” Ross said. “You had to carry around your neck the sack that you put the cotton in. Then you had to put your hand inside the cotton boll … and it’d make your hands bleed.” A grandmother who lived to be 100 years old was the family’s best cotton picker. Meanwhile, Ross’s father kept an

allowed a tenant, often a Black person, to farm and often live on the land in exchange for a percentage of the crop. Before getting their share, however,

80 FEBRUARY 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE