Oral history with Mr. King Thomas Evans, Sr.

              Oral history with Mr. King Thomas Evans, Sr.
F341.5 . M57 vol. 748, pt. 2 ( Not yet published)
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Biography
Mr. King T. Evans was born on March 19, 1913, approximately seven miles south of Uniontown, Alabama, in Perry County. He was named King Thomas Evans by his parents Shep and Dora Lassiter Evans. He is one of six children born to their union; additionally his father had five other children, three brothers and two sisters. His formative years were spent in Alabama and most of his adult life in Mississippi.
In 1925, Mr. Evans moved to Mississippi with his parents. His father was a mechanic and farmer. Following several years of dismal crops in Alabama, Shep Evans decided to join others from Alabama's Black Belt who had moved to Mississippi in search of a better life. The family settled in Nitta Yuma in Sharkey County on the Vickland Plantation owned by Mr. D. D. Low. Shep Evans became a foreman for the plantation, and Dora Evans was a homemaker and school teacher.
Education was important in the King family. For a brief period, Mr. Evans attended the Piney Woods Country Life School; however, most of his time was spent working on the farm along with his father. Mr. Evans married, started a family, and became a foreman on the M. C. Ewing Plantation in Anguilla, just south of Vickland. In 1967, he bought a portion of the Sunnyside Plantation on the Sunflower River for his own cultivation. Along with his son, King Jr., he farmed that land until he retired. He became co- owner of a funeral home and burial association, Edwards and Evans, in Greenville, Mississippi. That business closed in 1985. In the interim he taught a class in farm mechanics in the local high school, Henry Weather High School, and later took a similar position in the Leland School System. He retired from the Leland School System in 1978.
Mr. Evans has remained an active member of the Sharkey County community and participated in activities to promote civic involvement and improved quality of life for all citizens. He served as president of the Sharkey County Branch of the NAACP, president of the Parent Teacher Association, president of the Parent Teacher Organization, organizer of the Anguilla Community Development Association, member Board of Directors for the Sharkey- Issaquena Improvement Association, and member of the Board of Directors for the Mississippi Action for Community Education in Greenville, Mississippi. mus- coh. evansk. doc Page 1 of 78