THE Forty-Acre SWINDLE, Introducing George Washington Carver -- To fourteen-year-old Jesse Turner, being free in Alabama in 1898 doesn\'t seem much better than slavery.
But who?.
And when the levee suspiciously bursts one night and floods their land, can Jesse find a way to save the family farm? Someone pulled along from the levee.
But as the Turners race to meet the deadline for repaying their debts, they run into a host of new problems.
Inspired by Carver\'s advice to hang on to the land at all costs, Jesse takes a part-time job, and he and his father plant a promising crop of soybeans.
But they find new hope in the teachings of George Washington Carver, a Christian agriculturist who travels the South helping fellow blacks with new farming techniques.
It seems the only solution is to sell the land and begin sharecropping.
The Turners\' Forty-Acre farm-given to them by the government following the Civil War-is exhausted from growing cotton, they face overwhelming debt, and trouble from prejudiced neighbors makes life difficult and frightening.
THE Forty-Acre SWINDLE, Introducing George Washington Carver -- To fourteen-year-old Jesse Turner, being free in Alabama in 1898 doesn\'t seem much better than slavery
