Leaksville Woolen Mill, North Carolina - ca. 1900

Charles Cleveland Poole was born in March of 1892 in the heart of the cotton mill belt in North Carolina.
The mills provided sharecroppers and tenant farmers a new way to live, with real cash wages, houses, doctors, and schools.
It was into this rigid socio-economic system that Poole was born.  Banjo in hand, Charlie did his best to escape the system.