Bear Grease - Ep. 294: The Extraordinary Life of Ellis Bell

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

In this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we hear the remarkable story of fourth-generation farmer and Arkansas Agriculture Hall of Fame member Mr. Ellis Bell from Forrest City, Arkansas. Mr. Bell tells the story of his heritage and personal journey as a minority farmer, along with the values he learned along the way. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. To me, that was success where most people were dying to get away from the country because they saw other people going north, looked like they was building a better life because they came back driving a new car. I didn't look at having a new car as being success.

I looked at my dad having a better crop. That was the success that I was looking for even as a smaller child. I wanted my success to be right here on the land. On this episode, I want to introduce you to a fourth generation soybean and rice farmer, 87-year-old Ellis Bell from Forest City, Arkansas. Today he still farms on the land purchased by his great-great-grandfather in 1881. Mr. Ellis is an African-American and many in his community. left the South in what historians call the Great Migration,

which took place between 1910 and the 1970s. But Mr. Ellis wanted to make a life for himself on the land that he was born on. And with much struggle, grit, and wisdom, he did. Mr. Ellis is a renaissance man. He had to be creative to keep his farm alive. And in his career, he built airplanes. He was an insurance broker. He's a pilot.

but deep in his bones he's a farmer. In 2023, he was inducted into the Arkansas Agricultural Hall of Fame. But the future of his farm is in question. This is an extraordinary story, and I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. And hey, this week on the Meat Eater YouTube channel, my Alaskan goat bow hunting film comes out, so you should check that out.

My name is Clay Newcomb, This is the Bear Greece podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. My name is Ellis Bell. I was born in Foist City, Arkansas. in 1938. My great-great-grandfather, he was discharged in 1883,

came out after the Civil War. They was either able to buy it through whatever the government program was. But my great-great-grandfather obtained this 83 acres at that time. But it's my understanding he paid about $300 for this last. Mr. Ellis is sitting at his dining room table in his home built sometime around 1930, and he seemed proud to mention that the joists were hand cut by his father, Rice Bell. My ears perked up when I learned that in 1881, his great-great-grandfather purchased the land just 16 years after the end of the Civil War, Joseph Doody.

That was the name of his great-great-grandfather, and he moved here from Tennessee after the war but was never enslaved. But he lived a short life. My great-great-grandfather, he passed away and he was like 43 or 44. At an early age, supposedly he got kicked by a mule in the service

and never recovered from it. So I've got many, many letters and things like that where my grandmother was trying to get a pension that was given to soldiers who got injured in the wall. And she was getting a pension to raise her daughter, you know, after he died. Joseph Dutie died a year's long, slow death from a mule kick. Mr. Ellis's home and farm is just outside of Forest City in a region we call the Delta. It's flat, fertile, agricultural land influenced by the ancient flooding of the Mississippi River. It's also the region of Arkansas where the vast majority of slavery took place,

where there was big ag, there was a need for big labor. Like Mr. Ellis, I've lived in Arkansas my whole life, and I can testify that there are social artifacts of this tragic period in American history still evident today. and if you'll permit me to be real, I'll share with you something that's always puzzled me. I grew up in Western Arkansas and didn't go to school with a single African-American person. I didn't know a black person growing up. While some schools in eastern Arkansas in the Delta were almost all African-American, this snippet will find relevance as we continue to tell this story.

And it's interesting to me the stories that we remember and the stories that Mr. Ellis is going to tell us it feels like age weeds out the riffraff and by the time a man is in his 80s, even his late 80s, the ones that he can recall are clearly essential and they form the architecture of his life. This next story is from the 1940s and was formative. It was when Mr. Ellis was just a child.

And I like to tell the story when my mom father told my mother this was in March. He said, they're getting their loans and I'm going up here to the bank to see if I can get a loan. And I heard them talking. And I says, can I go? And they says, no, it's too cold. It's too, no, you can't go because I like to follow my dad everywhere. And so we went to bed that next morning, my dad, I heard him when he got up. He put the team together. He tied them off, came back and eat breakfast, and I was still begging to go. So they let me go. We drove downtown, and we tied off the team, and we walked down to the bank, and we walked in the lobby of the bank, and I had never seen so many white men's in one place in all of my life.

They were all having fun, and, you know, they were all there. I guess they knew that they were going to get their money to farm. that year and my dad, we walked down in the rotunda, and my dad, we got about halfway in the Bank of Medals. And he says to my dad, Rice, I can't let you have no money. He says, but if you go out to see the Lindsay boys, they'll take care of you. That story gives a razor-sharp image of the 1940 South. There's a controversial idea I've heard much.

of my life regarding America's past and it's problematic in a generalization at best. If you'll permit me, I will say something that's usually unsaid. And it's this, that the South valued the individual black man but devalued the race on a systemic level. And Northerners didn't value the individual black man but valued the race. And I'm being vulnerable here because it feels weird to say that. out loud, but we see this in history. And thankfully, that thing is less true today than it was 40 years ago. The exact reasons are unclear, but Mr. Rice, who this banker knew by name,

wasn't able to get money from this bank because he was an African American. But ironically, the bankers seemed to treat him with respect, but they'd arranged for someone else in town to handle the black business. I'd also like to do that. to note that in the early 1940s, Mr. Ellis's family was still driving a wagon. Model T had been around for almost four decades. Cars and trucks were the norm. But the story continues. We're now back with Mr. Ellis in the wagon. So we walked back down there and got it in the wagon, drove four miles out here to Carwell, Arkansas, and we got out of the wagon, and we got out of the wagon, and we...

We proceeded into the Lindsay boy's store, and there was a man standing on the porch crying. And I was looking him up and down because I'd never seen a grown man cry. So I felt like that either he had a broken arm or somebody didn't beat him up or something, but he was holding up against the post, the post to hold the porch over. He was crying. So I was asked my dad. It's a weird man crying. My dad didn't say anything.

So we walked in there. And the Lindsay guy knew my dad, and I guess he knew who he was out there for. He says, rice. He says, we got you covered. He said, anything change? My dad said, yeah, I'd like to buy another mule, another cow, whatever, a few plows, or whatever. He said, that's what, a couple hundred dollars, $300? My dad said, yeah, he said, we got you covered.

So we proceeded to walk back out of the Lindsay Boy's store, and this man still sitting there crying. and I'm looking him up and down. Why is this man crying? I'm asking my dad, my dad's not telling me. He knew because he was listening to what the other guys were saying, but I wasn't listening to them. I'm wondering what's wrong with this man. So we get in the wagon, and my dad said,

well, the reason he's crying is because he lived on this man's farm, I guess he was sharecropping or whatever, and he got his money, from the Lindsay brothers for his part. And he went in there and they told him that the man said he couldn't stay there any long. He had to move because the man told him, says, you can't register your kids in school until I get through picking my cotton.

And he registered his kids in school anyway. So he had to go home and tell his wife that they had to move. And he didn't have no place to go. He said, and that's why he's crying. The crying sharecropper's landowner wanted the man's kids to work the fields until the cotton was picked. But the father pulled them out of the fields and sent them to school in the late summer. It's clear this man wanted the best for his kids. He wanted him to get an education, but it made the landowner mad, and he kicked the whole family off the land.

This is the kind of stuff that made many African Americans want to leave the South. And they did in great number. It's called the Great Migration. Let's get back in the wagon with a young Ellis Bell. And, of course, by this time, you know, it's, I mean, we got started that morning before day going downtown. By this time, it's weird afternoon. It's windy. It's cold as hell.

And they had put a pallet in the wagon for me because they knew that I'd be took it out before I got back. So my dad put me back down the pallet and covered me up. And if you ever rode on a steel wheel wagon over the rock road, that wheel did not miss a rock in that road. It looked like it drove me crazy while I was laying there until I went to sleep. But anyway, that was a story I thought was worth telling because, again, that's part of the hard times that I've seen in my life. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps games,

calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts now i'm going to tell you i love mine because it's easy to use i'm not going to go i'm not going to win a turkey calling contest it's just not going to happen but when i run this call i get the sounds that gobblers are looking for i have a great turkey hunting track record if you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods they're not going to win calling contests right that's who i listen to i can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out

prime cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting

action. We raised hogs and cattle. Like I said, it was an Afro-American community and we would get together as a community and kill hogs. You know, we may have five or ten, they'd kill hogs all day long, you know. You'd bring your three or four up,

and they'd dress them and kill them and, you know, work them up, and the families would get together, and they would do a lot, do the ham, and then, you know, they'd get together, and they'd cure them together. But, yeah, we raised hogs, And we raised cattle and we had a smokehouse. And my mother and them used to have to go to their smokehouse

and feed other people in the community sometime. You know, there wasn't even new people coming to the community that didn't have anything, didn't have anything to eat. And they could always go to their house, a smokehouse, and get a ham. She canned a lot, and she raised a big garden. And she'd give them a jaw, this, a jar of that. That's what Afro-American people did together back in those days.

And I won't say they flourished, but maybe that's how they came through hard times together by working together. It looked like it wasn't until integration started taking place, that people start scattering. They start not doing his merch together. And it's been splintered, it looked like to me, pretty much ever since in certain ways like that. We didn't do that.

And then a lot of people left the country, of course, you know, went north and started working into factories and stuff like that. Mr. Ellis saw something interesting, tragic, and complicated. It's far beyond me to understand in its fullness. But did you hear him say that desegregation splintered black communities? It's clear that segregation was a destructive cultural practice, and desegregation was a positive for society. But many now see the end.

implementation of integration, brought forth many problems. Like Mr. Ellis saw, it broke up many traditionally black communities and resulted in what author Cheryl Cashin described as social and political fragmentation, because it replaced community institutions that were led, supported, and filled with black people for community institutions that were led by somebody else. Schools are the best example. Segregated schools had black teachers and faculty. And now the black kids went to schools without any black people in leadership at all. And this hostility isn't speculative or exaggerated, as evidenced by the Little Rock Nine incident from September 1957. I think you can see where all this is going.

Mr. Ellis graduated from a segregated school in 1956, just 90 miles east of Little Rock. But the next thing that he saw kind of blew my mind. I didn't spend time crying over something that somebody didn't want me to do. You know, I was raised up here in Arkansas, and, you know, and we passed by the white schools all the time on our way to the black schools. So, you know, and what was hard for me is that sometimes we'd been walked almost seven miles of school, and we would pass Chinese people walking from their home to the white schools. And we would be passing them going to the black schools.

The rabbit hole of the South just keeps getting deeper and deeper the more that you peer in. Arriving as early as the 1870s, there were many Chinese immigrants in the South who came here to fill in the labor void created by African Americans leaving after the Civil War. war and many in the south would find themselves in the grocery business by the mid-1900s. Do you remember Bear Greece Hall of Famer Hulk Collier of Mississippi, having the neighborhood kids buy him an orange drink from the China grocery before he would tell them stories? That's interesting. These formative memories of Mr. Ellis are so powerful, but this next one set the tone for his

life. It's a story about his mother. This was an all-Afro-American community out here. Most people that lived out here, I didn't know about one family that was Caucasian that lived about a mile down the road. And there was a story to be told about that. And that is, that name was Jones. And I remember them fairly well. And one night, it was cold in the wintertime.

and we had pulled all the beds in the room where the fireplace was. And my two sisters were sleeping at the head of the bed, and I was sleeping at the foot of the bed, and my dad and mother had another bed off to the side of that bed in the same room. We had a fireplace in there, and we had a frame house, and, you know, it was open in the bottom, and, you know, it took a lot to keep it warm. It was because back in those days, that's when we had zero degrees for five and six and seven days,

like it was almost unheard of now, you know, like it was back in those days. And one night I awakened when my dad opened the door, and he said to my mother, and he says, I got the horse salad. and tied to the porch. And I saw my mother, she was dressed so abundantly tight that all I could see was like a ball standing there, still wrapping herself. So I says to my mother, I says, where are you going? And she says, I'm going to help Mrs. Jones.

And I thought about it for a little bit. She said, don't want to help Ms. Jones. She's having a baby. And I said, well, Mrs. Jones, I don't know no black people with the last name Jones. So I said to my mother, I said, that's a white woman. She turned and looked at me. And I hadn't seen her face, but I saw her body being wrapped. And all I could see was her eyes.

And she says to me, Elizabeth, she's a human being. And then she walked out of the house and got on this horse. And back in those days, the bridges was impassable. The horse had to go around the bridge almost to get across them. You had to go around in the creek. And then, of course, it was woods all through here. And we was living right over there. And that, well, I told you, when it was born.

And I didn't know if she's going to come through the woods to get to Mrs. Jones or was she going to try to go around the road. to get to Mrs. Jones. I didn't know any of that. But anyway, I started crying because I felt like that whatever route she took was going to be very dangerous.

And I didn't know if I'd see her again. So I started crying. And that was a lesson to me, you know, for her to tell me that she was a human being. What a powerful story that shows the character of his mother and father. I know we're neck deep in the bear grease, but this next story is probably going to make you laugh. I wanted to know if Mr. Ellis ever did much hunting.

I went fishing with, you know, I like to follow people or like to do things. My dad was never a hunter. I had my uncle. My cousin was hotter. And they used to talk about the fun. They'd have going out of what. at night. One night they was going out Coon hunt, and I went with them.

It was a scariest night of my life. I was afraid I was going to fall in a hole and they would find me. And they were shooting them, Coombe, they was falling out of the tree. That was an experience. When I got back home, I never wanted to go again. That's my experience in hunting. Otherwise, you know, there's plenty of rabbits running around here. You know, we'd shoot one every once in a while.

Mr. Ellis got a kick out of telling that story, and so did I. But let's get back to the farm. See, in this part of the country, this land back in the day wouldn't raise anything. Anything that was west of the ridge up here wouldn't hardly grow anything. When we picked cotton, we had knee pads because cotton wouldn't grow two feet high, hardly. But cotton back in those days was king, you know. And because cotton was king, they could still make a little money by growing cotton that was knee high. You know, in the sheds, that would be, when I was a kid, that would be knee pads all around the wall.

Well, people had to get on their knees to pick the cotton. Well, I worked very closely with my mother and my father. I would help them. I was there chatter wherever they went. Whatever they did, I was always there being nosy, trying to help her in the way, you know, it was cooking or whether it was out, you know, rowling the horses and mused. You know, I was riled in the horses and mused when I had to stand on the gate.

to put a bridle on them. You know, I'd bribe them to come up and get some corn and I'd stand up on the gate and put a bridle on them. And, you know, I remember when I was probably four years old, I guess. Again, I'd follow my daddy every place. He went, and whenever he went out to feed the hogs and stuff, I'd go. And he finally built something where I could climb up there. And finally he put my clothes on me and he says, okay, you can do it by you.

Okay, you can do it by yourself. Man, sure, I'll show him how I could do it. And I was happy to go out there early in the morning. They'd follow me up with clothes on me, and I'd go feed dogs. I was that kind of a person. And, of course, that's where he used to hide his piece brandy in the cotton seed holes. You know, he'd say the cotton seeds for the next year. And he'd make his brandy, and I knew where he had his stash.

I go feed the hogs and I had a jug that I turned up and get me a few swags every day. That was probably about four and a half five. And one day I looked at that jug. It was only half a fool. Oh, boy, I'm in trouble now. I don't remember whether I drank it all up. I pulled it out, but I didn't want him to know that I was, you know, I got through feet and hog.

I'd go back in the house, and they'd be sitting at the table, drinking coffee and tea and stuff, and I'd be feeling good. That was something that I kept to myself. I didn't ever tell him by, you know. Mr. Ellis, I think you knew better than to be chugging your daddy's peach brandy. And what he'd tell us later was that his dad made it from wagon loads of peaches that he'd bring home. But we're now at a major transition point. in Mr. Ellis's life.

In the chronology of his story, he graduates high school, but he quickly gets sucked away from the family farm. And I graduated in 56. I went away to the St. Louis area for the winter. And I was going to come back in farm, 57, landed a job for the winter while there in St. Louis. so I was taking boys out to McDonnell Douglas aircraft where they were seeking a job,

and I was there a transportation person because I had a car. They didn't have one. He graduated and went to St. Louis, Missouri in 1957, and while he was taking some friends to a job interview, he ended up landing a job at a major aircraft manufacturer, but was quickly confronted with the attitude of the nation towards integration. I found out that McDonnell Douglas was taken in black people because they were being asked to do it because they weren't hiring minority people out there.

And they didn't really want you out there, even though there was a mandate to do it. And I found out that after I was there, they wouldn't give me anything to do. They wouldn't tell me, they wouldn't say good morning to me. They just let me stand around out there in the shop. And what McDonald had, I used to call it, 15 in and 15 out, they would bring 15 in on Monday and start them for training. But on Friday, they would let 15 go. So if you were there 30 days, I believe it was 30 days,

you could join the union. And so to keep you from joining the union, they would take you out of there. In other words, on Friday evening, they let you go. So I was watching and I was seeing that every Friday. And I'm saying to myself, well, since they're not giving me a job, they won't sign me to a job, but they won't give me a job. They won't talk to me. I'm probably going to be one of those.

And shown up, they told me one. Friday morning says get your belongings and they already had a group of black boys standing over there and they said go get in that line over there and of course me being visual I saw I knew where the supervisors were the general forms and people like that I got to know who they were I've got to know their names I didn't know them personally but I heard their names enough to know who they were so when they asked me to get my belongings and go over and standing that line I broke rank

and went and went to the superintendent's office. And when in the end, I asked the young lady, I says, you know, it was my goleian in, that's the general former's name. She said, no, he's out. I says, can I help you? I says, yeah. I said, I like to talk to him. I said, and I was upstairs, and I pointed to her as a big wonder.

I said, I'm standing over there with that group's boys. and I says, I would like to talk to him. And she said, when he'd come back, I'll tell him. So sure enough, about 15 minutes, he came out on the floor, and he grabbed my supervisor. He didn't talk to me. And he just told my supervisor what my name was. And my supervisor looked over there at me.

And then he begged for me to get out of the line. And that's how I got saved. otherwise I'd have been gone. This 1950s company checked its integration box while hiring but firing these men. Because they knew that Mr. Ellis could see what was going on, they let him keep his job, but no telling how many others were fired. I landed a job there and took training in Smar,

which was sheet metal work. And after mastering the job, that I went on to become an aircraft mechanic out on the flight line there at McDonnell Douglas and I stayed there 13 years. Anyone who's ever tried to save a family farm knows that it takes some creativity and hard work. In Mr. Ellis's case, it meant that he had to build a career somewhere else with the end goal of making it back to the farm that was purchased by his great-great-grandfather Joseph in 1881. The Bell Farm.

There just wasn't enough money in farming to support him and his parents right out of high school, but he made regular trips back to Arkansas to help his dad, but the end goal was always staying on the farm. During his time with the aircraft company, he also earned his pilot's license, which is an incredible feat in and of itself. But Mr. Ellis's work ethic didn't stop in the aircraft industry. He started up a completely new career,

while working up there. While there, I also took insurance courses and even and started selling insurance. But in the meantime, I almost had dual residency. I was still coming home to help my father's farm because I felt like one day that I still might be able to come back to the farm. And finally, at a point in time, I was... After leaving McDonnell-Dougness, I became an insurance broker. And that gave me, you know, my own boss so I could be away three or four days in a row.

I'd be on the farm and then go back to my insurance business. I had a nice staff and everything. So that was a great experience for me. And it taught me lots about business, even though I only had a high school education. I had pretty well had a photostatic memory. I didn't have to write things down. I could remember things and I could get things done. And I could go out and visit with a family and I could remember all the kids' names and

for the night they went to college and all those kind of things. So it was a great experience. But my experience in having a dual residency because I never forgot my roots, Arkansas, is where I was born, Arkansas, where I really wanted to be, and that's where I still am. From 1965 to 2014, Mr. Ellis ran Bells and Associates Insurance Agency and managed billions of dollars and assets. He had to go to the city to make money so that he could survive back here in Arkansas, and that's the difficulty with many of these rural poverty-stricken states,

is that you've got to go somewhere else if you really want to make the money. but the thing that stitched it together, stitched the city and his farm together, was that he was able to fly. He was a pilot, and he managed to buy his own plane. It was the only way that he could run a farm and an insurance agency out of St. Louis. But one day, early in his career, he got a tip from a crop duster that he was in serious jeopardy, and it could have cost him everything. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over.

They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence.

Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers.

Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And very often, you know, I would leave Kansas and head right straight into Forest City. Or I would leave from Chicago and head straight into Forest City. And often I'd come in at night because I did a lot of night flying. And that would be, I used to come into the Forest City Airport. and I would see cars out there. And I knew that they were detective cars, I suppose.

And I thought nothing about it. And one day, they flew a crop dust and stuff out of the airport in the daytime. And I had crops, and they would fly my crops and stuff like that. And these guys knew me. They knew kind of what I was doing. And I had seen these guys out there. And one night, I flew in there. And when I pulled my airplane into the parking place, they all came up to me.

And when I opened the door and stepped out, they were all laughing and smiles and everything. And when I stepped out, all those smiles came to a frown. And I wondered why. But I didn't know. I didn't know why. But one day, one of the pilots that was flying my crops, he found out that I was in town because that was the day that I didn't, I came in in the day, so I parked on my private runway on the farm. Didn't have lights. He came out and he says, change your pattern.

And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, you're coming in at night and you're disrupting their drug pickup out there. and they're going to put some drugs in your airplane and buss you. Because when you come in, if their plane that's delivering their drugs can't land, he's burning a fuel and he may not be able to get to his next stop. So they're going to put a stop to you. And that was very disheartedly to know. The way I was working and my honesty, you know, my not being able to borrow money

and it was one thing, and I kind of overcome that. But through skill and hard work, I overcome that. But here's something now that I'm not gonna be overcome because I'm gonna be in jail. I really, it really made me angry at first. And there was some people who just couldn't understand, even from my own people, how I was doing all of these things, buying land, buying an airplane, farming,

coming in and go on when I want to. They just see people around that does it. They do that. Not even white, all the white people. So I said, well, you know, I was going to go up there and confront the authorities about what I was here.

And I said to myself, well, you're going to be right in the way in jail. When people would be saying, I know that n n*** that was doing something wrong. Flying that airplane and doing all this stuff, we knew he was hauling drugs. He had to be doing something. I said, no, just change your path.

So I stopped coming in at night. I started purposely coming in in the daytime. So I was forever thankful to that guy who came out to the farm to tell me that. I think this is a testament to the wisdom of Mr. Ellis and navigating his life in this era. Ego could have got him into a fight that he couldn't win. But he just changed his pattern and he beat the system. His life is full of stories like this and him overcoming the odds. I'd also like to note that this man spent the first 15 years of his life riding in a wagon pulled by mules.

He only had a high school diploma, and then by middle age, he owned his own plane and would fly across the country running a business and farm. Even from a technology aspect, wagon to plane, pretty astonishing. He did this all the while acquiring more and more land adding to his Arkansas farm. This is truly an incredible story, but I think you're going to be surprised at the end. I now want to understand how Mr. Ellis evaluated success. When I saw my life one year and one year or two years later, I had a better life than I had. two years before. To me, I was always seeing some success.

And it was in small increments. Sometimes it looked like it didn't move. Sometimes it did move. And sometime it leaf rocked. To me, that was success. It was about having gone to school. It was about having a little bit more money in my pockets, a little bit more knowledge in my head,

A little better outlook on life. With my mother them having more meat in the smokehouse, more hogs in the hog lot, more cattle going from a wagon to a car or to a truck. To me, that was success, where most people were dying to get away from the country because they saw other people going north, looked like they was building a better life because they came back driving a new car. I didn't look at having a new car as being success.

I looked at my dad having a better crop. That was the success that I was looking for even as a small child. I would go north for the summer sometime and spend a week or 20 days with somebody and come back. I still had no desire to go north. I wanted my success to be right here on the land.

That was what I looked upon as success. In the time period when over six million African Americans moved out of the south to northern cities, Mr. Ellis stayed home to scrap through the inherent difficulties of the region and make it here. And at 87 years old, I think we can say that he's done that. This next story is a significant part of Mr. Ellis's legacy, and it came from an unlikely place. You may recognize the name Monsanto. I had been buying Monsanto stock for a while, but I'd never been going to the stockholds meeting. And I had signed up for it, but I would never go.

And my office was a couple of miles from Monsanto's headquarters. And I happened to be in town one day, and I knew the stockholds. meeting was being held. So I said to myself, I think I'll go to a stock hole in meeting. So I got up and I went down there. When I was approaching the table where you sign in, I noticed that was some Afro-American standing around in there.

You know, I didn't know them, but they were standing around in there. So it's cool, you know, other black people here, but I didn't see many in the line. And I didn't know what they were. The position was there, I guess they was in security or something, you know. And people were kind of looking at me kind of funny.

So I get to the table and the lady stops me and she looks at my credentials and she asked me to step aside. And I'm wondering, why she asked me to step aside? I knew I took care of everything. I've done this two or three years in a row, but I hadn't been there. And so she went back in the back and I guess she talked to some people because they had never seen an afternoon. American come through the line. So the lady that came from the back says to me, Mr. Bell,

come on here. So I go on the end and I take my seat. They are holding stockholds meeting and they got a couple of Afro-American people who's on the board of Monsanto. They're sitting up there on the front on the podium and there's some other employees

sitting in the audience. You know, I didn't know them, but they were sitting here and there. You know, you could see a black face every once in a while. after the meeting was over, people who had bought stock was testified about how well their stock had been doing and how they was enjoying their entire retirement and their dividends and stuff that they were getting. And I'm sitting there listening to all this. And something was telling me, say something. So when I got a break, I got up and I said to the board, my name is Ellis Bell.

I'm a fourth-generation farmer in the Far City, Arkansas. And I says, and I read many magazines, and I see where Monsanto is giving to schools that's helping Caucasian kids. I says, but I never see them giving to schools. That's happening Afro-American kids. And when I say that, the CEO stood straight up. He was a tall guy.

He's standing there And I'm still talking And when I finished talking He asked, don't you go nowhere I want to talk to you So After the meeting is over Well, he makes a V-I-N off that stage

Come on a way He sets him in and we start talking We stayed there two hours After the meeting Everybody was gone He says I think it's a legitimate question and I'm going to see if I can do something about it and that's how I got my non-profit organization started next thing we know we were on our way educating kids about

agriculture in conjunction with the University of Missouri the junction of Illinois East St. Louis Illinois Bolliver County Mississippi High Bluff Arkansas we were setting up ag classes to show kids where their food was coming from and tell them how important it was to get involved in agriculture. In 2007, Mr. Ellis founded Bell AgTech, which for almost 20 years has helped minority high school students find pathways into agriculture. However, there is an irony, which is sad to me when he spoke about the future of his own farm. I considered not putting this in the story because it's deep. personal to Mr. Ellis, but it's just the hard reality that isn't the beautiful bow that we'd like to see at the end of the story.

And, of course, the farm is not being passed on. I'm probably the last generation of farmers. How does that make you feel? Tired. At 87, I don't feel like I may farm one more year. I'm trying to put together something to go one more year. I still like to look back and say it. I've still had a good life.

I've had a, not a happy life all the time, but it was, it was, you know, kind of painful. And there's some stories to be told, you know, I've enjoyed my life. You know, you've got to have a mindset, you know. And when I say mindset, it gets back to that decision thing. What decisions do you make? How do you make them? When do you make them? Just decisions.

decision, the decision. I was always guided to do the right thing. Very few times I wound up failing to get the job done. Faith that I could get it done. The good Lord looked after me. You know, it's me and the good Lord in my health, you know, trying to keep it all together. The complexities and challenges of the large-scale row-crop agriculture of the last 30 years have seemed almost insurmountable to small-time American farmers. And though Mr. Ellis' great-great-grandfather Joseph would now marvel at the size and scale of the Bell Farm in 2025 in a big ag world, it's a small farm. Keeping it alive this long has been a feat not far from a miracle,

fueled by the hard work, grit, and determination of one man. What an incredible story. Thank you, Mr. Ellis, for who you are. I can't thank you enough for listen to Bear Greece and Brent's This Country Life podcast. Please leave us a review on iTunes and share this podcast with a friend this week. Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag and there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper,

from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen back. woods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. an IHeart podcast.

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