Fred Akers picked cotton in the Mississippi Delta alongside his eight siblings and sharecropper father until times got better and they moved into town.
Lived in a Blytheville, Ark., neighborhood called the Sawdust Bottoms. Home was a shotgun house with no electricity or plumbing. O.H. Akers doubled its size by adding three rooms. Even then, Freddie, as they called the boy, didn't get a bed to himself until his senior year in high school.
Freddie was his mother's favorite, the only one to earn a high school diploma. Edna and O.H. argued over it. O.H. thought Freddie ought to be out working with his brothers and sisters.