Browse Items (1434 total)

The day after the auction, a dejected Katie plays on a swing set. The family hopes to find a small house in town to she won't have to switch schools. 'I wish we could stay here,' says Katie.

After a long and emotional day at the auction, Lionel and Shari sit at their kitchen table while the proceeds are added up. After all the sales have been tallied, they're still in debt and will be forced to leave the farm. 'I knew after this was…

Katie Bockus 6, doesn't have the heart to go outside to the barn where hundreds picked over her family's belongings. 'Mommy said were not going to sell the kittens or the dog or our coats or clothes,' says Katie.

friends and neighbors gather around Lionel in the tool shed offering advice on how to get one of his tractors working the day of the auction. Much of his machinery was damage due to a series of devastating floods the past several years.

Lionel Bockus' milk cows are paraded one by one in front of potential buyers. Because the auctions started so late, the crowd had dwindled by the time the cows were sold, so it wasn't able to get full value for one of his biggest assets.

Shari watches as auctioneer Doug Gilmore takes bids on her prized buffet. She didn't want to sell it, but the family needed all the money they could get. The buffet brought $17.50.

the night before the auction, Shari checks the farm books after receiving notice from the bank that five checks had bounced.

facing mounting debt and imminent eviction, Lionel Bockus has no choice but to finally call it quits. 'A lot of of people have been calling,' says Lionel's wife, Shari. 'They never thought he would do it. They thought he would die on the farm. '

Lionel Bockus checks the condition of his corn prior to the auction of his family farm. Bockus has 'Worked hard all his life, even if he hasn't been successful,' says auctioneer Doug Gilmore. The family farm is a 'Dying thing,' says Gilmore, ' and…

Donald Anderson rides through the fields where his ancestors worked as slaves in Eagle Rock, Virginia. The world hardly knows the man, though he may have done as much to lift the hearts and raise the sights of the Southern black poor as any man…