Just as a tree without roots is dead,
a people without history or culture also becomes a dead people.
—Malcolm X

Oral History Project*

Researcher Eleanor Ramsey (right) visited Millwood Plantation in the early 1980's with Minnie Walker (center) and Walker's daughter. The Walkers' relatives were slaves on the plantation and some stayed on as tenant farmers after the Civil War. Minnie Walker lived at Millwood until 1925.

     In the summer of 1981, anthropologist Eleanor Mason Ramsey and her assistants set out to capture a neglected part of the past. Patiently, they interviewed dozens of elderly African Amencans to learn about their lives and the lives of those they knew in Elbert County, Georgia, and Abbeville County, South Carolina. The backdrop for this research was a patchwork of piney woods and rolling, red clay hills, intermingled with small towns and hardscrabble farms on earth frequently scarred by erosion from the days when cotton was king. Sparsely populated and mostly rural, the region, even today, provides glimpses of a vanish-ing way of life in the South. The oral historians selected residents of these two counties, which straddle the Savannah River and the borders of the two states, because they lived near the site of the new Richard B. Russell Dam. Construction of the dam, which began operation in 1984, and the body of water it created, Russell Lake, dramatically changed the landscape. Consequently, years before the dam began to take shape on the Savannah River, other researchers had arrived from many different disciplines to pore over the ground within a 52,000-acre radius.

They studied and documented its features and cultural significance, dating as far back as twelve centuries ago. Their work was directed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Savannah District, which oversaw building of the dam, and the National Park Service's Southeast Archeological Center, which administered the research contracts.

As a Federal project with significant regional impact, the dam fell under a Presidential Order, the Archeological and Historic Preservation Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act, which require that a record of human life and the environment be made to preserve knowledge that otherwise could be lost. Researchers from such diverse fields as archeology to architecture were involved, beginning nearly 20 years before the dam was finished. Their detailed findings are collected in the Russell Papers, some 20 publications that form an invaluable record of a place and its people.
 

Historian Shirley Moore (left) studied old photographs
with many of the people she interviewed in Elbert and
Abbeville Counties in the early 1980's.

The identities were lost over the years of many of the people in the old photographs researchers collected, including the name of this child, photographed around 1918 in Elberton, Georgia.

Investigators worked diligently to cross check what they heard, returning to newspaper archives to gather more details of some recollections, and studying census, tax, birth, marriage, and death records to verify or elaborate on aspects of other reminiscences. This task was impeded at times by the earlier neglect in recording facts about AfricanAmericans in both official documents and newspapers. Nonetheless, investigators assembled a complex portrait of a people, place, and time. As Ramsey observed of the African Americans, "They are their own best historians."

Much of the material in these pages, including photographs, comes from the findings gathered in the early 1980's. Unfortunately, however, significant details about when and where many of the interviews occurred went unrecorded, as well as information about many of the subjects of photographs and when the photographs were taken.

The authors of this volume have collected additional photographs, as well as more information from the original tape recordings and transcripts, and from other sources. Important material also derives from other Russell investigators who interviewed local African Americans, some of them the same individuals the Ramsey team met. These included archeologist Marlessa Gray and researchers from Loyola University of Chicago, under the leadership of Charles Orser, who provided valuable insights about African-American relations with specific plantation owners. Marlessa Gray also helped document the story of landowner Gilbert Gray, while The Historic American Buildings Survey offered useful background about Jim White, one of the most successful early African-American farmers in the area.

The History Group, an Atlanta-based research team, recounted the defiant tale of the white planter George Washington Dye and his relationship with a slave woman, Lucinda. One of their descendants, Edward Brownlee, was a significant source of information. Credit also goes to archeologists David Anderson and J.W. Joseph whose summaries of the technical findings of the Russell research were invaluable.

The Morrison family of Elberton, Georgia, includes from left to right: George Morrison, his wife Venie, Minnie Wall, who is Venie's sister, and Hershal Morrison, son of George and Venie.

The remembrances forming the basis of this volume deal mainly with life between 1880 and 1930, although some of the residents provided information gleaned from their conversations with parents and grandparents about the days before the Civil War. Other memories are more recent, recalling the Great Depression, World War II, and the decline of family farms. Taken together, these accounts sum up not only the history of a people in two rural counties, but mirror a broader story about the entire South. As a result, while the central focus here is always on the African Americans, it is sometimes impossible to separate their life stories from those of the white residents with whom they closely interacted.

The dominant themes of this narrative about human existence are universal: family, work, education, recreation, religion, and friendships. It is important to note, however, that while the people profiled shared many cultural ties, each was a distinct individual with unique experiences. Any generalizations are made cautiously.

If, however, there was an uncontestable feature shared by everyone, it was an indomitable strength of spirit. Despite a legacy of enslavement and their own experiences of forced segregation, the African Americans did not consider themselves to be powerless victims. Rather, they returned again and again in their memories to the triumphs of their lives. They pointed proudly to the achievements of poor farm children who grew up to be doctors, ministers, teachers, and business leaders, and of the countless devoted parents who sacrificed their own ambitions to ensure that their children had better lives. This, then, is the long overdue retelling of their stories.

Left and below: unknown local residents, photographed ca. 1890-1900

Captured and Sold

*This and following chapters adapted from the book entitled
In Those Days by Sharyn Kane and Richard Keeton

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