David Woodbury’s Q & A with Leonard Todd, Author of “Carolina Clay”

Note from moderator Vikki Bynum: With David Woodbury’s permission, I have posted here his interview with author Leonard Todd as a followup to “A Beautiful Craft; A Wonderful Book: Dave the Potter and Carolina Clay.” This Q & A was originally published on November 02, 2009, on David’s blog, Of Battlefields and Bibliophiles. 

A sidenote to Leonard’s sensitive discussion of the life of Dave, a slave within his ancestors’ household, is his mention of his ancestral name of Landrum. The Landrums of Jones County, Mississippi, were originally from South Carolina. Many of them were Unionists during the Civil War. Leonard tells me that his great-great-great granduncle, Dr. Abner Landrum, was one of the foremost Unionists in the South Carolina upstate.

My thanks to David Woodbury for his generous lending of this and the previous post on Carolina Clay!

Dave the Slave
a Q&A with author Leonard Todd

At left. Leonard Todd with some of Dave’s pottery. Photo by Brook Facey.

Faithful readers with better than average recall and few distractions in their lives will remember a blog entry from a month ago when I first became enthralled with Leonard Todd’s book, Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave. Since that time, I took time to read it cover-to-cover, and corresponded with the gracious Mr. Todd about his uniquely American story.

I sent him six questions, and received six answers, presented here unedited.

OBAB: Thanks very much for taking the time to respond to some questions about your book. First let me say that I enjoyed reading it very much. It’s a powerful and poignant journey of discovery, and fascinating in the way your effort to piece together the life of this illusive historic figure is simultaneously a fleshing out of your own family history and roots. Could you begin by relating a little bit about the experience of first learning about Dave’s pottery in The New York Times, and of the dawning realization that you had familial ties to the potter?

Leonard Todd: I can remember the exact date on which I first learned of Dave. I was in New York City, where I had lived for almost thirty years. I opened The New York Times on January 30, 2000, to find an article announcing an exhibition of his work. I read that, while in bondage, Dave had created pots of great size, utility, and beauty—many bearing original poems that he had inscribed on them while their clay was damp. The article indicated that he had lived in South Carolina, which increased my interest because I had been born and raised there—in Greenville—before moving north.

Information at the end of the piece, however, took my breath away: Dave had been owned for much of his life by pottery manufacturers named John Landrum and Lewis Miles. Their names matched those of ancestors of mine, who had lived in a small, central South Carolina town called Edgefield, not far from the Georgia border. I saw that Dave also had lived in Edgefield. With sudden understanding, I realized that my family had owned Dave!

That moment of discovery was like finding a door flung wide to the past: Through it, I could glimpse a complex world of clay and kilns and pottery workers—that I had known nothing of. I was pleased to find that I was linked to Dave, one of the south’s great artisans, yet dismayed that slavery was the mechanism that connected us. Like many white southerners of my generation, I had grown up with a vague sense that my ancestors had been slaveholders. It seemed so long ago, however, that I regarded it as almost unreal. Now, I couldn’t do that anymore.

OBAB: On the surface, this is an account of a skilled slave—exceptional in that he could read and write—whose utilitarian workmanship has transcended to the realm of valuable museum pieces. But the story is so much more than that with your personal connection to the artist. Like the author Edward Ball in Slaves in the Family, you were compelled to face potentially uncomfortable truths about family history. Quite frankly, it would have been easy to concentrate on the pottery and present this as the story of a well cared for servant of kindly masters, and left it at that (an apologist alternative still commonplace today). I thought you treated “the elephant in the room” honestly, and without flinching. Did you struggle with that at all, or do you feel far enough removed to be dispassionate in recounting simple history? Was there any resistance on the part of present-day family members along the lines of letting sleeping dogs lie?

Leonard Todd: My ancestors were Dave’s owners throughout most of his life. When I began writing Carolina Clay, I was so uncomfortable with this fact that I bent over backwards to judge them harshly. Over the course of several drafts, however, I began to understand that my role was not to judge but simply to tell what happened. This would leave the reader free to come to his or her own conclusions.

By telling the story in a straightforward way, I hoped to reach a deeper understanding of both sides caught up in the slavery system. Only by seeing the slave owner and the slave in all their complexity—their strengths and their weaknesses—could I begin to penetrate the world that produced Dave.

My relatives were uniformly supportive of my project. Their only qualm was that I would not be able to find enough material about Dave in the historical record. And, indeed, mentions of him are sparse. As anyone who has tried to research the life of an individual slave can tell you, the institution of slavery so complicated the lives of those in bondage and at the same time so completely erased the record of what it had done that it is often impossible to discover what happened to them. I was able to put together clues about Dave and his fellow workers in the potteries of Edgefield by learning all I could about the men who owned those factories. In an odd way, I first had to know the slave owner before I could know the slave.

OBAB: I learned a lot about the history of pottery in this country from your book, all very interesting—in particular, the workings of groundhog kilns, the development of different glazes, and the mysterious adoption of some ancient Chinese techniques in antebellum America. You mentioned a new program at the Piedmont Technical College in Edgefield that planned to construct a groundhog kiln of the type Dave used. Your book’s been out for a year or more—how’s that kiln coming along? What a cool idea. At the very least they should get you to lead a class out to Pottersville (I know the location of the Stony Bluff kiln remains a secret—damn relic hunters!).

Leonard Todd: The ground was broken for the construction of the school’s outdoor kiln on July 12, 2009. This date fell on the 200th anniversary of Dr. Abner Landrum’s discovery of a bountiful supply of fine clay in Edgefield District, a discovery that led to a century of successful pottery making here. I was invited to be among the speakers at the ceremony. I took that opportunity to present a very special guest to the audience. She was Mrs. Thomasina Holmes Bouknight, who was the only person I had found who knew of a link to Dave in her life: He had made a large jar with an inscription on it for her mother, whose parents had been slaves in the area where Dave lived. She had recounted the fascinating history of the jar to me when I was writing my book (see page 205 of Carolina Clay). After I introduced her to the crowd, she rose and took a bow in response to the protracted applause. A few weeks later, she died. With her passing, the last known connection to Dave disappeared.

Though construction on the kiln is temporarily on hold, it will, when completed, be one of the major attractions of Edgefield. Its site is only a few steps from Main Street. Crowds will be able to gather for firings, as they did when Dave made his pots in the district.

OBAB: If tenderly cared for, do the surviving jugs and containers have a shelf life before they begin to crumble or disintegrate? Or will they effectively last forever, like stone?

Leonard Todd: I asked an expert to answer this one. He is master potter Gary Clontz, Coordinator of the Professional Pottery Program at Piedmont Technical College in Edgefield. He says, “Pots treated in a normal manner will last virtually forever. They will break, of course, if they are dropped, and they will crack if liquid is left in them to freeze. But there are pots in museums that are thousands of years old and still have their integrity.”

Dave touched on this question in one of his inscriptions. In June of 1854, his owner, Lewis Miles, apparently told him that the handle on the jug he had just made was not sturdy enough. To let posterity be the judge, Dave wrote, “Lm says this handle will crack” down the side of the jug at issue. More than 150 years later, the handle is still intact!

OBAB: Dave spent his entire adult life producing pottery. It’s exciting to think that there are still extant pieces, like bits of treasure, scattered across the regional landscape. You write of a number of examples, such as an inscribed “Dave” pot sitting in an old barn, or the one in the yard of Thomasina Holmes Bouknight that she remembers playing around as a little girl. I’m dying to know if you’ve learned of any new pieces coming to light since the publication of your book (“Hmm, that old pot says ‘Dave’ on it”). Are there any pieces on permanent display (in Charleston or elsewhere)? Do you personally own any of Dave’s pottery?

Leonard Todd: Word of several newly discovered Dave pots has come to me through my web site (www.leonardtodd.com). Because the world of pottery collecting enjoys its secrets, I am usually sworn to silence when the news arrives. I think I can safely say, however, that there will be some interesting auctions in the months to come!

I do not own any Dave pieces, but I take great pleasure in visiting the excellent examples on public display. The art museum in my hometown of Greenville, South Carolina, has recently purchased a magnificent jar inscribed with a poem that speaks of stars and bears (pronounced “bars” by Dave.) The Charleston Museum owns the two largest jars he ever made, turned on the same day in 1859. Two museums in Columbia, (the South Carolina State Museum and the McKissick Museum) own Dave pots, as do two museums in Atlanta (the High Museum of Art and the Atlanta History Center.) Other repositories of Dave’s work are the Augusta Museum of History, the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center in Madison, Georgia, the Mint Museums in Charlotte, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Washington Historical Museum in Washington, Georgia, and the Smithsonian Institution.

OBAB: I’m intrigued by the fact that—in the course of this exploration—you actually relocated with your wife from Manhattan to live in Edgefield, the center of the story. Has living there—amongst your own distant relatives, and certainly some descendants of Dave as well — helped you gain a better understanding of Dave’s life experience, or some other insight into the day and age in which he and your ancestors lived? Have you uncovered any more information on Dave from local sources since the publication of Carolina Clay (you mention the emergence of an African American historical society, and a surge in the writing of local histories, with the tantalizing prospect of new connections)?

Leonard Todd: Edgefield is one of those rare spots that the poet W. S. Merwin calls “an unguarded part of the past.” Once a powerful place—ten governors have come from here — it virtually echoes with historical incident. By walking on the very sites where Dave and my ancestors lived and worked, I often begin to get a sense of what their lives were like. Some of the buildings and homes and landscape are unchanged since Dave’s day.

Though I have located descendants of many of the players in Dave’s story, I have not yet found members of his own family. I have traced what I believe is one branch of that family up through the 1930 census (see page 226 of Carolina Clay.) The 1940 census will be released to the public in a very few years. I have great hope that it will bring Dave’s descendants closer to us.

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Confessions of a Small-Town Texas Gadfly

Professor Stauffer is angry at me; I mean really angry. He’s furious that I don’t think more highly of his and Sally Jenkins’s book, State of Jones, but especially that I have the temerity to publicly say so. To get it all off his chest, he just let off more steam on page 2 of the December 10th issue of the Jones County ReView.

Why, he even called me a gadfly–again. His definition: one who ”builds her reputation by constantly annoying, irritating, or slandering others.” Well, I prefer Socrates’ description of the gadfly’s role:  ”to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth.” Under those terms, I plead guilty, having criticized the sloppiness of his research and the distortions of his arguments. That’s what reviewers (and gadflies) are expected to do, when warranted, in our profession.

Professor Stauffer claims that he and Sally Jenkins have in turn treated my work with respect. Go back and listen to you and your co-author’s remarks about me in your interviews last May and June with Mike Noirot of This Mighty Scourge, and on NPR’s Diane Rehm show. Who are you kidding?

Aside from gadfly, what I really am is a history professor who has taught at the same university (in that “small Texas town” he sneeringly mentions) for almost 24 years; a historian who has written three books published by the University of North Carolina Press, a premier academic press.

I could say more about my credentials, but then I’d begin to sound like Stauffer, who ritualistically trots his out. So let’s get to the point. Mr. Stauffer says that I have slandered him. As he kindly explains for us, that means “saying something false or malicious that damages somebody’s reputation.”  He then proceeds to attribute words to me that I have never uttered (how’s that for slander?)! Such as that I “dismissed” him and Ms Jenkins as “Yankees and carpetbaggers.” Mr. Stauffer is not only confused, he repeats himself a lot. You can read my response to these and other phony charges by clicking here.

There is a new charge against me. Stauffer now accuses me of having launched a “blitzkreig” against his and Jenkins’s work on the Internet. Gee, all I did was review their book. They were the ones who asked Kevin Levin of Civil War Memory to let them post a response to that 3-part review, and Kevin graciously did just that. An internet debate followed in which the authors and I, and anyone else who cared to, participated.

So, what’s all this talk about me refusing to debate? Seems to me we’ve already had that debate. Virtually every charge that Stauffer raises anew in his ReView column I have answered either on Renegade South or Civil War Memory. In any case, Mr. Stauffer has never extended an invitation, as he claims, to debate me face-to-face. Now, Mark Thornton, the editor of the Jones County ReView, did once extend such an invitation–Oh, my, has Mr. Stauffer appropriated Mr. Thornton’s idea as his own? Tsk, tsk, imagine that.

Having misrepresented not just the history of Jones County, but also the history of the present debate, Stauffer goes on to confidently proclaim my book, Free State of Jones, a failure. Most remarkable are his standards for that judgment: sales figures and fame. You see, my university press book hasn’t sold nearly the copies that his mass-produced, media-hyped Doubleday version has.  

Here I was, thinking it was great that people from around the United States continue to contact me eight years after Free State of Jones was published. But, no, Stauffer assures us that my book was “virtually unknown outside of Jones County, the Texas town where she teaches, and a community of some 50 scholars who write on Southern Unionists.” Why, he says, I was just a poor little nobody who had never even had my name in the New York Times (just imagine!) before he and Ms. Jenkins opened the door to fame and fortune for me. Silly me for thinking that fame and fortune have about as much to do with high-quality scholarship and history as pop stardom does with perfect pitch. Mr. Stauffer can explain that, too: he says I simply don’t understand his book’s ”genre.”

Despite Professor Stauffer’s tactics, which represent the worst in academic class snobbery, one might expect that he, an academic himself, would understand that the vast majority of historians don’t spend years in graduate school because they hope to write bestsellers that will entertain the masses.

Which reminds me. Years ago, when I was in the final years of my Ph D work at the University of California, San Diego, I proudly wore a shirt sold at conferences by Radical History Review.  The logo on the front featured Karl Marx holding a copy of the Review and the words “Earn Big Money; Become a Historian.” My fellow graduate students and I loved that shirt–it epitomized the passion we felt for the research and writing of history. No, we were not in it for the money.

Vikki Bynum, wearing her Radical History T-shirt in 1986.

(To see a copy of the t-shirt logo, visit Radical History Review and scroll to the bottom of their page. You might even want to order one for yourself!)

The same, evidently, can’t be said for all history professors. For some, it is, rather, all about the money.

It all comes down to this: John Stauffer and I have very different approaches to the profession of history, and I have a very different personal story from his, one that he apparently can’t fathom from his lofty Harvard perch. You see, I earned a PhD the hard way–as a divorced mother of two children and the daughter of parents who, through no fault of their own, never graduated from high school. It may surprise Mr. Stauffer to learn that I never aspired to be either an Ivy League professor or a bestselling author; that my hard-won goals were to write honest, deeply-researched histories about ordinary people of the past who acted in extraordinary ways, and to teach students from backgrounds similar to mine that intellectuals are not confined to elite institutions.

Mr. Stauffer, in contrast, evidently loves to write about poor, downtrodden folks from the past, yet exhibits contempt for present-day renegades who have beat the odds, achieved success on their own terms, and have the gall to proclaim a flawed book just that–no matter who wrote it.

Why, Mr. Stauffer, you’re all lit up like a Christmas tree, and all because of the words of this little old Texas gadfly.

With the sting of truth,

Vikki Bynum

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Preview of Cover for THE LONG SHADOW OF THE CIVIL WAR

THE LONG SHADOW OF THE CIVIL WAR, forthcoming, UNC Press, Feb., 2010

I am delighted with the cover designed by University of North Carolina Press for The Long Shadow of the Civil War, forthcoming February 2010. The cover’s shadowy figures and shrouded landscape not only suggest the enduring importance of place, family, and kinship in the South, but also the clandestine, rural world of Civil War Unionists.  Hazy outlines of a makeshift structure put me in mind of the deserter hideouts in the North Carolina Piedmont woods, the swamps of Piney Woods Mississippi, and the Big Thicket forests of East Texas that inspired the essays contained within (to learn more about the book, click here).

My thanks to UNC Press, long known for the high quality of its publications and the highly effective “first impression” quality of it’s book jackets, for showcasing so beautifully The Long Shadow of the Civil War.

Vikki Bynum

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Setting the Record Straight for Professor Stauffer

At a  recent two-day booksigning in Jones County, Mississippi, State of Jones co-author, John Stauffer, hurled some serious charges at your Renegade South moderator that must be addressed.  According to the November 13, 2009, online edition of the Laurel Leader Call,  Professor Stauffer attributed several comments to me that I have never made, and others that are gross exaggerations of what I have said in my critiques of their book (to see my 3-part critique of State of Jones, begin here). Perhaps Mr. Stauffer was simply confused; much as been written about his and Sally Jenkins’s book since its June 23, 2009 release. Let me, then, set the record straight.

First, Mr. Stauffer accuses me of refusing to debate him. The truth is, I have never received any personal communications from Mr. Stauffer–ever–much less an invitation to debate him.

He goes on to accuse me of having labeled him and Ms. Jenkins ”Yankees and Carpetbaggers.” I have never made any such remark about them.

Nor have I ever said or written, as Stauffer claims, that Newt Knight was “no friend of blacks.” 

I have also never said or written that the writing in State of Jones is ”inferior to that of high school students.” As a teacher of college students, however, I did agree with one of my blog commenters that if a student turned in a research paper that was as poorly documented as much of State of Jones is, I would insist that the student rewrite it.

Finally, according to Stauffer, I accused the authors of writing fiction rather than history.  Well, not quite. But I have commented several times in various sections of Renegade South on the manner in which Jenkins and Stauffer play fast and loose with the facts in State of Jones. I gather here those remarks, which I stand by:

1. In regard to State of Jones, there’s nothing wrong with history that reads like a novel, but the research and use of evidence must be done responsibly unless it is categorized as fiction.

 2. All of us love to read exciting stories, but the historian must always be careful not to privilege the excitement of a good story over factual accuracy. It’s fine to speculate, but you must tell the reader when you are doing so. The authors’ weaving in of other people’s histories with Newt Knight’s to suggest what he “might” have thought or done was not done carefully enough to separate fact from conjecture in my view.

3. Yes, I agree that it would be more accurate to define Jenkins and Stauffer’s work as “historical fiction.” But the authors themselves claim that their book is historical scholarship at its finest.

4. If writers are going to mix fact and fiction to build a more exciting story, they need to make that clear to their readers. If what Ms. Jenkins and Professor Stauffer wrote were to be transferred to a TV special, for example, it would have to be termed a “docudrama” to avoid charges of poor research and incorrect suppositions.

In the future, let’s hope that Professor Stauffer sticks to the facts in defending the contents of State of Jones, and that he resists engaging in ad hominem attacks on his critics. 

Vikki Bynum

NOTE: For my response to Professor Stauffer’s subsequent published remarks in the ReView of Jones County, see Confessions of a Texas Gadfly.

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Ed Payne to speak on “Free State of Jones” before Kiwanis Club

“Free State of Jones” bumper sticker, courtesy of DeBoyd Knight

Newt Knight was an important leader in Jones County’s Civil War insurrection, but he did not create Mississippi’s most famous inner civil war. Ed Payne, one of my favorite Mississippi historians, recognizes this better than most, having researched Jones County records for over four years now.

At 12:00 noon, November 18, Ed will address the Kiwanis Club of Laurel at the Laurel Country Club.  The meeting will begin with a luncheon, followed at 12:30 pm by Ed’s thirty-minute presentation, “Civil War Jones County:  Free State or Just Different?”

Those attending, who will include members of the Jones County Genealogical and Historical Organization as well as the Kiwanis Club, can expect a multi-faceted treatment of Jones County’s economic profile, elaborate kinship networks, and the complicated issue of the county’s divided loyalties during the Civil War.

The audience will be treated to the work of a first-class researcher who favors truth over myths, facts over fantasies. Perhaps Ed should have titled his talk, “Beyond Newt Knight.”

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John M. Baylis: The Confederate Side of Jones County

Reading Renegade South, one might gain the impression that all of Jones County supported the Union during the Civil War. That was certainly not the case, although the county did give a substantial majority of its votes–166 out of 255–to John H. Powell, the county’s anti-secession delegate to Mississippi’s secession convention of 1861. The other 89 of those votes went to the pro-secession candidate, 33-year-old John M. Baylis.

John McCormick Baylis was from one of Jones County’s wealthiest families. His father, George Baylis, was a Methodist preacher who, in 1850, owned fifteen slaves. Only two men in the county–William Duckworth and Isaac Anderson–owned more slaves. In 1860, John himself owned seven slaves; his brother Wyatt owned five. 

By 1860, John had been married to Mary Rawls for some five years; the couple’s household included three children, as well as John’s younger siblings, Wyatt and Catherine. Like their father before them, the Baylis brothers were among the wealthiest men in Jones County. John was a physician who owned real estate valued at $11,000, and personal property (which included slaves) valued at $8,300. Wyatt, though only 21 years old, owned real estate worth $4,000, and personal wealth worth $5,000. Catherine, still a teenager, claimed a personal estate of $4,000.

Like everyone else, the Baylis’s lives would soon be transformed by the Civil War. John and Wyatt both joined the 7th battalion Mississippi Infantry, infamous for having contributed a multitude of deserters to the Knight Company, including its notorious captain, Newt Knight.  John and Wyatt Baylis, however, were not among those men; in fact, after the war, John was foremost among those men who opposed Newt Knight’s rise to power. Wyatt, however, was dead by then from wounds sustained at Vicksburg. 

Shortly after enlisting in the army, John Baylis was appointed official surgeon of the 7th battalion, giving him the authority to recommend medical discharges for the men of his unit. In the aftermath of the searing battle of Corinth (1862), he was detached from his unit and remained in Corinth with wounded men from his battalion. By December of that year, he himself was reported sick and absent from duty. Following Vicksburg (and the death of brother Wyatt), John was reported AWOL. He later returned to service, and, on February 8, 1864, was once again assigned to detached service. 

In the immediate aftermath of the war, on July 30, 1865, John expressed his contempt for Knight band renegades in a personal letter to Gov. William L. Sharkey. In the wake of Confederate defeat, several Jones County Unionists, including Newt Knight, received plum appointments from the reconstructed government. Outraged, John declared the new appointees dishonorable men and little more than bandits. He specifically accused the new sheriff, T. J. Huff, of having

united with a band of outlaws who have been engaged in murder and pillage during the war and who have stated frequently that they would not submit to authority of any kind.

He was referring, of course, to the Knight Company. Jones County’s Unionists wielded power for only a brief few years. by 1872, pro-Confederate Democrats had turned back the tide of Reconstruction.

Although the war had impoverished many families, John M. Baylis remained a wealthy man. In a county where few people in 1870 claimed more than a few hundred dollars in property, Baylis’s combined real and personal property was assessed at a whopping $15,000. 

Now, bear with me while I take a bit of a detour with this story. One would logically conclude from all this that the families of John M. Baylis and Newt Knight were miles apart in wealth, ideology, and probably just plain hated each other’s guts.  But not so fast. Remember that Newt’s grandfather, Jackie Knight, was one of the largest slaveholders of neighboring Covington County before the war.

Remember also that Jackie’s son, Jesse Davis, took a different route in life than did Jackie’s son Albert (Newt’s father). Jesse Davis Knight owned slaves (one of whom was Rachel, Newt Knight’s accomplice during the war and lifelong companion); Albert chose not to.

Jesse Davis Knight also married Sarah Elizabeth Baylis, daughter of George Baylis and sister of John M. Baylis, connecting the Knight and Baylis families. Later on down the road, Jesse Davis and Sarah Elizabeth’s son, George Baylis Knight (nicknamed ”Clean Knight”), married Elmira Turner, who was kin to Serena Turner, who married Newt Knight.

Well, with all those family connections, you can guess what happened if you don’t already know: the nephew of John M. Baylis ended up becoming one of Capt. Newt Knight’s closest lifelong friends! Clean Neck lived to be a hundred years old, just long enough to defend Newt’s reputation against the charges hurled against him in Ethel Knight’s Echo of the Black Horn. I love it when history defies the odds.

Vikki Bynum

[Records used include federal manuscript population and slave schedules, 1850-1870; Confederate army military records, governors' papers, and interview with Earle Knight]

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The Legacy of Amos McLemore’s Civil War Murder: 20th Century Family Stories

Amos Deason Home, site of Maj. Amos McLemore's murder, Ellisville, MS. Photo by Victoria Bynum

 There’s an interesting new blog, Across and Back, written by “Red,” a descendant of Amos McLemore who recently made an odyssey to her ancestral home of Jones County, Mississippi, to learn more about the fate of her kinfolk.

The murder of Confederate Major Amos McLemore on October 5, 1863, allegedly by Newt Knight and two of his accomplices, is famous for being the opening shot–literally–for a band of Confederate deserters’ and Unionists’ insurrection against the Confederacy. Major McLemore was visiting the home of Confederate Rep. Amos Deason when intruders entered the home and shot him dead. The reason? McLemore’s efforts to round up local deserters. Shortly thereafter, on October 13, the Knight Company was born, with Newt Knight elected its captain.

That story has been repeated over and over, but the story of what happened to the McLemores after his murder has never been told–hence, Red’s trip back home to try and recover that hazy past. Give Across and Back a visit–you might see someone you know!

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Author Jonathan Odell to Speak October 5th in Hattiesburg

UPDATE, Sept. 26, 2009: Please note below that I have corrected the time of Jon’s presentation from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm. 

One of my favorite writers, Jonathan Odell, will give a presentation on his various works of fiction and nonfiction on October 5, 2:30 p.m., at Provision Living, 217 Methodist Blvd (across the street from Turtle Creek Mall) in Hattiesburg, MS.

Jonathan Odell

Jon will read from his novel, The View From Delphi, something you won’t want to miss. As I wrote last December in my review of this book, “Odell writes the kind of fiction that makes history come alive. He is a master of dialogue, revealing a keen understanding of human character.” Here’s what others have said:

From an anonymous reviewer: “As an African American. . . . rarely have I read a book by a white author in which there is a black main character who is not rescued by benevolent white characters. . . . Jon Odell has invited us all into an honest dialogue about our race stories, our relationships across race, and ultimately our shared history and future as Americans.” From Randi Madden: “It was truly a ‘slice of life’– something that happens to others, the joy of finding friends in places you didn’t imagine, the harsh reality of what is the South.” From J. Gilbert: “As a native Mississippian, I appreciated the honesty of Odell’s story and the artful way he developed the characters.”

The View From Delphi

Jon will also discuss what he has learned about Jones County’s controversial history after interviewing over 100 folks on topics as varied as the legends surrounding Newt Knight, the 1951 execution of Willie McGee, and the life story of Laurel, Mississippi’s own Leontyne Price.

Intrigued? Then head on over to Provision Living on October 5.  Refreshments will be served, and Jon will be happy to sign your books. If you don’t already have a copy of The View From Delphi, you’ll find it at Main Street Books, 210 N Main St., in Hattiesburg. The event is free of charge.

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“Who are These Women?” Revisited

Another Knight descendent has weighed in on the identities of the two women portrayed in my earlier post,   “Who are These Women.” Dorothy Knight Marsh identifies the woman on the left in that photo as Anna Knight, born 1874, the daughter of George Ann and, possibly, Newt Knight. Dorothy, then, agrees with Yvonne Bivins, who speculates further that the lighter-skinned woman on the right is Candace Smith Knight, also born 1874, the daughter of Lucy Ainsworth Smith and the wife of Anna’s brother, John Howard Knight. It does make sense that sisters-in-law who were the same age would pose together for a photograph. Let’s look at that photo again:

Is this Anna Knight and Candace Smith Knight, sisters-in-law?

Now let’s look at the picture below of Yvonne’s  mother, Mary Ann Dodds. Mary Ann was Candace’s niece. Both women were descended from Lucy Ainsworth Smith, and all three, Yvonne tells me, were tiny women, under 100 lbs, who were known to greatly resemble one another. Readers can judge for themselves Mary Ann’s resemblence to the woman on the right, above:

Mary Ann Dodds, niece of Candace Smith Knight

Below is an actual photo (unfortunately very faded) of Candace with her husband, John Howard Knight, and their family.

John Howard Knight family. Candace Knight is on the right, in back row. Collection of Yvonne Bivins.

 

So, what do you think? Look forward to more observations and perhaps even confirmations!

Vikki Bynum

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Part 3: Yvonne Bivins on the History of Rachel Knight

Rachel Knight

by

Sondra Yvonne Bivins

 

Rachel’s Children Fathered by Jesse Davis Knight 

      Slaves had few legal rights, least of all to marry and have children. Just two years after arriving on Jackie Knight’s place, Rachel became the slave mistress of his son, Jesse Davis Knight.  Illicit interracial sexual relationships were not unusual in the antebellum South in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Jesse Davis Knight’s liaison with Rachel resulted in the birth of three known children: Jeffery Earley, Edmund, and Frances.

      Early in 1858, Rachel gave birth to a son, her third child.  Jeffery Earley was born a slave, owned by his grandfather, John “Jackie”  Knight. By law, the status of the mother determined the status of the children, so Rachel and her children were his property.   After slavery, while still a teenager, Jeffery married Martha Ann Eliza Jane, “Mollie,” the daughter of Serena and Newton Knight. The rumor mill started immediately, with claims that Newt forced his daughter to marry the former slave boy who in physical appearance was nearly white and who after all shared the same grandfather.  To local whites it was just impossible for a white girl to become attracted to and fall in love with a Negro; however, to the family this was just the case.  Jeffery and Mollie had grown up working and playing together on Newton’s farm.  Newton was well aware of this, and so he determined to erase any vestige of Negro in both Rachel’s and George Ann’s children.

      To the union of Jeffery and Mollie were born the following children: Ollie Jane (1883); Charles Madison (1886); Lawrence Larkin (1887); Altimara (1890); Leonard Ezra(1892); Chauncie Omar (1897); and Otho (1900). In 1890, Jeffery had an outside affair with Newton’s youngest daughter, Cora Ann, and fathered a son named Billy (1891).  In March 1817, two months after Mollie died from uterine cancer, he married Susan Ella Smith.  J. E. lived and died in the Six Town Community and did not associate socially with Blacks.

      Edmond was born on February 8, 1861 two months prior to the first shots fired at Ft. Sumter, SC.  He died when he was about sixteen or seventeen years old.

      Frances, who was called Fan, was born March 18, 1863 and married Newt’s white son George Madison, “Matt,” in Dec 1878. She had nine children before he deserted her for a white cousin named Francis Smith.  Fan later married an itinerate preacher named Dock Howze from Clarke County, MS.  In 1914, she denied under oath that she was black. It is possible, but not proven, that Dock Howze was a part-Choctaw whose given name was Benson Howze. 

      According to family stories, Jeffrey Early and Fan both had deep-seated issues with being defined as “Negroes.” Although Fan had delicate features, she could not pass for a white person, so she claimed to be mixed with French and Native American.  All of Jeffrey Early’s children by Newton’s daughter Mollie married white, almost white, or to relatives to avoid being classified as Negroes. They were raised as white in an isolated environment and had difficulty being accepted by either whites or blacks.  Their situation reminds me of the song that Kermit the Frog sang about “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

Rachel’s Children Fathered by Newton Knight 

            The ex-slave Martha Wheeler said it best.  Children of white fathers were given privileges that other former slaves did not have.  As soon as Newton’s children were old enough, the indoctrination began.  Newt indoctrinated them with an elitist attitude that made them believe they were somehow better than the average black because of their white blood. He helped build a school in the community and attempted to send his children by Rachel to that school.  When the local whites rejected them, it is said that he burned it down. 

      Martha Ann Knight was born August 15, 1866.  She had long, bushy hair and light complexion, café au lait, or coffee with cream color.  She married Samuel Knight whose parents were Daniel Thomas Knight, Newt’s cousin, and Harriet Carter, another of John Knight’s slaves.  Martha and Samuel had four children: Sidney, Amos, Viola Ode and Senia.  Martha and Samuel encouraged their children to marry someone of their own kind.  All except Senia married a cousin. Senia fell in love with and married a black man named Robert Johnson.  The couple eventually had to move away to avoid harassment. 

         John Stewart, born in May 1868, was believed to be homosexual by family members and never married. Anyone breaking the peace in the family was accused of acting like Stewart. Living alone, he was brutally hacked to death in 1920 by locals looking for money. 

      John Floyd was born in 1871. His first wife was a white girl named Sophronia Cox. He married her in 1890.  The marriage was witnessed by her brother Richard C. Cox.   There is no record of Floyd’s marriage to Lucy Ainsworth Smith.  Quill Anderson stated that his family moved to the Soso area around 1895.  Floyd and Lucy had three children: William Wilder (1895), Ivy Jane (1898) and Octavia “Tavy” (1900).  Floyd died in 1942 after suffering a stroke. He is buried in the cemetery of Shady Grove Church in the Kelly Settlement Community.

      Augusta Ann “Gustan” was born April 22, 1873. After the death of her mother, she lived with several of her siblings, the last of whom was Martha Ann. Gustan married William Watts of Lamar County, MS in 1906.  Her children attended Oakwood College in Huntsville, AL.

      John “Hinchie” Madison was born in 1875. Hinchie married Lucy Ainsworth’s daughter, Mary Florence Magdalene “Maggie” Smith in 1893. Their marriage is recorded the white Marriage Record Book at the Ellisville Court House. Hinchie was a prosperous farmer.  His fifteen children mostly remained in the Soso community or in Mississippi, with a few moving to California in the 1950s. 

      With the exception of John Floyd during his brief marriage to Sophronia Cox, none of Rachel’s children fathered by Newton passed for white.  

 Open Secrets

      In the antebellum South and after the War, white men believed and accepted that it was a natural rite of passage to manhood to sexually exploit black women, which resulted in families of mixed race children like those of Rachel Knight.   Everyone in the slave community knew who fathered Rachel’s children, but it was not openly discussed.  Since she was raised from birth to be a slave, Rachel was aware that she did not own her own body; she was property and did not have the right to reject sexual advances. The white woman on the other hand was expected to be a loving and dutiful wife, an affectionate mother, and subservient to her husband. It was easy for her to blame the slave for her husband or son’s indiscretion. In the South, white women were powerless and little more than servants, too. Unlike today, divorcing a husband who had extramarital relationships was frowned upon and not an easy to obtain. The white mistress often punished the slave woman for her husband’s wrong-doings, telling herself that the powerless slave seduced her husband, or even demanding that the slave be sold to remove the temptation.

      There remains to this day a hush-hush “open secret” and outright denial of past race-mixing in the South by slave masters. After emancipation, Newt, like many fathers of mixed race families, provided land and financial assistance to his off-spring which resulted sometimes in the development of elitist attitudes among them and resentment by neighbors, both black and white. Often when a mixed race person was successful in any endeavor, whites would exclaim that it was their “white blood.” In general, after the Civil War blacks were treated with callous contempt by whites; however, children fathered by their former masters were given a certain amount of protection from local harassment that lasted as long as the white father lived. The descendants of Rachel Knight, who were neither accepted nor openly rejected by their white and black neighbors, came under attack after Newt Knight died in 1922. Two of Fan Knight’s grandchildren, Rachel Dorothy and Fred Nolan, were poisoned by local whites in the early twenties, while Fan and Dock Howze both died under mysterious circumstances in 1916.  It should be noted that Newton was not the only white man in Jones and neighboring counties committing miscegenation; the others simply did not openly flaunt their relationships. 

Rachel Dorothy Knight, daughter of Mat Knight (son of Newt and Serena) and Fannie Knight (daughter of Jesse Davis and Rachel Knight). Collection of Ardella Knight Barrett.

 

Slave Narrative of Martha Wheeler,  former slave of John “Jackie” Knight  

      In the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), to interview former slaves to preserve a picture of the African-American experience with slavery.   Martha Wheeler was interviewed in the Hebron neighborhood when she was 86 years old.  She states in the interview that she was one of Jacky Knight’s slaves born on his place and at the age of eight, was sold Elizabeth Coleman Knight after his death.

      The following is what she had to say about Newt, Rachel and George Ann:

“For many years the Knights seldom married outside of their family, but Newt and his family were the only ones to mix extensively with the Negroes. Rachel was considered his woman, then he moved her to his place and her daughter, Georgiann, took her place and separated him from his wife, who went out and lived, until her death a few years ago, among her children. He never married the Negro but brought up a family of seven with her at his old home place and died among them. He is buried in Jasper County half way between Stringer and Soso, one mile west of the road. His Negro children were given advantages and are said by many to be handsome. One girl lives in the old home. Another is high in school circles and served as a missionary to Japan and a third married a white man from other parts and has never been back home. His wife is buried at Palestine Church, three miles from Laurel on the Bay Springs road, now U. S. Highway 15. Newt’s parents, Mason and Albert, are buried at Hebron cemetery right at Solon Huff’s house. Their graves are probably at the beginning of the cemetery.” 

 Embracing My One Drop

After being questioned by a friend, I had to take a bit of time to reflect on why I choose to embrace my “one drop” of African blood and must admit that it has been an emotional reflection. It would be very difficult to believe that I am African American if I did not tell you so.

When I began researching my family line, something or someone kept tugging at me to keep digging for the truth.  I knew that once I published my ancestry, it would cause some anxiety and denial from some of my relatives.  I felt a deep sense of needing to connect with my ancestor and became curious to know just who that woman was that survived the anguishing trip from the shores of Africa and endured the horrors of slavery, never-ending work, and rape. I envisioned that she was young, strong  and slender with a coal black complexion and kinky hair–not like the character that Ethel Knight described in Echo of the Black Horn, which is the only description of Rachel that exists other than what I was told about her.  It seems to me that she was calling me to set the record straight, because so many of her descendents had either denied her existence or claimed she was something other than a strong black woman.

If I could meet her mother, I would want to know where she was born, the places she lived, when she was abducted and when and by whom she was captured.  Did she come directly to the New World or did she get broken in the Caribbean Islands?  How many generations passed before Rachel was born?  These are questions that will forever remain unanswered because my family lineage stops with a bill of sale when she was purchased by John “Jackie” Knight. 

  As a child, I grew up in an environment where I was instilled with middle class values and taught to be proud of my racial heritage.   I was taught to value honest work and an education and not the color of my skin or any other physical attributes.  My mother made many sacrifices for us, never missing a day of work in 32 years in order that we might go to college. She was a great role model. 

Mary Ann Smith Dodds, mother of Yvonne Bivins. Collection of Yvonne Bivins.

      I remember that my grandmother was often asked why she chose to be black by whites.  She would boldly say that she chose to be black because if she were white, she’d be poor white and would rather be a dog.  She didn’t think too highly of poor whites.  According to her, they had been white and free all their lives and no reason to be poor. My Grandfather just quietly accepted his lot.

Note: This is the final installment of Yvonne Bivins’s history of Rachel Knight. My thanks to Yvonne for sharing her research with Renegade South.

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