Transcript
Into America
Reconstructed: In Search of the Promised Land
Pastor Mauricio Sonny: My mama is from Camden, Arkansas. And when I say a country grandma how to cook some fish, whoo, you guys are in for a treat. I brought the…
Trymaine Lee: It’s a cold and windy February morning in rural Georgia, about halfway between Atlanta and Savannah. Pastor Mauricio Sonny is talkin’ up his mom’s fish fry skills in one of those big old fancy RVs.
Sonny: You seen this yet–
Allison Bailey: (IN PROGRESS) –so all over the plant– no.
Sonny: I built this. I like to say that.
Lee: Pastor Sonny completely renovated this RV himself and the two others parked nearby. He hooked ’em up with these huge kitchens and cozy couches, with pillows, full bedrooms, and an office. They even have a gas fireplace.
Sonny: She designed it, I built it from the top to the bottom, yes.
Carole Sonny Davis: Mm-hmm.
Lee: He’s showing our associate producer, Allison Bailey, around as his mom Carole gets ready to fry some fish.
Davis: Today we’re going to have catfish.
Sonny: Yes.
Davis: Mm-hmm.
Bailey: And where’d the fish come from?
Davis: I caught the catfish.
Bailey: How big would you say that is?
Davis: My husband weighed it. It was nine, no, 11 pounds.
Lee: Everyone here calls Carole Sonny Davis Mom, family or not.
Davis: Some people like puttin’ it in a bowl and shakin’ it and all this kinda stuff. I’m kinda hands on. I’m still old school. (LAUGH)
Lee: Mom, Pastor Sonny, and his wife Chris aren’t in these RVs in the Georgia woods for a weekend getaway or vacation. They’re here along with 19 other Black families to make a dream come true. The dream of a new city called Freedom, Georgia.
Archival Recording: All right, y’all go check it out. (LAUGH)
Archival Recording: I just got a message that the fish is hot and ready.
Archival Recording: Oh, yes, hot and ready fish.
Archival Recording: Yes. We’re going to build a city for Black people by Black people. We’re saying that we are specifically and intentionally building something for Black Americans to prosper. And that’s a revolutionary act.
Lee: Freedom as a dream city might be new, but Black folks have been dreaming of freedom for a very long time. The dream has been as much about a state of being as a desire for a landing place, something tangible. Freedom was something a million ancestors fought and prayed for.
A place where men and women could build homes and futures, where they could nurture sustenance from seeds, and where churches and schools and families could grow. A place where children could sink their toes and their imaginations into soil they could call their own.
And for a time, we had it. In the immediate post-Civil War years, African Americans built thousands of settlements all across the Deep South and West on land they’d once been enslaved on. Freedom was a bright light and a beacon burning in the embers of war and stoked by fragile promises made by the U.S. government.
It all started on January 16th, 1865, months before the end of the Civil War when Union general William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Order 15 declaring that “Land on the coastline from South Carolina to Florida be given to newly freed Black families.”
The order came after Sherman’s scorched earth march to the sea where he led 60,000 soldiers on a 285-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia, confiscating Confederate land, livestock and supplies. Once in Savannah, Sherman called a meeting of 20 local Black pastors and asked a simple question.
“What did free Black people want from emancipation?” The pastors answered in one resounding voice. They wanted land. I’m Trymaine Lee, and this is Into America. On Part Two of our Reconstructed series, In Search of the Promised Land, the story of how Black people finally free from bondage after the Civil War acquired land, built towns, and laid a foundation for generations to come. What does it mean for this place to still be here?
Reverend Willie Neal Norman Jr.: This is the richest place in all the earth. You know, when you think about all the dreams and aspirations that people had and they lived, and then they’re buried here.
Spencer Crew: Well, what have here are some objects that were found from a dig that was done in Texas. There was a family there who purchased land and was able to keep that land in the family for almost 100 years.
Lee: I’m with Spencer Crew at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Spencer is the museum’s emeritus director and also co-curated their special exhibit on Reconstruction, Make Good the Promises. He’s keeping us company all month to help us understand the era through artifacts. We might sound a bit muffled, because we’re masking up for COVID.
Crew: You have this branding iron that they used to brand their cattle. Part of what we really want to make sure in talking about the individuals and the importance of land is that if you can keep it in the family for a long time, it gives you a legacy. It gives you a chance to really sorta dig your roots into the ground.
Lee: One of the most enduring stories from Reconstruction that we still hear today is the promise of 40 acres and a mule.
Crew: Well, the idea of 40 acres and a mule actually starts with 40 acres. General Sherman, when he goes to the areas in South Carolina and Georgia and decides that what he wants to do is to divide up the land of the landowners who have left and divide it up among the African Americans who were there, so he issues what is called General Order Number 15, in which he offers them 40 acres that they could take over and farm for themselves.
Lee: Sherman’s Field Order Number 15 was issued in January 1865, redistributing confiscated Conference land to freed men.
Crew: He also offers them Army mules if they’d like them to help with the work, so you have the idea of 40 acres and a mule.
Lee: Then a few months later, President Lincoln was assassinated just one week after the war ended, bringing his vice president Andrew Johnson into power. Johnson was an avowed white supremacist who’d fought to preserve the Union but not to end slavery.
For a period, he owned people himself. Once he was president, Johnson offered protections to former enslavers saying, I’m gonna quote this, “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am president it shall be a government for white men.” Johnson immediately set fire to Sherman’s order.
Crew: And he takes all the land back and gives it to the original landowners.
Lee: Spencer brings me over to an artifact that exemplifies this hope and failed promise of Sherman’s order. He gestures to a long, thin, wooden church pew worn from time.
Crew: One of the places we looked at was in the area of Edisto, South Carolina.
Lee: The pew is from the Presbyterian church on Edisto Island, 25 miles South of Fort Sumter along the coast of South Carolina.
Crew: Began as a church owned by the slaveholders, and the enslaved were forced to sit in a balcony and to listen to the sermon from up there. What happens is when the war comes and the whites leave, African Americans take over that church and then become the congregant and the congregation for that church.
Lee: Under Sherman’s order, Black families were able to officially lay claim to a swath of land on Edisto Island, including the Presbyterian church.
Crew: We were lucky enough to get this bench that had been in that balcony, had been the seat that African Americans sat in during enslavement, but also that continued to be there when they took over the church. So it’s a wonderful illustration of their past and the changes that took place and how important religion was to them. (HYMN)
Lee: But on October 19th, 1865, Union general Oliver O. Howard arrived at Edisto by boat. At the time, he was the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau. And in case his name sounds familiar, this is the man who would go on to found Howard University. General Howard asked the community to gather at the church.
It was bad news. President Johnson had ordered him to return the land back to the enslavers. Howard later wrote about that moment in his autobiography saying that “Some people began hollering in protest, and others broke out into song, lamenting ‘Nobody knows the trouble I feel, nobody knows but Jesus.’” Sherman’s order had been in effect for less than a year, and just like that, it was gone.
Crew: So it really illustrates again the possibilities and the many ways African Americans could have been set up to have been more successful. But also it illustrates the unwillingness of the federal government to really give them a land or provide them the kind of basis they need for real success.
Lee: With emancipation and the end of the Civil War, 4 million formerly enslaved African Americans were set free in the eyes of the law. But this legal designation did nothing to shield them from their former enslavers. What they needed most for survival was community.
Many of the newly freed set off in search of the loved ones who’d been stolen from them during slavery. They placed ads in newspapers and passed word through the growing network of Black churches asking if anyone had seen those they’d lost.
Crew: They would put ads in newspapers. They would describe who that family member was who was lost, how they were separated, and asking if anybody’s seen anything of it.
Lee: And without the promise of land from the federal government, many decided to pool their resources to build something for themselves. They tilled their own land and planted their own crops. They built churches and school houses. And around these physical markers of self-determination, Black villages and towns began to take shape. There was Mound Bayou in Mississippi, Eatonville in Florida, even towns out West like Nicodemus in Kansas. One of these free Black communities was called Promised Land, 2,700 acres of farmland that became so much more.
Crew: Well, Promised Land is an area that came into existence in South Carolina right after the Civil War. And they had a number of newly freed people who came together and cooperatively bought a large track of land and then shared it among themselves. And it becomes this place they call Promised Land, which is a wonderful name for it. And they were able to do this as a way of defending their homes and farms from others, but also of having that economic base they need to be successful.
Lee: A lot of city folk don’t understand 2,700 acres, that’s a lotta acres–
Crew: It’s a lotta land, and this continues to exist today, which I think talks about what were the possibilities. If people were in fact given land and allowed to control it and to control their own future, a lot more people probably would be in a stable situation had that been allowed to happen more broadly.
Lee: One of the reasons that Promised Land survives today is because it was not part of any federal effort. After the war, there was that brief shining moment of Black political power we talked about last episode. In South Carolina, future congressman Robert Smalls and other Black politicians knew that land ownership was integral to the success of their newly freed constituents.
So they set up the South Carolina Land Commission, which acquired land and distributed it to Black freedmen, giving them several years to pay it off. That’s how Promised Land was born. So I’m about five minutes out from Promised Land, and yeah, we in the country. (LAUGH) Like, we are out here in the woods.
I’ve left the coast of South Carolina where we spent the last episode, and I’m on a two-lane country road bound for Promised Land. You see some homes with white picket fences, some animals and livestock, and lots and lots and lots of trees.
Today the community is about half its original size, a two-square mile stretch of unincorporated land in the Upcountry. The closest city is Greenwood, about five miles away. Promised Land is a small town with a population of about 500 people.
Welcome to Promised Land community. An old school on the right, Promised Land Volunteer Fire Department. The most popular place in town is the Promised Land Grocery Store. Weather-beaten and busy, it’s one of those country stores where you can get a little bit of everything and anything, a snack, somethin’ to fix your car, some fried chicken.
People are gassing up and grabbing lunch. But right now, I’m headed to church. All right, let’s take a left here on New Zion Road. (VOICE TURN LEFT). Now we’re on, it’s not a gravel road, but it’s, like, an old, paved road. Mt. Zion AME. I promise there are probably 3,000 Mt. Zion AME churches across the country.
I don’t know if you could find a Black community in this country without a Mt. Zion AME church. Here we are. (VOICE: YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION). Beautiful brick, a white steeple. This is cool. Here we are. Promised Land. Behind the church, up on a small hill is a big old cemetery.
Norman Jr.: All of these graves are recent years.
Lee: Where’s the oldest part? I see some really old-looking headstones, one over there–
Norman Jr.: Yeah, they’re down here and back up through the center some.
Lee: Reverend Willie Neal Norman Jr. is 71 years old and was born and raised in Promised Land. He’s sharp in an overcoat, a black fedora, and striped bow tie. Most of Reverend Norman’s family is buried here in this cemetery, his parents, his grandparents, his great-grandparents.
Norman Jr.: And this is part of the Maraney (PH) graves. And you hear a lot about Maraneys (PH) being one of the families here.
Lee: Reverend Norman traces his lineage all the way back to the Maraneys, one of the original families in Promised Land.
Norman Jr.: 1793 to 1880.
Lee: We walk over to one of the oldest sections of the cemetery.
Norman Jr.: Easter Cole Marshall (PH), 1835 to 1925, “A woman made a slave, and a slave became a teacher, educator and died at the wonderful age of 90.” One of the former teachers who was born a slave here in the community.
Lee: And it sounds like this is the story of Promised Land.
Norman Jr.: Yes.
Lee: A woman is made a slave, right, and emerging out of slavery to build something brand new here in Promised Land.
Norman Jr.: Right, in Promised Land. This is the richest place in all the earth. You know, when you think about all the dreams and aspirations that people had and they lived, and then they are buried here.
Lee: By design, Mount Zion AME sits right in the middle of town. Its founders knew the church would serve as the center of the community, so they made sure it was within a two-mile walk for all the residents.
Norman Jr.: This is a part of the original land that James Field sold to the trustees of Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church to establish a church building.
Lee: So we’re standing on this original land, one of the original 50 plots. We’re standing on it right now–
Norman Jr.: Yup, that’s right. We’re standing on the original plot that was sold for the purpose of establishing a church.
Lee: Wow, it’s amazing.
Norman Jr.: Yeah.
Lee: The church first started as a brush arbor, an unenclosed structure with a makeshift roof. Brush arbors were a commonplace of worship during enslavement. Reverend Norman takes me to the side of the church where there are three cornerstones with names and dates. See here, this stone right here, what year does this say?
Norman Jr.: 1883. That’s when they first built the original church. They moved from the brush arbor. The members that remained here at Mt. Zion, they built the old wood church that used to be located directly behind this church.
Lee: And there’s a bell, and not just a bell but, like, a huge bell that’s been at the church for nearly 150 years. It signaled marriages and mourning, celebration and sadness. And just like the town, it’s still here.
Norman Jr.: Goes back to 1883.
Lee: There’s some history in this bell.
Norman Jr.: Yeah, and it still rings.
Lee: It still rings, yeah. Can we ring it? (CLANG) (LAUGHTER) I wasn’t expecting that. Still works.
Norman Jr.: Yeah, it still works.
Lee: Promised Land was founded back in 1870 when the South Carolina Land Commission purchased a former plantation and sold most of the land to African Americans. It started off with 50 plots, and within a few years, 48 of those were owned by Black families. We get out of the cold and step inside the church where Reverend Norman tells me more about the town’s history. Sogrowin’ up, what stories would you hear about Promised Land and its origins?
Norman Jr.: Well, of course, like everyone else, the 40 acres and mule were promised, which never materialized. The residents actually purchased their land. They had to pool their monies, but they did purchase it. No one was given anything. And part of the problem with that land when they had it was it had already been used so much, you know, really planting crops and all, that some of the soil wasn’t suitable to do some of the things that they thought it would do. But yet, it still yielded enough for them to be sustaining. And that’s the blessed part of it, that even outta nothing, you know, God can take it and bless it. And it can be of value to you.
Lee: The community quickly added a school to educate its children, and even as white backlash caused Black political power to wain in the 1880s, Promised Land remained a beacon of freedom. And it continued to grow. Word spread about this thriving Black town, and Black folks from all over the region came to settle here. By the 1890s, 250 families called Promised Land home. Elestine Smith Norman, the reverend’s wife, believes her family came to Promised Land in the second wave of residents.
Elestine Smith Norman: My grandmother, Mattie Brown Morton (PH), was born I believe 1890. And to my knowledge, she had always been a part of the community.
Lee: Wearing a black hat with a beautiful white feather, Mrs. Norman tells me that growing up she often heard stories of those early years in town.
Smith Norman: It’s the pride. They were looking forward to having a place of their own. You had the freedom now to own your own place, to raise your family, and not be beholden to anyone else. And I think just that longing to be able to have your own, that’s what was instilled from the generations on down.
Lee: I know folks are proud to be from here. What does it mean for you all?
Norman Jr.: When they say it take a village to raise a child, that’s true. And we really experience that here. And we were taught, whatever you had you share it with others. I can remember my father raised hogs. And whenever it was time to kill hogs, I always had a responsibility to take in they called it a “mess a meat.” (LAUGH)
You take a portion of meat and you carry it to different homes around the community. And you could tell that it was fresh meat, because all you had to do is walk through and you’d smell the bacon and the ham, you know, cookin’ on Saturday mornings.
Smith Norman: Leaving the community to go into the city of Greenwood for high school, most of the, I would call them the city children, they knew, “Yeah, those are the kids from the Promised Land. They look out for each other.”
Lee: Sobein’ an all-Black town, I’d have to imagine it created a buffer for some folks. Was this also a place of safety and refuge for Black folks, especially during those early, troubling, dangerous times?
Norman Jr.: Yes, I think the history of the people here has made it easy. And it has helped protect us the way the community is laid out. Of course, back during the days, we talk about the old Phoenix riots when the KKK would come through and go down to Verdery (PH), which is a few miles down the road.
But they had a tendency to shy away from Promised Land, because it had a history of men taking care of each other. End up, one of the preachers from this area really, he was beaten severely by what we say the KKK, and it’s been rumored that the community took care of him. They all gathered. They had their Winchesters and their shotguns, and they didn’t mind usin’ ’em.
Smith Norman: I don’t recall anybody mentioning, my grandparents or my parents ever mentioning any crosses being burned on their property or anywhere here in the Promised Land.
Lee: But that was happening elsewhere.
Smith Norman: It was happening all around.
Lee: You can’t come in Promised Land playin’ around with any of that mess, (LAUGH) huh?
Smith Norman: No. We just turn it into a marshmallow roast, you know. (LAUGH)
Lee: The Normans describe an idyllic life growing up in Promised Land. They felt safe, cared for, and there was always something goin’ on in town. Reverend Norman brings me back outside the church to try and capture just some of that feeling for me. As we stand in the parking lot, he tells me that when he was a kid, this used to be a baseball field.
Norman Jr.: That was the first base line, and down through here home plate was up here in the corner. Third base was down parallel with the road. It was a dirt road at that time when the baseball used to be played here. And all of this was open field. Used to be pines right up in there, because the home runs were hit up in this section. (LAUGH)
Lee: Now did you have any experience with those home runs?
Norman Jr.: Well, no, (LAUGH) not me.
Lee: It sounds like it’s hard to take a step in Promised Land without stepping (HORN) in the footsteps of history.
Norman Jr.: That’s right. Everywhere you step here, there’s history. No question about it.
Lee: Mrs. Norman is doing her best to preserve this history. She showed up to the interview with several old frame photos of family members, including her grandmother, the one who was born in Promised Land. She starts flipping through a three-ring binder with old newspaper clippings, photos and flyers.
Smith Norman: And we have a picture of the former one-room school house.
Lee: Wow. Now I love this kind of old ephemera, so when she pulled out that scrapbook, I got really excited. This is amazing. What else do we have in your book here? Oh, this is beautiful. I like this in the back. What’s this from?
Smith Norman: We would have Promised Land Community Association banquets annually, and the community organization sponsored a beauty pageant to raise funds for the volunteer fire department.
Lee: Wow, this is the first annual Ms. Promised Land Pageant. Looks like an illustration on this flyer shows she got an Afro, she got the earrings. It says, “Movin’ on up.”
Smith Norman: Of course, that was 1978. (LAUGH)
Lee: Wow, we have to put it in context here, 1978. Wow. Given that rich history, what’s life like in Promised Land in the present today?
Smith Norman: It has changed. (LAUGH) Because we do have others moving into the community, there is no family connection to us. And some get involved and some don’t. And for those moving in, it’s just a place to live. I wanted to live out in the country, so there was some property available. I bought it. I’m puttin’ up this No Trespassing sign, so you know what that means.
Lee: Promised Land is still a Black town, but folks we talked to like the Normans say they notice more white people buying property. So while you can feel the history here, you can also see the change. Many of the services for the area have been taken over by the county like the town’s formerly all-Black volunteer fire department, the one that Ms. Norman mentioned.
And the Promised Land school is abandoned and overgrown. And while the poverty rate is very low in the area, it’s still a small, rural town. The median age here is around 54 years old, a lot higher than the median age for the country at 38, or say, a city like Charleston, which is around 35.
Smith Norman: I have cousins and other relatives. When their children go off to college, they leave, and they may not come back. We’ve seen some of the promises, most of the promises fulfilled, but we can’t say that for six, seven and eight generations.
Lee: Reverend Norman tells me that’s because there’s not as much opportunity in Promised Land or even in nearby Greenwood, and that many younger residents who leave for college also seek better pay and opportunities elsewhere. But the pride in Promised Land and all its accomplished, it’s not goin’ anywhere.
You know, through it all, Promised Land is still standing. There are so many other communities, Black towns, that popped up all across the country during and after Reconstruction. But Promised Land is still standing. What do we owe that to?
Norman Jr.: I think it goes back to our relationship with God and strong family ties, and the emphasis that they place on the quality of life in helping us to understand that we’re not an island but we’re interdependent upon each other. It take a village to raise a child, and that’s what we need to be about.
Lee: When we come back, what if you had the chance to build a place like Promised Land today?
Archival Recording: Beautiful, Mom.
Archival Recording: This is nice.
Archival Recording: All right. Welcome to Freedom everybody. (CHEERS)
Lee: About two-and-a-half hours from Promised Land is the future home of Freedom, Georgia.
Archival Recording: Glad to meet you.
Lee: Freedom isn’t a town yet or anything close to it, but they’re workin’ on it. Our associate producer, Allison Bailey, traveled from her hometown of Atlanta to check it out.
Bailey: So where are we right now?
Renee Walters: We are in our house that was on 404 acres that we purchased.
Lee: The Freedom Georgia Initiative got it start in 2020 when a group of Black families bought hundreds of acres of land in Southeast Georgia with the goal of building a self-sufficient town. This is the rural South, right outside of the tiny town of Toomsboro.
There are big beautiful trees, open fields, and patchy cell service. Freedom is made up of two plots of land. One is 96 acres with RVs and tents, along with outdoor showers and a shooting range. About a mile away, along the main road is the other property, which is 404 acres and has an old hunting lodge.
Archival Recording: (IN PROGRESS) –beans or just farm houses.
Archival Recording: I’m helping move the brush out.
Walters: Oh, we need to do that today. I got some hedgers, some trimmers. We gotta get to all of that.
Archival Recording: Take it away from here.
Lee: Most folks here are from the 19 families that bought the land. On weekends, they come from all over Georgia to work on their future hometown.
Walters: I need you to cut this back, because we talked about doin’ a driveway as well, so that we have a pull-up and a turn-around for our–
Lee: On this day, the families were cleaning out the old hunting lodge and talking about their plans to turn the building into a welcome center.
Archival Recording: And this right here is gonna be our meeting room. So that’s gonna be the round table. Is it a round table, Boss, or?
Lee: The families say the building will also be used as a meeting place, a space to host guests and a place to hold their ecotherapy program, which practices improving healing and wellness through nature.
Walters: You can come in for the weekend just to have a nice little getaway just so you can come and just “Ah,” breathe. (LAUGH)
Lee: Renee Walters is the co-founder of the Freedom Georgia Initiative.
Walters: I felt like our ancestors called us to this land. And when we got on the land, it was, like, we both got chills. And we held hands and we screamed, like, “This is it.” Like, we had a sense of ownership. Soon as we stepped on the ground, it was like it was ours.
Like, it was called to us that we were supposed to be there in that moment to bring our friends and family together for a time such as this. Like, it’s time for us to get back to bein’ a village, livin’ out in nature, bein’ a family again.
Lee: Ever since 40 acres and a mule seemed like a viable possibility, a lot of Black people have had this dream, to get our hands back into the soil and escape the hostility of white society. To build a place like Freedom where land means independence and safety.
I wasn’t able to visit Freedom myself, and I gotta tell y’all I was pretty jealous. Because this place seems amazing. But I did get a chance to sit down with Renee’s co-founder, Ashley Scott. She told me that the seeds of the Freedom Georgia Initiative came to her halfway through 2020 amidst the chaos of a global pandemic, police violence, and economic stress that hit the Black community hard and all at once.
Ashley Scott: In the midst of watching Ahmaud Arbery being slaughtered in the streets of Brunswick, Georgia, and seeing what happened with George Floyd, and then even all of the things going on in the pandemic and people being disproportionately affected, it made me wonder, “How do we answer the problem of systemic oppression, right?”
Like, when you think about systemic racism and how it affects all of us on so many tiers, how do you fix something like that, right? And then the question isn’t even how do you fix it when you know that a lot of these systems were designed specifically to be able to create power structure for the white majority who live and run America, right? So it’s not really tryin’ to fix it ’cause it’s not broken. And so that is what made me have an aha moment.
Lee: When Ashley’s good friend Renee sends her an article that said the town of Toomsboro, Georgia was for sale for $1.7 million, they couldn’t believe it. I mean, that’s basically the price of a New York City apartment.
Scott: And so it was like all of these little things coming together to really have a spark that made me say, “Oh wow. The way to fix this problem of systemic racism is to innovatively create a brand new model.” And so that’s what we’re doing.
Lee: They were thrilled about the idea of owning land. And when people from their church heard what they were doing, several of them wanted in.
Scott: We have these strong relationships and bonds already from bein’ in church together, from being in business together. My hairstylist, she was the very first person to show at my door cash in hand to say, “Hey, I’m ready to buy this plot of land.”
If there was ever a time to say, “Let’s build something for ourselves” and put this money that we have to do it together and make it happen, now is the time. We can’t keep waiting. It was clear that no one was comin’ to save us. We had to save ourselves.
Lee: Ashley and Renee discovered the town of Toomsboro, Georgia was not on the market, but there was a 96-acre property right outside of town that was for sale. So with 19 families from their community and Ashley as their real estate agent, they bought the land but are keeping the price they paid under wraps. It was an old timber farm with nothing on it. To Ashley, that was part of the appeal.
Scott: We wanted to really try our hand at developing this land that’s probably not very desirable to most people, because we wanted to invest in something that would be for us, by us.
Lee: The Freedom Georgia Initiative is an LLC, so it operates like a business. Everyone brings a different skill set to the table. They have a doctor, a clinical psychologist, a marriage counselor, a Realtor, an event planner, an electrician. You name it and they got it. A year-and-a-half later, they now have a total of 502 acres of land. And as word spreads, people from all over the country are coming down every week to tour the land and invest in the future.
Scott: I gotta beat people off with a stick, to be honest, ’cause there’s so many who are interested in being a part of really history. Like, anyone who’s truly a visionary can see that this is a project that 30, 40, 50 years from now, our names will go down in history because of it. And there are people who want to be attached to that history.
Lee: The vision for Freedom is part of this long history of Black towns during Reconstruction when the newly freed came together to buy land and share it amongst each other. And for a time, those efforts worked. In 1875, Black people owned 5 million acres of farmland in the South alone.
Despite the repressive laws under Jim Crow, Black land ownership continued to grow through the early 20th century until it peaked around 1910. At that time, about 14% of all farmland in the U.S. was owned by Black families. Now, according to the 2017 census of agriculture, Black people own just 1% of the farmland in this country. But Freedom, Georgia is tryin’ to make a dent. Do you feel connected to the places like Promised Land, South Carolina, those small Black towns that popped up so long ago? Do you feel connected to them in, like, this current context?
Scott: I feel super connected to places like Promised Land, South Carolina, to the Tybee Islands, to the Geechee Islands. Because if they could do it with even more limited resources than what we have in 2022, what’s my excuse? And so I think about them, and I’m encouraged by their tenacity to not give up. Black folks, we keep comin’. We keep doin’ it.
Lee: Ashley and the other families are under no illusion that building a thriving town from an old timber farm is going to be easy. They still have a long way to go. But they have a plan.
Scott: I believe that within the next three to five years, we’ll be able to formally charter and get a referendum on the books to have the city of Freedom. So our game plan is to have homes built in the next 18 to 24 months that will give us the initial 200 people that we need. And then we’ll begin to implement some of the services that we need to provide for the residents so that we can have the feasibility of being a city.
Lee: To make a city in the state of Georgia, you’re required to have at least a mile radius of land, 200 residents, at least three municipal services like public utilities, trash pickup, fire and EMS, or a library. The families have a big goal for the future of Freedom. They want to create a first of its kind, sustainable, Afro futuristic city. After the land is cleared, they envision beautiful, ecofriendly homes, manmade lakes for sustainable fishing, greenhouses and community gardens.
Scott: People can eat organic, natural, healthy food so that we don’t continue to have the public health crisis that Black Americans are facing when it comes to diabetes and heart disease for access to public health, access to food, quality food, access to healthy exercise and walking trails.
Being able to engage with nature,it’sreally good for our mental health. And we need to have much better mental health when we consider the suicides that are going up in our community. We’ve gotta create and design community in such a way that people really know who you are.
Lee: But Ashley recognizes there’s no such thing as a utopia. A lot of your vision for Freedom was clarified through the sad and tragic, ongoing police violence against Black folks that we’ve seen in this country. And I wonder in Freedom, Georgia what the future of public safety and policing looks like? Do you have a police force? Like, how does that work in this vision free from some of the things that we’ve experienced already?
Scott: So one of the things, we’ve already started calling it a Peace Force. So we know that we’ve gotta keep the peace. There’s always some rowdiness. Somebody’s gonna have the barbecue, and it’s gonna get a little too loud. You know, domestic violence doesn’t stop. These are things that we just have to be realistic. But that doesn’t mean that we criminalize everybody because we know that crime exists. And that’s what our current police system does. It criminalizes anyone that has our color.
Lee: Ashley says one of the most common questions they get is, “Will Freedom have a jail?” Right now, the answer is, “Yes.” They use the county’s facilities if they have to, but the goal is to reimagine criminal justice. The idea of starting a Black town in 2022 is exhilarating but also a little terrifying.
Through Reconstruction and well into the 20th century, white vigilantes targeted and terrorized their Black neighbors. And Brunswick, Georgia, the town where Ahmaud Arbery was hunted, gunned down, and murdered by three white men is just a few hours away from Freedom.
Scott: Everyone wants to know, “How will we protect ourselves from white terrorism?” And that Peace Force would serve as a defense force. Because we do realize that we have to be able to protect ourselves.
Archival Recording: You really wanna try and wrap arm in that, like, wrap it around it, yeah.
Archival Recording: Like this?
Archival Recording: We can even, like–
Lee: Part of that protection means learning to be ready. The residents of Freedom are teaching each other how to shoot and handle guns for self-protection.
Archival Recording: It should be, like, “Bang.” It should almost surprise you when you actually let it go, you know what I’m sayin’? But you want to kinda try and line it up so when you squeeze it you’re right about. Got it lined up and everything you’re good, take it off safety, then put your finger on the trigger. (SHOT)
Archival Recording: Ooh.
Lee: Freedom has many sounds. It can sound like the explosion of gunfire. (SHOT)
Archival Recording: Good shot. (SHOT)
Lee: It can sound like laughter over a campfire. (LAUGHTER)
Archival Recording: Definitely the fire master.
Archival Recording: I mean, you know, I kinda do what I, try to do my best.
Lee: Freedom sounds like peace.
Archival Recording: It shows little girl (?).
Davis: Yes, I love cooking. I think, I know I got that from my mom, and I taught my son to cook, which his wife loves that, right?
Archival Recording: Yes. (LAUGH) Yes, I’m blessed–
Davis: He’s the chef in the family.
Archival Recording: Oh yes. (LAUGH)
Lee: This is Carole Sonny Davis, the oldest member of the group, who everyone calls Mom.
Davis: I don’t even think we were two months in when they all started callin’ us Mom and Dad. For people that don’t know you to start addressin’ you as Mom is an honor beyond compare, you know. Because that’s extra level of respect.
Lee: Mrs. Carole grew up in South Arkansas.
Davis: I’m of the age where I actually lived through the Black-only, white-only era. We could only go in certain areas. We could only eat in certain areas. In the movie theater, we had to be upstairs while the other people were downstairs. And with all ofthe, I’ll just say unrest that was goin’ on in 2020, I kinda felt like we wasgoin’ backwards. And so when this came about, a place where we can all go back to, I’m old school. You know, it takes a village. (LAUGH)
Lee: Mrs. Carole lives in Atlanta now but comes down to Freedom often with her husband, son and daughter-in-law to help out, like, catching and cooking the catfish for the fish fries.
Davis: We were taught to care for each other, to, you know, live and commune together. And these are the things that I want to bring back to our younger people that didn’t have a chance to experience that.
Lee: When she heard about this town, she was excited to see the younger generation get back to the land.
Davis: And I’m very, very proud of them, because the collective is a lot of young people, you know, my children’s age (LAUGH) that have their heads together. You understand? They have a goal, they have a plan, and that’s what excited me more than anything. It’s, like, oh wow, these young people got it goin’ on. (LAUGH) I’m very–
Lee: Mrs. Carole is looking forward to creating something for the next generation.
Davis: I’m gonna have an opportunity to teach my children, and they’re gonna have an opportunity to teach their children. So that’s what you call generational wealth. You know, and even though it may not be financial wealth, although we will get there too, but the most wealthiest part is not losing your heritage.
Walters: The response from our elders has been the most overwhelming, because, you know, former Black Panthers, people who did so much in that movement who are, like, “We didn’t think that there would be people who would carry this mantle on.” And they are super proud of us to say that, “Yes, we’re going to build a city for Black people, by Black people.” We are specifically and intentionally building something for Black Americans to prosper. And that’s a revolutionary act.
If not us, then who? If not now, then when? I feel as though that Freedom is the answer to our ancestors’ prayers. What we are doing, we only do it by standing on the shoulders of giants and the work and foundation that those ancestors built. And so going forward and building Freedom is an honor of the blood, the sweat, the tears that they laid down for us in the past.
Lee: It’s been 150 years since Black people escaped the bonds of slavery. Yet 150 later, Promised Land, South Carolina and Freedom, Georgia still embody the continued hopes of countless Black Americans who’ve longed to fulfill dreams of freedom with land they can call their own. But to create a place like Promised Land or Freedom, Georgia is a risk. It’s an act of rebellion but also an act of faith.
Faith is what brought us through the atrocities of slavery and continues to give us hope today. Faith is what keeps us pushing America to be what it has always pretended to be, a land of freedom. So next week, Reconstructed Part Three, Keep The Faith, Baby.
Archival Recording: As I walk the streets of the Harlems of the world, the Black Harlems and the white Harlems, people are depressed. They are frustrated. They are downtrodden. They see no hope. And I say to them, “Keep the faith, Baby.” (CALL RESPONSE) Keep the faith, because God’s realities always exceed man’s fondest dreams.
Lee: Remember to follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook using the handle @intoamericapod. And you can tweet me @trymainelee, or write to us at IntoAmerica@NBCUNI.com. That was Into America at NBC and the letters U-N-I-dot-com. Into America is produced by Isabel Angell, Allison Bailey, Aaron Dalton, and Joshua Sirotiak.
Original music is by Hannis Brown. Our executive producer is Aisha Turner. This episode was also produced by Stefanie Cargill. Recording help from Kevin Bond, Tom Craca, Jim Long, Jeff Pope, Claire Reynolds, Tom Staton, and Andy Scritchfield.
Additional research help from Elizabeth Bethel, Edith Childs, Bobby Donaldson, Candra Flanagan, and James Louden III. Special thanks to Fleur Paysour, Melissa Wood, and the entire team at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I’m Trymaine Lee. We’ll see you next Thursday for Reconstructed Part Three: Keep The Faith Baby.