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By LaDawn Fletcher
Before I met Cedric Fletcher,
the man who would become my husband, I had never heard of the East Texas town
of Grapeland. Our courtship led me there for the Peanut Festival every
October. The sweet Pennington Farms watermelons that make the summer heat bearable
brought me back. And in the decade or so of visiting, I’ve learned of hidden
historical treasures in the rich, red land surrounding the town, especially
the Freedom Colonies.
No one from so-called Freedom
Colonies knows them by that name, which was bestowed on them by modern
historians. In the book Freedom Colonies: Independent Black Texans in the
Time of Jim Crow, authors James Conrad and Thad Sitton explore these
communities, created in the 1860s by clusters of newly freed black slaves,
usually in the unincorporated areas of the agrarian counties where they were
previously enslaved.
My mother-in-law, the late
Bennie Fletcher Humphries, was born and raised in the small farming community
near Grapeland called Halls Bluff. Her enthusiasm for her hometown was deeply
rooted in fond memories of family, friends, and church. When asked where she
was from, to most she would say “Grapeland,” but among family and friends,
she spoke only of Halls Bluff and the neighboring settlements of Cedar Branch
and Wheeler Springs. For residents past and present, this is an important
distinction.
Freedom Colonies led me
deeper into the land where I soon discovered the history of a people and the
places they called home. And last year, to see the area my mother-in-law
spoke of so lovingly, and the historians wrote about, I drove further into
the Houston County countryside. Cedric sent his aunt, Floydia Fletcher
Philips, to guide me.
 Wheeler Springs
Traveling west from Grapeland
proper on FM 227, we veer left on FM 2544 and turn south on FM 229, where
fleeting glimpses of shimmering Houston County Lake peek through the hills.
The asphalt road turns into dirt just beyond the sign for County Road 2080,
pointing us to the Freedom Colony of Wheeler Springs.
Aunt Floydia confidently
makes her way down the bumpy, red-clay dirt road, billows of fine dust
settling around us. The view is amazing in the way that makes me love East
Texas. Pine trees tower over us and sturdy, mature oaks mark the passage of
time. The blue, cloudless sky drops down to meet the vibrant red dirt. The
occasional frame house and herd of cattle become visible, but we see no other
people. Aunt Floydia points left and right indicating where houses once stood
when she was a girl in the 1940s. We putter along for a few miles until we
arrive at a narrow road with a white, hand-painted sign that reads “Wheeler
Springs Church.”
The dirt road toward the
church runs parallel to a wire fence cloaked with muscadine grapevines and
morning glories in full bloom. Just ahead, the church and a now-abandoned
community center, both built with native stone, sprout from the lush
surroundings.
Pine and oak trees dwarf the
stone edifices. Several clapboard buildings housed the congregation from 1885
to 1944, and when the church needed more space, the beautiful stone structure
in front of us was commissioned.
Nearby on the property lies a
smaller building made from the same dark stone as the church. Here, we meet
Annette Parham, who grew up in Wheeler Springs and left to attend college.
After a career as a teacher outside of Dallas, she recently moved to
Grapeland. Her grandfather Mose Dailey built this structure, and she
remembers it as a schoolroom and a community center used for canning and
mattress making.
“During the summer, we would
gather here to can fruits and vegetables,” says Parham, who tells us that the
commercial-style canner came about as part of a collaboration with the Texas
Agricultural Extension Agency. Rural communities throughout Texas pooled
their resources to buy canning equipment. In Wheeler Springs, the food was
stored in the community center to feed those who needed it, and for school
lunches. Systems for providing for community members from within also kept
the residents beyond the reach of state and local Jim Crow laws, which
enforced separation of the races. Residents handled all goods and services
that could be provided within the confines of the community.
“These places were not in
rebellion of Jim Crow, but they were hiding out from Jim Crow,” explains
Sitton. “These were pockets of independent people who practiced avoidance and
ran their own show.”
Halls Bluff
Seven miles of road stretch
between Wheeler Springs and Halls Bluff, the nearest community.
The drive to Halls Bluff
winds along a dirt road cut into steep hills. It twists and turns, and Aunt
Floydia expertly steers around ruts in the road. Pine trees filter the sun.
The modern brick structure that is Pleasant Grove Christian Methodist
Episcopal Church suddenly looms before us, high on a hill.
Historically, churches in
Freedom Colonies serve both spiritual and social purposes. My husband tells
me he loved spending summers with his grandmother in Grapeland, but, because
of the heat, church attendance during revivals was not something he looked
forward to. Incapable of conjuring an excuse to get him out of sitting in the
sweltering church, which was cooled only by a window-box fan, he’d squirm for
what seemed like an eternity while services took place.
This church burned down in
1995, and the current building, complete with central air-conditioning, was
built the same year. The only thing to survive the fire was the church bell.
Though dulled by age, the bell rests on a tall metal post that stands
prominently in front of the church.
Cedar Branch
In fact, bells provided the
primary mode of communication in Freedom Colonies before phones became common
in the 1960s. Each bell had its own distinctive peal to announce emergencies
and deaths.
In the 1860s, when John and
Anna Smith gave their former slaves the land that would become the Cedar
Branch community (on CR 2210, off of FM 227 or FM 2544, northwest of Wheeler
Springs), they also gave them a bell for the church they helped build. The original
bell sits in the tower of the church, constructed in 1924, and is still in
use.
According to Sitton: “The
Smiths’ gift of the bell to their former bondsmen at Cedar Branch is
especially poignant. Such bells were formerly used to regulate work on slave
plantations. First bell
in the morning, get up; second bell, eat; third bell, be at your work
station, etcetera.”
Across the street from the
Cedar Branch Missionary Baptist Church, an historical plaque marks the site
of the old Cedar Branch School. This school, like many others throughout the
South, was built with the help of the Rosenwald Fund, a charity created by
Julius Rosenwald, the millionaire CEO of Sears, Roebuck and Co. Between 1917
and 1948, Rosenwald schools were built to educate blacks and rural
southerners. More than 400 Texas schools came about as part of the program,
and the money came from three sources—the fund itself, local contributions,
and the State Board of Education—in differing proportions at almost every
place.
Preserving the Legacy
By the time Halls Bluff
resident Willie Fobbs graduated from high school in the early 1950s, he saw
how difficult and unpredictable it could be to eke out a living from the
land. “The way they were struggling at that time, I knew I didn’t want to be
a farmer,” Fobbs says with a laugh. “People had started to move out during
World War II.” Most of the rural families who left moved to Houston,
Dallas/Fort Worth, and various places in California.
After graduating from Prairie
View A&M, Fobbs accepted a position as a teacher in the hometown that
nurtured him. Many others had already moved on, excited about the prospects
that integration offered elsewhere. Integration also signaled the end of
independent schools in the communities. Those schools, including the Cedar
Branch School, were incorporated into Grapeland, Crockett, or Lovelady
Independent School Districts.
The population of Freedom
Colonies continues to decrease. Far more alarming to Thad Sitton is that
their history is in danger of being lost. “While this might be construed as
African-American history,” he says, “I think it is also part of the general
history of rural Texas and the rural south.”
Buried deep in the
countryside are the stories of people who lived out the turbulent march
toward an integrated society with dignity, mostly in obscurity. The Civil
Rights Movement brought the end of the self-sufficient agrarian lifestyle
that carried them through, but it isn’t the end of the story. Organizations
like the Houston County Historical Commission and dedicated genealogists are
working to make sure that the lifestyle and the contributions of these early
Texas pioneers are recorded for generations to come.
Freedom Colonies
There are Freedom Colonies
throughout Texas and the southern United States. A partial list can be found
in the book Freedom Colonies: Independent Black Texans in the Time of Jim
Crow, by Thad Sitton and James H. Conrad, with research assistance and photographs
by Richard Orton (University of Texas Press, 2005; www.utexas.edu/utpress).
Cedar Branch, Wheeler
Springs, and Halls Bluff Freedom Colonies are in Houston County, west of
Grapeland and Crockett, off of FM 227, FM 229, and FM 2544. We recommend that
you take along a county map or a copy of The Roads of Texas to help you
navigate the backroads.
For Houston County visitor
information and more on Freedom Colonies in Houston County, contact the
Houston County Historical Commission (in
Crockett) at 936/544-3255, ext. 238;
email
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For area visitor information,
contact the Crockett Area Chamber of Commerce, 936/544-2359 or 888/269-2359,
www.crockettareachamber.org; and the Grapeland Chamber of Commerce,
936/546-1339, www.grapelandchamber.net.
The 66th Annual Peanut
Festival will be held in Grapeland the weekend of October 7-8, 2011. Events
kick off with a parade followed by live music, crafts, and food (including peanuts) at the
fairgrounds. For details, visit www.peanutfest.com.
The Texas Historical
Commission offers a downloadable booklet African Americans in Texas: A Lasting
Legacy (www.africanamericansintexas.com). This travel guide explores the
historical and cultural contributions of African Americans to Texas since its
founding days. To order printed copies, call 866/276-6219, or email
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