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The Curious Roots podcast digs deep in the living earth of our personal, familial and communal lives to help us understand how we exist in the world today. Though the format of the podcast may vary from season to season, be it narratives, one-on-one interviews or panel discussions, the root line is the same. What are the stories from our family and community histories that travel with us into the present? How do we understand and work with these histories as both individuals and as collectives to create the world of now and the future?
Season one of the podcast begins with the maternal story of my own curious roots, still buried, but breathing and holding fast in Harris Neck, Georgia. Each week, in six short form episodes, I’ll share the story of my mother’s people and how it informs my life today.
Curious Roots is hosted by Michelle McCrary and is co-produced by Moonshadow Productions and Converge Collaborative.
Curious Roots E4 - The People and the Land
Unidentified [00:00:01] Harris Neck was a unique Black community. There's been a lot of history at Harris Neck, that I was told by my mother, all not being wise I didn't get her to talk and put it on tape so I could later put it in writing. The only thing I could tell you about fishing and hunting in Harris Neck that is one of the reasons we no longer have Harris Neck, because the group of people that lived there, got their earning from the sea. They were great fishermen. They had fish, shrimp, crabs, and oysters that they harvested. Harris Neck oysters are known the world wide as some of the best oysters in the world. To this day. They are known for their blue crabs, which you will eat some of today. Harris Neck is an island. I can't remember the name of the creek, but once you cross that little bridge by the creek, you're now on Harris Neck and that was that's the only way you can get there other than by boat. There used to be a gate there. And under the gate were cross-ties because cows would not cross the cross-ties. That's how they kept their cows on Harris Neck and kept everybody elses cows off of Harris Neck. And there was a gate and I can remember going down in the summer. When we got to the gate you had the open it and we drove across you closed the gate behind you and we shut out the rest of the world when we did it. It's a tremendous game preserve at Harris Neck. Just about anything that runs wild in the woods in Georgia ran wild in the woods in Harris Neck. But they were there. I told you about the fishing thing, they just knew how to do it. And they lived from the water.
[00:02:00] Thank you dad.
[00:02:00] (Applause)
Michelle McCrary [00:02:04] As a close bond between humans and non-humans is essential to the indigenous people of the Americas and Africa, behaving contrarily, creates discord among kinship networks. Lessons through stories and model behavior and codes of conduct from humans and non-humans are in fact fundamental to the way in which the Mende view the world. As descendants of the Mende tribes Gullah Geechee also believe that kinship includes non-humans. - Sharon Y. Fuller. Welcome the Curious Roots. I'm Michelle McCrary.
Introduction [00:03:05] Curious Roots is a podcast that digs deep into the living earth of our personal, familial and communal lives to help us understand how we exist in the world today.
Michelle McCrary [00:03:26] In the last episode, we stepped into the intentionally thwarted promise of Reconstruction and the effect it had on the people trying to create new lives after over 200 years of forced bondage. The 3 million souls who finally began to make home in and around the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina, thanks to Field Order 15, saw that order rescinded. Their former enslavers moved swiftly to violently force them off those lands. With the help of a quote I read at the top of the show by scholar Sharon Y. Fuller. I want to attempt to contextualize what my newly freed ancestors lost and what black coastal communities in the South are in continued danger of losing to this day. When my ancestors were forced to the shores of Turtle Island, they came as indigenous African people who were ripped from the context of their own homelands. They found themselves in the presence of indigenous people in this new land. Many of my African ancestors who were enslaved in Harris Neck were Mende. They brought the indigenous worldview of the Mende people with them, as Sharon Fuller states. My ancestors developed a relationship with this new land, guided by this indigenous worldview they carried with them from West Africa. When they were freed from the brutal bondage of slavery, they sought to remain in communion and connection with this land that never failed to hold them spiritually and nourish them. My ancestors had a kinship with the land of Harris Neck and with all its nonhuman inhabitants. So when the kind of violent intentional displacement that happened after Field Order 15 was rescinded, the community of Harris Harrison lost not only their homes, but the deep relationship they cultivated with the land. The pain of that separation moved through time. It wasn't until I was older that I realized my own family's response to the generational pain of this dislocation was their deep commitment to gathering for reunions. My grandmother recorded some of these family reunions. One that I have is from a reunion program held at the First African Baptist Church in Harris Neck. I think the years around the late nineties, early 2000s. One of the final testimonies she captures is from Lester Hayes about her grandfather, my second great grandfather, Isaac Baisden Jr, and his wife Adella Baisden. Adella's maiden name was Grant. Her mother was Elizabeth Cooper nee Grant, the same Elizabeth Cooper who jumped on a gunboat with my third great grandfather, Lester Grant, bound for Florida from South Carolina during the Civil War.
Lester Hayes [00:06:11] Well, now everyone knows who I am. I'm Lester. I was named after my great uncle, Uncle Lester, according to my mother. I just wanted to give you just a bit of nostalgia. In the window on the right over here, you'll see a of memory of Isaac Baisden and Miss Adella Baisden. Isaac Baisden was a member of this church. And he sat right in that spot right there. Through all Sunday School. He was buried at this Church. Sister Harris was a member of the church and we no longer have one. And I thought, you know, I don't wanna get, cause I'm the guy that'll cry in a minute so don't pay any attention if you see the tears a roll. So this is supposed to be my (inaudible). It's just a joy to see and have you here. And to know that I'm related someway to every face that I'm lookin' at, and that just makes me feel good, and I hope it makes you feel good.
Michelle McCrary [00:07:28] So the family would make it a point to gather from near and far to share their memories of Harris Neck. To share these stories passed down from generation to generation, to share this world view about their connection to the land from generation to generation. And the stories I heard about Harris Neck came to me in the same way. And it's been interesting to see the outside world's view of Black folks from coastal Georgia. And to come to understand that labels like Geechee were only known to me when I was a child as an affectionate nickname, which describe my ability to consume ludicrous amounts of rice. And rice that, I might add, was always in the pot at the request of my grandfather, Rufus, whose people were all from South Carolina. But that's a story for another day. The importance of my relatives and ancestors gathering to reconnect and define themselves through their own stories became very clear once I began to sift through how black coastal communities were viewed with eyes, not their own. Sometimes those stories outside of the community obscured this indigenous worldview that they held as they struggled to hold onto the land and the culture and their legacy of hard won freedom. Other times I observed that when these stories were told with care, they illuminated the beauty of a bent but not broken mind of culture that water shipped back across the Atlantic to the shores of West Africa.
Speaker 2 [00:09:29] Lookman was not shouting now. You need it here. Without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees, he leaped, as fleet and bright has a lodestar. He healed toward guitar, and it did not matter which one of them would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother. For now, he knew, what Shalamar knew. If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
Michelle McCrary [00:10:07] That was an excerpt of Toni Morrison reading from her novel Song of Solomon. Though there are snippets of their lives in the annals of the Federal Writers Project. Most of that telling was recorded by a white Georgia writers project personnel who were primed with neo primitive rhetoric about Black coastal communities that had taken hold of the culture in the twenties and thirties. My grandmother was adamant that the way her relatives were represented in the Federal Writers Project book, Drums and Shadows was not how her people sounded when they spoke. I think the white WPA personnel were hearing Gullah and translating it into the fantasy stereotypes of black speech patterns they had ingested probably from the womb. The writers who went to Harris Neck spoke to Eddie Thorpe, whose father, Eddie Thorpe Sr, according to family tea spillage, was my grandmother, Effie's father. But I digress. They also spoke to Kathryn Baisden and Eliza Baisden on Sapelo. They spoke with Eliza's daughter, Rosa Salence. They were pressed to share stories about superstitions and conjure as a means to demonstrate the retention of African culture. Yet the most obvious connection to their African roots was overlooked. The indigenous worldview that infused their lives and connected them to the land was obscured by the white personnel's excitement to whip up a swirl of hate stories and hoodoo. Author, scholar and professor Melissa L. Cooper says that the story that centered the humanity of the people of the coastal south would not be recovered until black women authors like Pauli Marshall, Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor would reclaim them in their fictional works. Stories like Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon help to capture the real lived experience of my ancestors. The realities of removal after Field Order 15 and the contours of the exploitation and theft endured by black coastal communities in the South through the 1900s to the present are often missed, especially when the voices of the people from the community are not center. The stories of Harris Neck, I learned, came in part through my grandmother's cousin, Evelyn Greer. Miss Evelyn told us that the people of Harris Neck lived off the land and only got things outside the community like cloth and maybe flour. She said the men would take off work during a certain season to slaughter hogs while the kids pickled vegetables that the folks had grown in their garden. They also fished and hunted on the land. Most of my own ancestors were fishermen. The land was lush with pecan, pomegranate and orange trees. My other third great grandfather, Isaac Baisden Sr, was apparently a cabinetmaker who could identify trees in the forest simply by smell. Cousin Evelyn said his son Isaac Jr, was a sweet, sweet man, while his brother Mark, Baisden Jr. was mean and ornery. My second great grand uncle Frank Henry Proctor, Jr, was the town sheriff, and Harris Neck had its very own post office.
Margaret Baisden [00:13:30] Yeah, well. Oh well, the grandfather name was was Frank Henry Sr. Right? Yeah. Well I that that much I think Dick told me that, that his name was Frank Henry and because Uncle Frank Henry was a junior. So I figured if he was a Jr. then the the grandfather must have was was a Sr. But he said he didn't know the grandfather of the, you know, the wife's name. All I know, her name was Margaret, because Mama always told me that I was named after her.
Louise Proctor [00:14:03] So that's all I know too. But I know, my daddy and Dick you know, they were two first cousins. But now who was they people? I don't know.
Margaret Baisden [00:14:31] Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, was my great grandmother name was her name Elizabeth Spencer?
Louise Proctor [00:14:49] I don't know.
Margaret Baisden [00:14:50] I think I think Aunt Gladys said her name was Spencer, but I'm not sure see cause Aunt Gladys gave me some of that stuff. And I guess I had it written out on a piece of paper and my granddaughter had to have some information and I think I gave it to her. Yeah. And I if she gave it back to me, I can't find the paper. But I knew now I don't know anything about Papa's people. His Mom and Daddy. I don't, I don't know their names. My grandfather. Willis. I don't know anything about that.
Margaret Baisden [00:15:35] Well. That's it. That's the main thing I was trying to find.
Louise Proctor [00:15:41] If it wasn't about Harris Neck, I know who could tell you that thing. And that's Jesse Grant. Because he know a lot more them old people. And I tell Evelyn (inaudible) I don't have to do I want her to find out who was Margaret Proctors' people before she was married to Frank Henry Proctor. I wanted to know who were her people.
Margaret Baisden [00:16:10] And she was your...
Louise Proctor [00:16:13] Grandmother.
Margaret Baisden [00:16:14] Oh, wait a minute. You, you were uncle, Uncle Frank Henry's?
Louise Proctor [00:16:19] Daughter.
Margaret Baisden [00:16:20] Well see that? That's it. I know none of his. I knew Uncle Henry had some kids but I didn't know. And I was thinking that you had to be because Uncle Ferdinand didn't have any kids.
Louise Proctor [00:16:32] Yeah he had one daughter.
Margaret Baisden [00:16:32] He did?
Margaret Baisden [00:16:37] What's her name?
Louise Proctor [00:16:40] Ollah. Well she was. Her first marriage was Ollah Shaw.
Margaret Baisden [00:16:49] I didn't know Uncle Ferdinand had any kids.
Louise Proctor [00:16:51] Year he had had this girl by this other lady.
Michelle McCrary [00:17:00] That's my grandmother, Margaret, again, unfurling the Harris Neck family tree with a Louise Proctor, a.k.a. cousin Wheezy. Cousin wheezy grandfather was Frank Henry Jr's father. She is part of a deep web of kinship ties woven into the relationship the community had to the land of Harris Neck. The connection to the land and kinship ties are central to the identity of the people of Harris Neck, just as it is for the rest of Black coastal communities in Georgia. Returning to Sharon Y. Fuller and her work, Gullah Geechee Indigenous Articulations in the Americas, which focuses on the people of St Helena off South Carolina. She posits that the Gullah Geechee are racially Black and culturally indigenous. Fishing, hunting and foraging that is specific to the lands of the coast and the Sea Islands are all ways of life for black coastal communities to this day. This way of life is an articulation of the African indigenous worldview passed on through generations. So when Courtney Thorpe, a descendant of the human trafficking enslavers who owned plantations on Harris Neck, began dealings with the Civilian Aeronautics Administration in 1931, his aim was the removal of the entire community of descendants of the formerly enslaved people on that land. His actions would pave the way for the U.S. government to declare eminent domain and destroy Harris Neck on that awful day in July 1942. The vicious project of colonization and removal that began against the Creek and Cherokee in their home territories in 1793, continued unbroken with the destruction of the Harris Neck community in 1942. On the next episode, we'll learn more about what happened on July 27, 1942, and unearth the complicated seeds of struggle to regain Harris back that were planted in the 1970s and continue to this day.
[00:19:13] Curious Roots is co-produced by Converge Collaborative at Moonshadow Productions. Our theme music is courtesy of Makaih Beats. Please rate, review, subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or however you listen to your podcast. Don't forget to check out curiousrootspod.com. If you want to learn more about what you've heard. Big thank you to our producer, Pat McMahon. My deepest gratitude to Mr. Wilson Moran and to the community of Harris Neck. Big thank you's to Terri Ward and Adolphus Armstrong of Ujima genealogy. And thank you to my relatives who are now with the ancestors, especially Ms. Mary Moran and my grandmother, Margaret Baisden White. Thank you all for listening to Curious Roots.