Dad, on Rosa Parks

Here's an e-mail exchange Dad and I had about Rosa Parks, whose father was from Henry County.  What prompted this e-mail was a conversation we had had a year or so earlier about former Alabama governor George Wallace.  I was glad I could talk with Dad about these things, and I was very encouraged and even surprised by the response.

November 1, 2005

Dad,

I remember a year so ago when we riding back from the farm and you brought up George Wallace and how he admitted he was wrong and that it was a good thing.  I agree.  Anytime we mess up and can sincerely acknowledge what we have done, it's a positive.  However, this week, I have been thinking about the life Rosa Parks led compared to Wallace.  What she did, by sitting where she wasn't legally supposed to, shows just how brave and morally superior she was to George Wallace and the countless others who wrote and defended those laws.  I just think it's more important to do the right thing when we recognize it's right.  If everyone waited till they were on the verge of death to "come clean" it would be more tragic.

One of the questions I get whenever I travel and people find out I am from Alabama is "How come, if the vast majority of whites in Alabama attend church and profess to be Christians, did they let all that go on?"  Of course, in those days, churches were also at the forefront of keeping blacks in "their right place."  Not only could Rosa Parks not have legally sat down anywhere on the bus, she would have been barred from entering white churches.

I just think the US is better for having a Rosa Parks.  And, I just wonder how many pastors mentioned her name in their sermon this past Sunday?

Allen

Rosa was mentioned in our church and we had a moment of silence at AU's game for her as well.  By the way, Larry Smith spoke to Kiwanis this morning and Rosa's daddy was from Henry County and she lived on a farm in Abbeville until she was 5 yrs. old.  Her Daddy was an excellent carpenter and builder and her granddaddy, Anderson McCauley, owned around 600 acres of farm land near Graball, west of Abbeville. I will try to get Annette to e-mail you my Kiwanis bulletin this week telling more about it. Larry knows so much about this and you might want to get the inside info from him. She was a great lady and most think God put her where she was on that bus to help right the wrongs of those days.
                          
Love,

DAD


The Kiwanis Bulletin info that Dad later e-mailed me.

NOVEMBER 8, 2005

LAST WEEK

            T. Larry Smith, Henry County's Historian, talked to us on Rosa Parks, whose recent death sparked interests throughout the country.  Rosa, the mother of Civil Rights, will be buried on November 2nd in Detroit, Michigan where she lived her last years.  What many people didn't know is Rosa Park's connection to Henry County.  Rosa's daddy, Jim McCauley, and his daddy, Anderson McCauley were from Henry County near Abbeville.  Anderson McCauley's father was a white man and his mother a black slave girl who was part Indian.  Anderson was a farmer and in fact owned around 600 acres of land just west of Graball.  The Henry County Historical Society will erect a historical plaque on the old home near Highway 10 where the McCauleys lived.  Rosa Parks lived there until she was around 5 years old.

            Rosa's father was an excellent builder and actually designed and built the old Henry County Training School in 1914.  This school closed in 1970 and over 1300 black students graduated from there.  Jim moved with his wife to Tuskegee in 1912 and Rosa was born there in 1913 before they moved back to Henry County on the farm.  Jim later went north to build and Rosa's mother carried her back to Pine Level near Montgomery where her grandparents lived.  Anderson McCauley died in 1922 and his wife sold the land to payoff a loan in 1928.

            Rosa Parks' mother was a teacher and Rosa went to college and taught in Montgomery.  Rosa married Raymond Parks of Pine Level.  Her last trip to Henry County was in 1944 and she later moved to Detroit, Michigan. This was a good story and it ties Henry County to a lady who'll be remembered as one of the great ladies in our country's history.



Source

Dedication of Rosa Parks Historic Marker in Henry County, Alabama

Henry County Historian T. Larry Smith, second from left

Photo of Historic Marker and Parks Home in Henry County
Photo of Rosa Parks Library and Museum - Downtown Montgomery, AL
Rosa Parks Museum video
Rosa Parks Statue Unveiling - US Capitol Building

Update February 28, 2014

article by Larry Smith

Rosa Parks' childhood home just west of Abbeville.  From Forgotten Alabama
Sad that the home can't be preserved. Sad for the county and State of Alabama.

Click here for more on George C. Wallace.

Happy Times!

This was always one of my favorite pictures.  Taken in the mid to late '90s, in front of a gorgeous tree in the front yard of our family home in Headland.  My niece and nephew were in town visiting, and I had stopped by to see Mother. 

The same tree - a Japanese Oak.  (2009)

spot the tree in 1970!

From more images of the yard in 2009, click here.

Sibs

 

Mother always said Leslie helped her out a lot when I came along.

Mark looked after me some, too. 

Even Miles!

I had spent some time with my grandparents, Victor and Dot, and Dot said they really fattened me up.  This must have been around that time!  Miles had his hands full.

circa mid-70s.  I think on a trip to the mountains.

circa 1980

circa '90s.  Lake Espy.

circa late '90s.  Solomon Road.

2010

have more to add

Let Freedom Ring

50 years ago today.

I first heard this whole speech when I was in college.  One of my assignments in a business class was for us individually to go to the Civil Rights Museum in downtown Birmingham and then come back together as a class and discuss what we learned.  The experience of looking at all the exhibits, and taking in all the history that I hadn't been taught - not in any serious way- in high school, my community, and my church really impacted me.  I later picked up a book of Dr. King's quotes, and even after I graduated, would read the quotes from time to time.  I still have the book, in fact.  What struck me was just how more consistent Dr. King's views about humanity and ethics and freedom were with Jesus Christ and our Declaration of Independence than the actions of my own state and my own people (not all, but lots), who suited up for church on Sundays and proudly waved the American flag.  It really jarred me, and it was a "Galileo moment" that pushed me to learn more.  A bit before then, in Germany, on a trip ironically I was taking with an uncle to Russia, we stopped off in a museum. And one of their exhibits had life-size cutouts of blacks, up against a wall, being hosed by police taking Bull Connor's orders. And then there was another of snarling dogs barking at and biting scared protestors.  All the iconic Civil Rights protest pictures, really. At first I got offended. This was Germany, the place where Hitler and the Holocaust originated! How dare they?!?!?! But this "sting" stung for a reason. It really didn't matter who was delivering the news. The message bothered me. The message about my past, my people, my state, my country and what that might say about me, or perhaps, much worse, what aspects of that condition still lived in me, and in those around me. The indoctrination, the prejudice, the indifference, the denial, the guilt, the sin, the shame, the embarrassment.  Now, in my early forties (three years older than King when he was assassinated) I have grown to greatly admire people of King's stature - Gandhi, Susan B. Anthony, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.   And others.  Some whose names are not significant.  But I think to myself, if I could be a little more like these people, who sacrificed far more than I could even contemplate, I would be very pleased.

For another writing I did about Martin Luther King, Jr., click here.  And, for a look at an earlier post I did about Alabama landmarks, go here.

Here's a young lady worth emulating.   Imagine how she "upsets the apple cart."

This girl has amazing courage and a message of hope for those trapped in fear in any culture. These cultures are not just in Islamic countries, where Malala's story comes from. They are here in the US. They are very likely in your own family. They could be anywhere, really, where freedom of expression and inquiry are suppressed. It's where you're told what to think rather than encouraged to learn how to think. It's where individuals self-censor themselves and their thoughts and ideas out of fear of offending, out of fear of retribution or simply out of fear of standing alone. It's where groupthink is predominant. But there's always hope when you pursue truth. And young Malala epitomizes this.

 "Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born." - Malala Yousafzai

And here's a great quote.  One of my cousin Beverly Espy Dayries' favorites:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

 

Crabtree Falls

We left at 4 PM and drove 45 minutes to the Crabtree Falls parking lot, where the trailhead was - mile post 339.5 on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We had plenty of water and some picnic foods.  Of course, we had our video camera.  On the way up to the Parkway, a black bear cub ran across the road, in front of our car.  The Law of Bear Attraction is still with us!  The video in this post shows some interesting aspects of our hike, and it shows the all-around beauty of the falls.  Hope you enjoy!  Oh, and at the end of our hike, we went straight to Mount Mitchell for the 8:07 PM sunset. In all, we were gone about 5 1/2 hours. Should have been only five, but Old Fort, NC has some missing street signs.  Really.

 

Mount Mitchell Sunset

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity...” ― John Muir

 

As great as the images are, our video is even better.  We used our SONY HD 7.1 MEGA PIXELS HANDYCAM, which is much, much better than our smart phone video camera.  Our last visit to Mount Mitchell was three years, and the sky was very clear.  I made a pretty good panoramic video using our digital camera or our smart phone.  You can see it here.

Oysters: Oh, I love them!

Oyster Housing Brewing Company in Asheville, NC opened a few months ago.  It has quickly catapulted into one of my favorite dives. 

Their website is here.  After looking at menu, be sure to check out the beers they brew and take a walk through the photo gallery.

Below are some images I took.  I ate a full two dozen raw ones and drank one beer.  I stayed away from the warm water Gulf Coast oysters and instead focused on the five cold water varieties.  One reason the oysters are more expensive than normal is because they are flown in daily, and from places all up the East coast and into Canada.  We are in the mountains!  But I will say, as much as I like Gulf Coast oysters, especially at Hunt's in Dothan, AL, I have now found some other varieties I like as least as much.  Now if I could just get a chili dog and bottled Coke, and the ambiance Hunt's offers, well, I would almost be at home.  And the prices down too!

One of my bigger bucket list items is to fly to Paris, rent a car and simply drive west to the coast.  From there, I would drive south, right along the coast, indulging on the most scrumptious and freshly harvested raw oysters served in local bars and restaurants.  Besides Kade and me, I really don't want to see any tourists.  After eating our way to the French/Spanish border, and after visiting a Bordeaux vineyard or two, we would drive east to the topless beaches (the French Riviera) along the Mediterranean Sea, where we'd spend a week soaking up the sun. 

Mom thought Victor Grace's family tree ( a branch) goes back to France.  Thus far, it's only speculation.  Haven't come close to verifying it.  But maybe this could be a future project? 

A Bit of History

 

 President James Buchanan

I believe these are the original deeds (or bills of sale) for the property that eventually belonged to the Graces in Shorterville, Alabama.  Mother held on to these.   President James Buchanan's signature is on each certificate, and the year on them is 1858.  As I do research and discover more, I will make updates to this post.

When Mother pulled these certificates out to show me - probably in 2008, when I started "acquiring" blog content - she pointed out Buchanan's signature and the historical significance of the certificates.  And I believe she said that these were from sales of lands that had just opened up after the "deals" and "wars" with the Indians.  And Mother stood there with me, outside, as I shot these digital images.   We needed the natural outdoor lighting, and we used the brick carport wall to place them on.

back of one of the certificates

The Führer & The Bear

Probably my very first research paper was on Adolf Hitler.  I had to be very, very young.  Let's just say middle school.  I spent the night at Dot's home on Mitchell Street and used her encyclopedias for ideas.  She had this complete encyclopedia set next to her chair in the den and would use it like we use Google today.  Her knowledge on subjects was very extensive, and it served her very well when it came to her daily crosswords and TV quiz shows.  And you could have intelligent conversations with her, as I learned when I got a lot older.  So, when I had my paper due, I went straight for those encyclopedias.  I grabbed the A or the H, and eventually ended up on Adolf Hitler.  I was sitting at the kitchen table, notebook in hand, Dot walking around.  I read about Hitler's early life, and how he rose to power, and the horrors that eventually happened.  I remember being intrigued by the subject, and I remember Dot saying a few things about that time period, because WWII affected so many lives.  Victor's nephew, Charles Hayes, had been a paratrooper in the war - one of distinction, in fact.  At my age, I knew little about the war and even less about how to properly do a research paper!  But I had mastered one thing:  the art of procrastination.  The paper might have been due to the very next day.  Using Dot's electric typewriter, which then was ahead of its time, I basically read paragraph after paragraph, taking the text and putting it into my own words.  I used no other sources, and don't even know that I properly cited the one I did use.  But I finished it in time, and likely got a pretty good grade.  Don't know what that says about the school system!   In the end, probably the biggest thing I gained from that experience was an interest in World War Two (and Hitler, and Stalin and the Big Three) that has lasted to this day.

In 2008, when I was flipping through a World War Two pictorial that once belonged to Uncle Watty, I found a very unique picture.  Lo and behold, a Dinah Grace with the Führer!  I immediately copied it, and sent it to Mother.  She got a laugh out of it, and even thought I had photo-shopped that in somehow.  Nope.

Dot loved Bear Bryant and the Alabama football team.  She was as equally as passionate for the Tide as I was for Auburn.  Luckily, Auburn had the upper hand during the eighties, and thus I had an upper hand on my grandmother.  We teased one another and talked sports a lot.  On our "road trips" to Dothan, Dot always liked to get her groceries at Food World on the way back to Headland.  Once, in the checkout line, she saw this Bear Bryant commemorative edition magazine.  And she bought it, of course!  Many years after Dot had died, while in Headland visiting Mother, I was rummaging through a closet in Dot's bedroom and I found the magazine.  I took this image of it.

In the late 90s, I went to Tuscaloosa to meet a friend and see the law school.  I got to the town a bit early, and to kill time, visited the Bear Bryant Museum.  It was very interesting.  Dot was with me, in spirit. 

During my travels, when I would meet other Americans, especially older ones, and they'd find out I was from Alabama, the name Bear Bryant most often came up.   Probably second was George Wallace, but for more of a negative vibe.

 

Dot's Career

Dorothy Moore Barnette Grace (left) with a friend (or her sister-in-law)

Likely in Montgomery, Alabama

Dot's maternal grandfather had lived in Montgomery (actually Ramer, just outside the capital).   And Dot, when she was in Shorterville growing up, every year would jump on a train and take trips to visit him.  It was something she always looked forward to.  Then, in the years 1939 and 1940, Dot took a job in Montgomery with Sears Roebuck.   She was twenty-six, and not yet married.

In an interview I did with Dot for a high school history project in the 1980s, she talked about this time in her life:

I finished Campbell Business College and got my diploma.  I went to Montgomery and went to work as a payroll clerk for Sears Roebuck.  I had to complete and work out the payroll for every employee at Sears.  We had about fifty regular employees.  They punched the time clock, and I paid them off every week.  - Dorothy Grace

In that same interview I did with Dot, I asked what she might have changed about her educational opportunities and career choice:

I would have like to have gone on to college (4 year) and learned more.  I would have liked to have had a better job, been better qualified and maybe been in civil service work - had a civil service job and worked in Washington.  Civil service work is so much better, pays more and you have a good retirement.  - Dorothy Grace

Either prior to going to Montgomery or sometime right after marrying Victor, Dot worked in other capacities:

I was a bookkeeper and secretary.  That was about the only training you could get back then.  Most of my jobs were working around peanut companies - Goldkist and Session Oil Company - paying off the farmers when they'd bring in their peanuts in the Fall.  Every figure you put down had to be right. - Dorothy Grace

After giving birth to Mother (Dinah), Dot stayed home and took on a different set of responsibilities.  However, she still used her bookkeeping smarts to help Victor manage their farm.  And I think she said - and I remember Mother saying it too - Granddad Victor owed a lot of his success to her business acumen.

Dorothy Barnette Grace's Siblings

These would be Mother's uncles and my great-uncles.  As I get more photos from their respective families, I will add them here.

Dot with her brother Dewitt

 Dewitt Barnette, his wife Wilodene and their son.

Dewitt lived and worked in Birmingham, AL most of his life.  Dot would always talk about how intelligent Dewitt was and how he was a voracious reader.  He and his wife Wilodine Stephens (Barnette) had a condo at Pinnacle Port at Panama City Beach, FL, where we used to visit them on our vacations in the 80s.  Aunt Wilo died on March 27, 2011.  She taught in the Birmingham school system for 30 years. Here's her obit.

on back of photo:  Joyce. Dorothy and John

Joyce was Dot's cousin, and John was her brother.

John Barnette

 John holding daughter Gloria, Mother's cousin (circa 1950). 

Gloria and her husband Jack live in Nashville, TN.

John, with his mother and wife

For more photos of Dot with her siblings, and some photos of Dot's parents, click here.