An 1890's graduation portrait at Harbison College marked a significant milestone. Parents, teachers, and church leaders shared in the achievements of successive generations.

     While there were many pleasant memories culled from the past by the elderly residents who shared their life stories, the daily struggles they had faced for most of their existences also colored their recollections. Money, in particular, was almost always scarce and a source of lifelong worry for many. But sometimes, by banding together, individuals had accomplished collectively what was all but impossible on their own.

In the late 1800's, African Americans began forming burial societies to relieve their families of the final financial burdens their deaths would bring. Elbert County and Abbeville County residents who joined the societies paid from 25 to 35 cents a month to belong, with some paying the fees for most of their adults lives.

Members, Janesta McKinney explained, "...were entitled to about the poorest burial you could get. Usually the family would add a little more to make it [the burial and funeral] more presentable." Not everyone joined a burial society, however. Henry McIntire's mother preferred to put aside money on her own. "She saved just enough to bury herself. She didn't want us cryin' two ways, cryin' with she gone, and cryin' with the way she got put away," he remembered. Over time, funeral homes, social clubs, or churches offered similar burial insurance plans to the ones offered by burial societies.

There were also other reasons for joining together. As early as 1899, African Americans in the area formed the Farmer's Institute, which numbered 54 members, who gathered to talk about common problems. Later, in 1925, Elbert County leaders cooperated to encourage young African-Americans farmers. In March of that year, The Elberton Star carried an article about the effort: "A farm worker's club is being organized in different districts of Elbert County among the negro boys by a committee of prominent colored men composed of L.H. A. Bell, Jake Thornton, Rev. A.R. McKinney, and Paul Blackwell.

"The movement is endorsed heartily by W.P. Huie, county farm agent, as well as receiving the moral support of all classes of our citizenship... .The negroes of the county, who constitute a considerable portion of the farming population, are making progress in the conduct of farm work along improved scientific and business methods."

Perhaps the most wide-spread cooperative efforts for African Americans concerned religion. Many of those interviewed talked about how important church was in their lives. Besides providing sites for worship, churches were also the social, political, and educational focal points for communities.

Churches and schools played integral roles in fostering a collective identity that was distinctly African-American. Rufus Bullard remembered just how important the two institutions could be: "We didn't go to no movies. The school and the church were about the center of that community... .See, we used to have a school there.... And the neighborhood. We thought we had a pretty nice neighborhood. We always had a pretty nice congregation of people. We had intelligent preachers."

Some remembered hearing from their parents and grandparents about a time before African Americans had church buildings of their own. According to Phoebe Turman, "They didn't have no church on it. I used to hear the older heads say they would have a place to go to serve the Lord... sing and pray... It was a big, old oak tree. Big, old, nice, shady oak tree, and that was their church." Samuel Calhoun remembered hearing about services conducted in grass arbors, hut-like structures formed with a frame of cut pine trees.

In Elbert County and Abbeville County, African Americans built some of their early churches on land donated by whites, including the log church Davis' grandfather, George Thompson, and his twin brother Lloyd, built when Davis was a young boy. About a century later, Davis recounted the events which led him to join the church. "I was about 13 years old when I joined the church. I got to the edge of the woods and something told me to kneel down by that stump and commence to whooping and hollering. I went on to church and the man, old Wade Dye, he took me in. And I cried two days and two nights before I quit. So, I've been a member of the church ever since."

Not everyone shared the same unqualified enthusiasm for religion, however. Rufus Bullard said, "I reckon I was a member [of a church] in my time... .You know, I ain't been goin' that often. We got [some] ignorance in our church now. You know, shouting, slapping, hollerin' goin' on. We used to didn't have that. People would sit there. [Now] preacher say two words, they holler, and it's kind of boring to me. I mean, I never used to just hear 'em holler every minute, every minute. And we had some good preachers here, tell you the truth. Old man McKinney was a good ole man, I thought. Nobody never did see nothin' wrong with him, but his son a little bit feisty, fresher. But you know what I mean. He was intelligent. We didn't have no ignorance like we 'bout to get hold of now."

In contrast, church continued to be a vital part of life for Lillie Pressley. Researchers interviewed her on a Friday in her kitchen where she was about to prepare a feast for a charity fund raiser for one of several churches she attended.

"I'm goin' to get my hair washed tonight," she said. "[Also] I'm gonna do my cookin' tonight. I've got all my chicken. I'm gonna put on a roast. I'm gonna cook some peas, and make macaroni, and make some cornbread, and some biscuits, and cook some corn... That's exactly what I'm gonna fix for tomorrow. And furthermore, I'm gonna get up in the mornin' [Saturday] and eat what I feel like I want to eat, and go right on. I don't have time to cook on Sunday 'cause I gotta go to church all day on Sunday. Now, that's my day. When you look for me, you look for me on Sunday in church. Folks tell me, 'Lillie, you do so much charity work,' [and] I tell 'em I enjoy it. I always enjoyed it, doing something for somebody, makin' somebody happy. That's what I like to do."

Pressley was born around 1912 and grew up on a tenant farm where her family raised cotton, corn, peas, potatoes, wheat, oats, and cane for syrup. As a young girl, she did her share of the work, including pushing the plow. School began for her at the age of four because her brother needed a companion on the long walk from their farm. "We stayed about six miles from school and he didn't have anyone to walk with him to school every morning. I had to go with him to school. At that time, they didn't have any certain age for children to go to school," she explained. She was a good student and sped through the seven grades that the two-room school had to offer, then went to work full time on the family farm.

Left: Lillie Pressley spent many hours working for her various churches.
 

Just as religion continued to be a dominant factor in her adult life, so it was for Lillie Pressley as a child. She fondly remembered riding as a youngster in a lantern-lit wagon to church services at night. "Well, if this wagon [the one her family rode in was full, it'd be two wagon loads goin' from right in here in this community. All right on up the road, the other wagons join them wagons. And that's the way we went to church. We had to go about five miles. Well, it was fun in them days, you enjoyed it. It'd be so many of 'em [wagons] in the road, you'd just enjoy it."

A similar caravan of wagons also took her family to day-time services on Sunday. Pressley remembered how the wagons were "...hitched to mules. Wagon and carriage, that's the way you used to go, you know. Just like the white people in them days, they would ride in a carriage and buggy.  Now, the rich folk, they'd be ridin' in the fine carriage and they had the black man to drive the carriage, two-seat carriage. Now, we take them mules and hitch 'em to the wagon, put childs in the wagon, and go to church that way."

Short of money, church members paid the minister with "...milk and butter, and ham and chicken, and things. And give them to the pastor. You see, they wouldn't take nothin' like that now." As a little girl, Pressley looked forward with wide-eyed excitement to Children's Day at the church. This was held the second Sunday in June and was special because the children presented a program for the congregation.

"In them days, we used to have Children's Days. You go to church in the wagons and they have a trunk full of food. [Then] we, all the children, have a speak and sing.  And they just had a big program all day...All the children be dressed in their little new suits an' things. And it was real innocent. We don't have things like that now."

Edward Brownlee talked about his father's recollections of similar festivities: "I remember my dad saying that when he was a boy, they would go to Glover's [church] about once a year for what they called Children's Day. They would go in one-horse wagons and most times they would pull oxen or they would ride on the oxen's back. They'd cook trunks of food so that the kids would just have all kinds of food. This was always held in July. This ole lady used to ride this oxen and carry this trunk of food. She'd throw this blanket up across this oxen. She'd have this ole trunk in front of her, holding it, goin' to Children's Day."

During Pressley's childhood, another big church event was Anniversary Day. "We didn't hardly feed on a church anniversary. We just invite different churches. But that was back when people were wearing frills and frocks. You know, the long dresses, with big skirts 'n little bit tied up here on the waist. The blouse [had] the puff of sleeves up here. I sure wish I could find some of them [dresses]. Honey, them some days. People served the Lord in them days, I'm telling you the truth. Then, like I told you, the church was full of people in them days. But nowadays and time, people got nothin' to do but get in their car and go to church. They don't even have time."

At 16 years old, Lillie Pressley sneaked away from home and secretly married a young mechanic, Joseph Pressley, who worked at the local Chevrolet dealership. They were wed at the Elberton courthouse by a justice of the peace at eight o'clock at night in 1928. No one knew about the marriage until the couple finally broke their silence a month later. "Would have been married for [about] 50 years, 50 years, if he had been livin'," she said. Her husband died in 1963.

Even in the 1980's, some African Americans who once lived in rural areas still maintained ties to their childhood churches, despite living many miles away from them. Occasionally, these members revisited the old churches, especially on Homecoming or Anniversary Day. "My sister in Ohio," explained Pressley, "she's a member of Dove's Creek [church]. It's just only a few miles out in the country. But for 60 years, I've been in town, right at Mount Calvary [church]. But I don't forget my home church [Dove's Creek]. When things goin' on at home church, I remember them, too."

The railroad played an important role in the church of Rufus Bullard's youth in the small town of Heardmont, Georgia. The train brought both the minister and worshipers to the church from some distance away. "Our preacher used to ride it [the morning train], Reverend McKinney. And then, see, time you go back at night, the service would be over with. He'd catch this train goin' back home where they had people gettin' off at Pearle and Milton, two stops between here and Elberton."

Some of those interviewed were almost as devoted to social organizations they belonged to as they were to their churches. The Masons, Odd Fellows, Eastern Star, and other groups, many of which promoted charitable acts in the community, provided opportunities for members to gather with friends. Significantly, within these fraternal organizations, African Americans could assume positions of leadership where they wielded the kind of authority often denied them elsewhere by whites.

Many of the fraternal organizations insisted on secrecy and involved mysterious and elaborate rituals that added to their appeal for members. The Good Samaritans, for example, were supposed to meet on the top floor in whatever building they gathered, according to Lillie Pressley. A member for 40 years, Pressley actually had an association with the Samaritans for longer than that. As a child, she had seen her mother leaving for Good Samaritan meetings and marching in the organization's parades.

"They had big turnouts, you know. Just like they're going to have a turnout at Mount Calvary [church]. They'd march from here to Mount Calvary. All will be dressed in black suits and white shirts and white gloves," she said. Pressley, like others interviewed, joined more than one group and was also a member of the Eastern Star.

Louella Walker participated in both the Eastern Star and the Women's Home Aid Society, which she had belonged to for about 35 years. The Women's Home Aid Society provided burial insurance and a ceremony for members when they died. Individual lodges met during the year in private homes, then, once a year, all the lodges in the area converged for the anniversary celebration, held at a different church every year, always on Sunday. The members and their guests participated in a regular morning church service. "Then [when the service] is over, we have the program.... We'd sing... All the different lodges are there. Some [of them] might sing. Somebody read a piece and like that...We have dinner, too."

At some point in the celebration, "They will ask if anybody want to join, you see. You have to get up and say you want to join and they'd take your name. They take you aside and read to you and ask you different questions. 'Are you willing to abide by it [the rules] ?' And all that. [Then] they will set the time to join. You have to go through a ceremony. You have to meet 'em at a house. [You] have your Bible. Tell who you are, how old you are, who your husband is, all like that."

Despite the loyalty of many members, importance of the fraternal orders gradually declined, in part because of improved conditions for many African Americans and because of dwindling populations as people moved away to cities. Remembering times past, Pressley said, "...they help people when they're sick and things like that. But just like I'm saying, it's not as strong as it once had been.... Back yonder, when times were hard, they were a lot stronger."

Education was another significant component of life for African Americans interviewed, many of whom had sacrificed to attend school or whose parents had sacrificed for them to get an education. Randolph Davis, as a young man sometime around the turn of the century, rented a tenant farm from Albert Dye, descendant of George Washington Dye and his slave Lucinda. Davis recalled that Dye insisted that his son Willie obtain an education. He "...sent that boy to school [so he could] tend to his business like he wanted. Old man Albert, he never had no learning, so he sent that boy to school. And [later], he told Willie to figure for him. Willie had good learning."
 

Harbison College at its peak had 200 boarding and 150 day students. After tragedy struck, the school moved away from Abbeville. Faculty and students gathered in front of one of the original dormitories in happier times.

But getting a good education proved to be a serious struggle for some, a struggle that in Abbeville County ended in violence and tragedy. Schools were racially segregated and unequal for African Americans in many ways, from the length of the school year to the classroom supplies they received, compared to white students. Where most local schools for African Americans remained in session for only three months, similar schools for whites held classes up to nine months. Parents who could afford to sought better conditions for their children. Charlotte Sweeney remembered, "Miss Lucille Martin, she was a school teacher. We were only getting three months of schooling.

And she told my mother [who] got kind of aggravated over the situation." Several African Americans remembered their parents paying for tutors or extra instruction after the usual term ended. Most schools were affiliated with local churches, but in some instances Northern church groups provided schools that offered longer terms. Grace Reynolds and Louella Walker both attended Mr. Lee's School, supported by Northern Presbyterians. The Calhoun Falls school offered longer terms and students could reach a higher grade level than in most local schools. To attend, Grace Reynolds had to leave her home and board with another family, a not untypical arrangement for the time.

Minnie Clark moved to Abbeville as a teenager to take advantage of one of the better schools, Harbison College, which provided ten months of instruction in both primary and secondary grades. Clark boarded with a local undertaker's family and paid her rent by working in the general store they owned. At the time, she had no way of knowing the danger she would be facing as controversy engulfed the school.

Founded by Northern Presbyterians in 1885, the school was originally called Ferguson-Williams Academy, in honor of key supporters, the Reverend and Mrs. Emory A. Williams and the Reverend James A. Ferguson. In 1892, the Presbyterian Board of Education appointed Dr. Thomas H. Amos in charge of day-to-day operations. Amos, a distinguished minister and teacher, was born in Africa in Monrovia, Liberia in 1866. His parents were the first black missionaries from the United States sent to Africa by the Presbyterian church. When his father died, Amos and his mother returned to the United States where he completed his education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

When Amos took charge of Ferguson-Williams Academy, the school was foundering and in debt by some $2,000. He restored the school to financial stability by appealing to philanthropists such as Samuel Harbison, for whom the school was eventually renamed. Harbison, who was white, donated 20 acres of land on the outskirts of Abbeville where the school was moved from town sometime around the turn of the century. Before long, the school was prospering. "Negroes from everywhere were going there," remembered Edward Brownlee.

Left: The Georgia State Medical Association, photographed in 1918, counted the elite of  African-American society among its ranks.
 

During his tenure, Amos was able to raise more than $45,000 for the school. He lectured around the country, using these appearances as a platform for soliciting funds and for attracting new students and faculty. So successful were his efforts that students had to pay only a little more than three dollars a month for instruction and boarding, according to one report of the time. Still, for many, even three dollars was an enormous sum. As Ursula Mae Haddon, a former student, recalled, the school accommodated those unable to pay the full amount. For those who didn't board at the school, "...say you chipped in a dollar.. .it was in your reach... We all who attended the school liked it. We were proud of it; we were glad to get to school. Maybe our parents didn't have the opportunity. I'm sure mine didn't. I had the opportunity. I tried to avail myself."

Many students paid their tuition through laboring on the school grounds, instead of with money. Minnie Clark remembered classmates working on the school's farm. "If you wanted to pick cotton in the afternoon, pick some cane or something, you could do that," she said. Clark, who played the organ at school performances, remembered the nickname the older students used for her and her fellow students when she first attended the school in the fifth grade. "They call us 'prep' for preparatory. We were preps, so low down under them."

Despite the fond reminiscences of Clark, Haddon, and others, an ugly undertow was pulling at the school's tranquility. Under Amos, the school apparently operated fairly smoothly for about ten years. Then, for reasons not altogether clear, Amos and his African-American faculty, which included his wife, became caught up in the fears and hatreds some whites harbored towards blacks.

Rumors in Abbeville cited Amos as the instigator of black labor resistance. Another whispered charge was that his students were armed. In an article in The Abbeville Press and Banner, Amos strongly denied the accusations and added, "I have positively done nothing to merit the ill will of the white people and I would not be able today to name a single white man in the town or in the country to whom I could feel justified in feeling unkindly." He blamed the rumors on jealous friends of his predecessor.

Nonetheless, Amos was eventually forced to resign. In a 1980 letter to the Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, one of Amos' children, Fannie Amos Stewart, provided additional details of what her parents had told her about the coerced departure.

"Dr. and Mrs. Amos worked diligently and conscientiously at the school until the fall of 1906," according to Stewart. "They loved their work, students, and faculty....My mother used to speak of how pretty she thought the campus was and how beautiful the students looked strolling on the campus. Their [her parents] reason for leaving was due to racial prejudice. The white people in town were jealous of the school, its progress, etc."

Stewart added that her parents had also told her that her three older brothers and her father were graphically threatened with lynching, and that the family had to flee Abbeville for their own safety. A local physician, a white man, had overheard Ku Klux Klan plans to murder Amos and helped the principal and his family escape town just before the intended assault. The doctor drove the Amos family by wagon to Greenville, South Carolina, and saw them safely on a train bound for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wrote Stewart: "I don't think Dr. Amos ever got over the tragic ending to his successful work in Abbeville."

The school closed for several months after Amos' resignation. The local newspaper trumpeted the appointment of the next school leader, C .M. Young: "The agitation of the race question has awakened and intensified the race prejudice which seemed dormant or which had not until recently come to the surface in a pronounced form. The president of the Harbison College is a native born negro, and one who seems to be acceptable to a majority of our people... .His predecessor was a Northern negro, who was objectionable to some of our people."
 

Reverend C.M. Young (seated in the center) was president of Harbison College. He taught music and Bible studies. The facultay also included his wife, who was the school matron and his assistant, and Robert W. Boulware, who taught mathematics and Latin.

The controversy surrounding the school, however, persisted. In January 1907, fire destroyed one of the school buildings, prompting rumors about the blaze's origin, speculation that the fire was deliberately set. The atmosphere in the community became so highly charged on the topic that Young felt compelled to write an article for the local newspaper to calm the situation. He wrote that the fire was caused by a defective flue and wood stove.

But another fire on March 17, 1910, was indisputably arson. Three boys died in the blaze and several other students and a teacher were injured. Minnie Clark witnessed the tragedy: "I was there when the building caught fire...it's a good thing I had my pack on...I like to got burned up."

The day after the fire, Abbeville citizens staged a mass rally in support of the school. They condemned the arsonist and raised a reward of $300 to help catch the culprit. Prominent white citizens also circulated a petition urging that the school remain in the town. All these efforts proved futile, however. With the arsonist at large, the board of directors decided to move the school to Irmo, South Carolina.
 

School children learned how to produce a newspaper, from writing stories to designing the pages.

Elbert County also experienced its share of the racial tension that stirred throughout much of the South. Elberton's newspaper carried advertisements for Ku Klux Klan marches, Klan movies, and Klan rallies in the early 1920's. One of the advertisements for a Klan rally mentioned that the Elberton Municipal Band would perform. The paper also printed an article detailing 70 hangings of African Americans in various places in the South. Those hanged were murdered for such offenses as "trying to act like a white man" and "not knowing his place."

Nonetheless, African Americans continued to make social progress. Minnie Clark looked back proudly on her "30, 40 years" of teaching a new generation of African Americans the joy of learning. She also talked about how things had changed since the days when a short school year was imposed on her and other dedicated black teachers.

"You see, at that time, they didn't give us justice. They give the whites nine months [of school] and they give the blacks three and four. So, now we can get nine months as well as the whites, so that justice did come down. Justice come in.... It was slow."
 

Leading a Brownie Troop was another way that volunteers gave of themselves to help the next generation.

While many argue that still more needs to be done to improve school opportunities for African Americans, researchers observed that some families made steady educational advancements from one generation to the next because of their own efforts. According to Ramsey, "This is the pattern that emerges over and over again in the family stories. Grandparents who went to local, poorly funded, segregated schools pave a path for their children so that they can go to better endowed schools and receive respected degrees; the children in turn help their offspring to maximize the education available to them."

Former Harbison College students and faculty are examples of that observation. Sons of the principal, C.M. Young, became medical doctors. Ursula Mae Haddon, a former student, eventually went back to school in middle age and earned a bachelor's degree in 1942. One of her sons became a dentist and her grandchildren became highly trained professionals, including a lawyer. As Haddon expressed it, "I can be sort of proud that there have been some Harbisonians who have benefitted by the school."

Final Thoughts

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