Graveyards Destroyed for Mississippi Industrial Project

Governor's secret negotiations lead to relocation of historic white cemetery, possible destruction of adjacent black graves

By Alan Huffman

Aug. 6, 2016

BOLTON, Miss. -- No one asked Ernestine Jones, or her sister, Bernice Jamison. The elderly African American sisters weren’t privy to confidential talks between Mississippi officials and a German tire manufacturer over the sale of public land near their home for a $1.45 billion industrial site.

Because of that, the developers were unaware of a key detail well known to the sisters. As Jamison, 94, recalled while sitting with family members in her small home about a half-mile from the site: “We used to bury there.”

“There” is an otherwise vacant, nearly 1,000-acre parcel where Continental Tire the Americas plans to build one of the state’s largest industrial facilities. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant announced the project in February, touting it as an economic boon to the financially stressed county that includes the state capital. But in their zeal to land the project without interference, state officials and private contractors avoided speaking with local residents and so failed to discover that an unmarked black cemetery stood in the way.

In a state with a notorious racial history, whose governor made headlines earlier this year for supporting and signing an anti-gay “religious freedom” law and who chose black history month to proclaim a new “Confederate heritage month,” the story of the cemetery offers a small but telling window into the widening chasm between conservative politicians and minority groups, many of which have historically had a limited voice.

“Those are our people buried there. People remember them,” said Alfenette Robinson, a relative of Jones and Jamison who visited the site unannounced in early June while a crew from the University of Mississippi’s Center for Archaeological Research mapped and worked on a test excavation in a nearby white cemetery. Robinson, who has compiled extensive records of the area’s often-overlooked African American history, was surprised to find that her family’s graves were still in limbo. “Why does no one seem to care?” she asked.

Yvonne Horton, left, and Alfenette Robinson point in the direction of the unmarked black cemetery. Both women have relatives buried there.

The burial grounds became publicly known in February, prompting state officials to say they would take steps to ensure the graves were located and moved. But in early June, survey crews with small earthmoving equipment began marking and excavating graves in the nearby white cemetery, known as New Salem, but not in the unmarked black burial ground nearby. Asked about plans for the unmarked black graves, which had not been located or flagged, the crew leader said he knew nothing about them.

Such cemeteries, unmarked because the survivors typically did not have money for permanent markers, have in the past been bulldozed elsewhere in Mississippi and across the South – in one case, in the state’s Turkey Creek community, despite considerable public outrage. And there are few laws to prevent that from happening. Michael Trinkley, director of the state of South Carolina’s nonprofit Chicora Foundation, told CNN in an episode of its “Black in America” documentary series, “The problem with preserving these types of sites is that African-American cemeteries are hard to find. You can think of the people buried there as the invisible dead. And not knowing where they are, or how many there are, makes them susceptible to loss.” Even when gravesites are recognized, Trinkley said, they are sometimes destroyed for development. “What if in that grave was your mother or your child?” he asked. “It’s an issue of respect and an issue of dignity. It’s the last decision society and the individual make together.”

There is no official data on the number of unmarked cemeteries that have been desecrated or destroyed for development projects, sometimes even after supporters made their presence known. Cemeteries occupy an odd niche in American society: in one sense, sanctified, yet sometimes treated as dispensable, especially when valuable real estate is involved. The contrast is often at its starkest among abandoned, historic African American cemeteries in the South. For some, the seeming lack of concern for the African American graves on the Continental site is indicative of Mississippi’s troubled racial history. Such cemeteries, like the people buried in them, were historically given short shrift by the powers that be, and history, in the American South, was meanwhile largely written by whites.

The unmarked cemetery fell through the cracks decades ago, when burials ceased and the narrow, historic road that the sisters say divided it from the white New Salem cemetery was closed. The cemetery’s physical endangerment came about as a result of secret negotiations and secret research combined with what was, essentially, a secret history – one that historically has largely been ignored.

The environmental assessment of the Continental site, done for the state by private contractors, was withheld from public view, but a leaked copy reveals plans to relocate the white cemetery but makes no mention of the unmarked black burial ground. New Salem also includes a few unmarked graves and at least one grave of an African American, but over the years it has been treated differently than the black burial ground. Many of the New Salem obelisks have been damaged by falling limbs and trees, but when the Clinton School District, which owns the property, sold the timber several years ago, loggers avoided the white cemetery, which is clearly identifiable by its elaborate tombstones and filigreed cast-iron fences, while the area where the sisters say the unmarked black cemetery lies was clear-cut and is now a thicket of briars and vines. Until recently, both cemeteries were accessible only by a mile-long walk through rough terrain. On the day Robinson and others visited, a gate across the logging road that skirts the site was open, enabling them to drive in. “We wouldn’t have known they weren’t doing anything if we hadn’t come out here,” Robinson said. The road has since been closed with a padlocked chain.

Negotiations for the Continental project began as early as 2014, though few people know the precise date because everyone involved was sworn to secrecy. Rumors had circulated for years that a big project was in the works for the property, on what is known as 16th section land that is set aside for education funding, and the consensus was that it was essentially unstoppable because the governor was pushing it so hard. Even the local newspaper, The Clarion-Ledger, took the unusual step of agreeing not to publish anything due to concern that doing so might derail the project. Huge sums of money, a projected 2,500 jobs and powerful political agendas were at stake. Bryant officially announced the project on Feb. 4, 2016, only after the Associated Press broke the story. By then it was said to be a done deal.

How the unmarked graves came to light is a cautionary tale about public accountability, historical priorities and the lack of protection for abandoned cemeteries. But the key issue was secrecy. The state’s cultural resources impact report, which was used to gain the necessary federal site permit for the project, was deemed exempt from the state’s open records law. Likewise, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which issued the permit, declined to provide details from the report beyond noting that there was no mention of an unmarked black cemetery.

State Sen. John Horhn, the African American chair of the state senate’s economic development committee, in whose district the Continental site is located, said that before he was contacted for this story he had not heard of either cemetery. Once informed, he called Manning McPhillips, chief administrative officer of the Mississippi Development Authority, the lead state agency involved in the project, to ask if he knew about the graves. McPhillips said he did but that he was not authorized to respond to media questions and would arrange a follow-up call. McPhillips told Horhn the Development Authority was coordinating plans for the cemeteries and other relevant historical sites with the state Department of Archives and History, yet when Hohrn subsequently phoned archives director Katie Blount she said she was not familiar with the burial grounds and referred questions to the agency’s director of historic preservation, Jim Woodrick.

At the time, Woodrick said that given the revelation about the unmarked black cemetery, the state would have to revisit its project site assessment, though he added that there are few protections for cemeteries and the ultimate responsibility for deciding how to address them would be up to “the applicant.” In early June, Woodrick said he was unaware that work had begun on the relocation of the white graves, though Horhn said an MDA official had told him the archives agency was in charge of the process.

The website of the Corps of Engineers’ Vicksburg District lists the permit applicant as Gov. Bryant and describes the project as a 5.2 million square-foot industrial facility to be built along Interstate 20. Much of the site will be leveled for the project. The public notice of the state’s permit application, posted on the Vicksburg District’s website, does not indicate whether any comments were received, and an agency official said a Freedom of Information Act request -- plus a hefty fee – would be required for that information. Interviews with area residents indicate that few if any knew about it. Vicksburg District spokesman Gregory Raimondo said no public hearings were required or held and that notification went to adjacent landowners and anyone who signed up in advance to receive notices on the website. He said the impact report mentions a few unmarked graves in the New Salem cemetery but that he was unaware of a separate black cemetery. The report was not disclosed because “cultural and historical information is not provided outside of internal review to ensure the integrity of the site materials and locations,” he said.

Graves marked with impermanent wooden markers are among the most vulnerable to desecration, but even cemeteries with elaborate stone markers have been abandoned and forgotten, and many have been pilfered, damaged or destroyed, including a historic cemetery that contained the grave of the founder of the town of Bolton, just west of the Continental site, which was bulldozed for a subdivision in the 1960s (a resident of the neighborhood later retrieved the tombstones and erected them on an empty lot). In some cases, abandoned or unmarked cemeteries have been ignored even after developers were informed, such as one in the Gulfport, Mississippi, community of Turkey Creek that was paved over. The desecration of the Turkey Creek cemetery was highlighted in the 2013 documentary film Come Hell or High Water, in which resident Eva Skinner points to a parking lot and says that beneath it lies the grave of her son. Developers reportedly left undisturbed only a few of more than 200 African American graves and those were cordoned off by a fence with a padlocked gate.

Woodrick said property owners sometimes resist allowing visits to cemeteries by descendants of those buried in them. “There’s concern about liability – it’s a private property rights issue,” he said. “It’s a legal question whether you have to provide access.” He said the issue of private property rights also limits his agency’s involvement in the cemeteries on the Continental site. However, the proposed project is planned for what is now public land, and the applicant is the state itself, which has agreed to invest huge sums of public money, including millions in tax incentives. Surprisingly, Woodrick said, “There’s very little in state law that speaks to the protection of cemeteries. The primary responsibility for graves other than those of Native Americans is the county coroner.” A spokesman for the Hinds County coroner said the office would not be involved with any of the graves at the Continental site.

In a follow-up call with representatives of the state development authority, the law firm handling the land transactions and the consultants that commissioned the cultural assessment report, the consensus was that neither cemetery would hinder the Continental project – that those graves that can be located will simply be unearthed and moved. Headwaters Natural Resources Consulting vice president Walt Dinkelacker, who is listed as agent on the state’s permit application with the Corps, said current estimates are that there are 45 to 50 marked graves and 20 to 30 unmarked graves in the New Salem cemetery. Others estimate the number of graves are much higher. The graves are being mapped using ground-penetrating radar and will be exhumed and relocated to the Bolton cemetery, according to Chris Pace, with the Jones Walker firm. The consultants conceded there are likely multiple cemeteries in the area, yet a later visit to the site indicated no survey was underway to locate the unmarked African American burial ground remembered by Jones and Jamison. The precise number of graves in that cemetery is not known.

Visitors explore the white New Salem cemetery in early June.

During the last funeral the sisters remember at the unmarked cemetery, the now-abandoned road was still in use, though they recalled that it was in such bad shape the pallbearers had to carry the casket a great distance to prevent the horse-drawn wagon that transported it from getting mired in mud. The last known burial in the white New Salem cemetery was in 1937 but the black cemetery was used well into the 1940s, according to the sisters, who said their younger sister and an uncle are buried there. Another descendant, Yvonne Horton, said she was told that burials continued until 1957.

The state’s cultural resources report, prepared by Mobile, Alabama-based TerraXplorations for Headwaters and the Department of Archives and History in September 2014, details the white cemetery and notes the presence of a few unmarked graves amidst the marble obelisks that could belong to slaves. The separate black cemetery is not mentioned. Kathryn Blackwell, Continental’s vice president for communications, said in an email that she was not aware of the unmarked African American cemetery but that, “Continental was made aware of a cemetery on site and in fact I visited the cemetery myself just a few months ago.” She said that to her knowledge, “Continental has never encountered this before, which is why it is very important to us that this topic is handled with great sensitivity. Continental has asked the state to take great care in handling the cemetery, including involving members of the clergy to ensure this matter is handled with the utmost respect and sensitivity.”

The cultural assessment report contends there are no known records of the church that once stood beside the white cemetery, though other area residents point to documents contained in the archives of nearby Mississippi College that detail activities at the New Salem Baptist Church from the 1830s to the 1850s. Among the notable details is that although the congregation was founded by slave owners, the majority of the members were slaves who provided written permission to join from their owners or plantation overseers. By the time the congregation voted in 1851 to move to Clinton, where they founded that city’s First Baptist Church, there were 82 slave members and 25 white members. Susan Newman, whose family lives about a mile from the site, noted that even in the white cemetery there is a marked grave of a man identified as president of a nearby African American church. Most area cemeteries, including the one in Bolton to which the state has proposed moving the New Salem remains, are racially segregated.

Robinson said one of the graves in the unmarked black cemetery belongs to a deacon and founder of the Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist Church, which is also African American and stands near the proposed industrial site. She said she would be willing to help document the unmarked cemetery but that for now, recollections of older area residents such as Jamison and Jones are the best sources of information. So far, neither she nor the sisters has been contacted by the state or anyone else involved in the project, she said. Horton, who accompanied Robinson to the cemetery, said that when she phoned the county she was told there was no black cemetery there. “I said I have relatives who know this is here,” she said.

Another former area resident whose ancestors are buried in the white cemetery said the state’s persistent secrecy makes him wary. “The thing that really got my attention is that no one was willing to talk about any of this,” said Connely Farr, whose ancestors are buried at New Salem and who now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. “There’s got to be due process. A lot of public money is involved. It’s being built on public land. The public has to be involved. My concern is that if everything is so secret now, if they didn’t include local people in the site assessment and, as a result, they didn’t know about the other cemetery, and they’re even in bed with the newspaper, what happens if there’s a problem at the plant? Who’s going to be monitoring all of this?”

During the unannounced visit to the cemeteries in June, the historic fences surrounding white family plots were found scattered along the logging road. When asked about them, Stephen Harris, crew leader for the Center for Archaeological Research, said the keepers of the Bolton cemetery did not want the fences due to the difficulty of mowing around them, though he said it would be up to the state to decide what to do with them (In early August, the fences were moved to the Bolton cemetery along with the New Salem headstones, where they ostensibly awaited their associated human remains, though they were eventually stolen or otherwise lost). As Harris spoke, the crew worked on excavating the New Salem grave of a man whose former wooden casket was evident by a rectangular series of rusty marks left by nails about six feet down. Harris said the remains in such graves tend to vary in preservation, from skeletal remains to what is essentially bone meal.

Cast-off cemetery fences lie along a logging road near the New Salem cemetery. After the state Department of Archives and History was notified, the fences were removed to the Bolton cemetery, but they later disappeared.

Horhn said that had he known that cemeteries in Mississippi have so few protections he would have introduced a bill during the 2016 legislative session to address that, but the deadline for filing bills had passed by the time he found out. He said it’s important for all of the graves to be sensitively relocated to an accessible site with an explanatory historical marker.

In Horhn’s view, the cemeteries and church records illustrate a complex history worthy of protection and further exploration. In particular, he said, “We have to go back and assess the black cemetery, and tell that story.” He said he was shocked to learn that surveyors were working in the white cemetery but that no effort was being made to locate the black cemetery. Afterward, he said, he contacted the Mississippi Development Authority to express concern over the possibility “that white bodies are being cared for but not with historical integrity and black bodies are being ignored.’”

Junior Goes to the Fair

Donald Trump Jr. looked a little hot and bothered as a small crowd gathered around him at the Neshoba County Fair, just outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he arrived on a sweltering Tuesday as a stand-in for his father, to address what looked like a strongly supportive demographic.

The crowd at the fair, an annual event held since 1889, was uniformly white, and the hundreds of political signs plastered to trees, posts and cabin walls were almost all for Republican candidates. Oldies rock songs about the U.S.A. blared from speakers around the grandstand on the horse racing track where Trump Jr. was scheduled to speak, while a man paraded through the crowd with two oversized flags – one the U.S., the other the Confederate, which begged the question: Historically speaking, which side did he support?

An unknowing outsider plopped down on the racetrack could have been forgiven for thinking the scene was an easy read – that this was an echo chamber in the red dirt hills of a county that became infamous as the setting of the murders of three civil rights workers in the summer of 1964. The fair is widely viewed as a Republican bastion, centering on a temporary town of hundreds of rustic family cabins, the consumption of copious amounts of food and drink, and, during political campaign years, candidate speeches. It’s where Ronald Reagan made his famous appearance after clinching the Republican nomination in 1980, during which he proclaimed his support for “states’ rights,” a euphemism for white political control.

But this being the bizarre 2016 U.S. presidential race, and the venue one of the most deeply conflicted regions of the Deep South, everything was not as it appeared to be. Underlying the cheering crowds when Trump Jr. appeared on the grandstand was plenty of evidence of questionable allegiances and unexpected opposition.

There was Bee McNamara, standing beside a Trump sign stapled to a tree, wearing shorts printed with GOP elephant logos, who said he wasn’t at all interested in Junior’s speech. “I’m a conservative Republican, and I won’t vote for Trump,” McNamara, a Mississippi native who now lives in D.C. and whose family has a cabin on the fairgrounds’ venerable Founders’ Square, said. McNamara also supports replacing the state’s controversial flag, which has the Confederate emblem in its canton corner. Given such conflicts, what would he do in November? “Probably vote Libertarian,” he said. The problem, he said, is, “It’s all about hate, on both sides.”

If a conservative Republican wasn’t buying Junior’s spiel, the responses of other fairgoers illustrated that the overt outpouring of support was actually riddled with fractures. The main allure of Junior’s speech, according to many fairgoers, was for bashing the other side in entertaining ways, which made the fair a colorful local microcosm of the national campaign. There were plenty of staunch Trump supporters on hand, but every effort to raise a chant of “U.S.A.” or “Trump” quickly petered out. At a cabin festooned with numerous large Trump banners, one man looked annoyed when asked about his political leanings, and said, “We’re here to watch the races,” referring to the horses, not the candidates.

At a cabin with a Trump banner and another with an image of Hillary Clinton behind bars and the words “Hillary for Prison 2016,” Robbie Fournet was anything but politically strident. Instead, she offered food or drink – as routinely happens at nearly every cabin, and when asked about the banners, said, “I have a brother who’s a sign maker, who probably has stronger feelings than the rest of us.”

Like many fairgoers, Fournet is an expat who came home for the annual fair ritual -- she and her husband Richard now live in Singapore, and she admitted she enjoyed the unconventional campaign. “It’s nice for people to feel strongly about what they believe,” she said. “I like the lack of apathy. I don’t like the violence. Let’s talk without getting violent.” Then she issued an invitation to come back that night for a meal of her mother’s chicken and dumplings.

The undercurrent of past violence in Neshoba County is impossible to ignore, though the fair is far more mannerly than the comment threads of social media posts, and the county seat, majority-white Philadelphia, now has an African American mayor. As one woman with more liberal political views, who asked not to be identified by name, noted, “There are a lot of good people in Neshoba County, but we all know who the former Klan families are. They’re still out there. Trump has brought back those people from the Sixties whose hatred got pushed down, and went underground.”

Rob Hill said he was shocked earlier in the day when he encountered a group of young people in a truck as he was on his way to shop for groceries. Hill has a “Hillary for America” bumper sticker on his car and said the kids in the truck tailgated him for a while and then pulled up beside him and flashed a hand-lettered sign that read, “Trump! White Power!” Hill took a photo of the truck on his cell phone which shows the entire back window covered with a decal that read, “Give God the Glory.”

At another cabin facing the racetrack hung a lonely Hillary Clinton sign, small in comparison with the Trump banners.

“It was the biggest one we could find,” said Kelli Nichols, a National Guardsman whose family owns the cabin. Not everyone in the family supports Clinton, she said, but they tolerate her views. Close quarters and long-time family relations and social connections require that, she said, even in the face of a divisive candidate like Trump. Being polite and hospitable are hallmarks of the fair, to the point that some families don’t allow political banners at all and, this year, some have forbidden discussing politics inside the cabins.

“There’s a deeper level of seriousness elsewhere, but here, we just want to chill out, hang out together,” Nichols said. “People don’t want to offend one another.” She said that if, for example, a black man walked up to a cabin that displayed a Confederate flag, he would be invited in for food and drink. It’s partly about manners, she said, “but there’s also a level of hypocrisy. When you leave, their conversation doesn’t change.” Nichols said her 17-year-old daughter is a diehard Clinton supporter and is excited about voting for the first time, but that many of her daughter’s friends support Trump. “They’re just going with a popular movement. And a lot of adults are worse,” she said. As if to support that observation, a boy of perhaps six who was walking through the fair’s carnival rides could later be heard lamenting, “I’m the only one in the cabin who doesn’t have a picture of Trump.”

Some fairgoers felt Trump Jr.’s appearance was inappropriate, in that he isn’t an actual candidate, and said it was foisted upon the fair by Mississippi’s conservative Republican governor. But others welcomed him with open arms. Soon after Trump Jr. made his entrance, three men proclaimed their support, though like many fairgoers, two declined to give their names. One of them was a fair aberration – an African American who wasn’t there to groom or race horses, so it seemed logical to ask if he, too, supported Trump. Unruffled by the obvious typecasting, he said he did. When Lindsey Lang, the only one who gave his name, said, “We need change, we need that wall,” he agreed.

At her family’s cabin on Founder’s Square, Dianne Walton sat in a porch swing under a ceiling fan languidly parsing the humid air and said she had no intention of listening to Junior's talk, which was wedged between a cake walk and an Eagles tribute band.

Walton said she was distressed by the preponderance of Trump signs on the fairgrounds, many of which had been placed by campaign workers. There was even one on the porch of the cabin of the family of football greats Archie, Eli and Peyton Manning, though in their defense, a neighbor pointed out that not everyone in every cabin could be held responsible for the signs out front. In his speech, Trump Jr. boasted of having been received in the Manning cabin, saying, “Now I know what it’s like to be one of you.” Some fairgoers said they had been approached about hosting him and had declined, but mixed support did not stop Trump Jr. from doing some late afternoon fundraising at select cabins.

For Walton, it was hard to write things off to simple political differences. “It breaks my little Christian heart to hear the venom spewing out of the mouths of people who claim their politics are based on faith,” she said. “I’m going to wax on Rodney King: Why can’t we just get along? Seriously, I’m scared to death. I’m scared of what our country would become under Trump. ‘Muslims: Go away!’ ‘Mexicans: Go away!’ I’m not in any of those groups, but what if I am in one of the groups one day?” Fairgoers in the quiet back alley known as Happy Hollow, which is known as a predominately Democratic neighborhood, expressed similar sentiments.

But there was no visible dissent in the crowd that gathered to hear Trump Jr. at the racetrack, where “R-O-C-K in the U.S.A.” and other patriotic songs were blaring so loudly that older fairgoers could be seen bending their ears to hear each other. A young guy in a Trump mask posing for photos appeared at first to be a protester, but his t-shirt read “Hillary Wasn’t Invited” and he carried a Trump sign. When Trump Jr. came onstage, it appeared that someone asked the man with the flags to lower the Confederate one, and he complied – it was, after all, a tantalizingly damning photo opp.

Trump Jr. did not speak long. He noted the size of the crowd, which numbered in the thousands, and said, “I thought the RNC was big!” Then he talked about how he is a hunter (“He kills elephants!” Dianne Walton blurted out when she heard about it), and said the election is all about the Supreme Court and the 2nd Amendment, which drew polite applause and scattered cheers. Later, on the porch of a Happy Hollow cabin, a Clinton supporter noted that a lot of people went to Junior’s speech just for amusement, and that it was impossible to say how many actually support Trump. As for the size of the crowd, he said, “There were more people for Miss Neshoba County.”

The doors will be open at Prospect Hill Plantation house this Saturday, April 12, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., for anyone who's curious about one of Mississippi's most intriguing historical sites and willing to pony up $10 toward saving it./>

Jessica Crawford, southeast regional director of the Archaeological Conservancy, which owns Prospect Hill, has been working mightily to get the place presentable, to show what's at stake and explain how it can be saved. Jessica, who took the photo of Isaac, the resident peacock, above, is working to stabilize the seriously decaying structure in hopes of finding a buyer to undertake a full restoration; the Archaeological Conservancy's primary interest is in what lies underground at Prospect Hill -- the artifacts that can shed light on its remarkable plantation history. Still, the house and nearby family cemetery are the visible centerpieces of that saga./>

Prospect Hill Plantation was founded by Revolutionary War veteran Isaac Ross, who came to the Mississippi Territory in 1808 with a large contingent of slaves as well as free blacks who had served alongside him in the war. The plantation's history is unique among historical sites in the United States and significant to the history of Liberia, in West Africa, as well. It is as much about African American history as it is a tale of a divided slave-owning family, and it spans more than 200 years and two continents./>

The existing Prospect Hill house is actually the second on the site. Ross's original Prospect Hill mansion was burned during a slave uprising and the current house was built by his grandson in 1848. Ross was close to his slaves, and said to have been fair in his treatment of them, perhaps because, as is also sometimes said, he was related to them by blood. Out of fear that they would be mistreated by a subsequent owner, Ross wrote in his will that at the time of his daughter Margaret’s death Prospect Hill should be sold and the money used to pay the way of his slaves (who were to be emancipated) to the West African colony of Liberia, which had been set up for the purpose of "repatriation" by a group known as the American Colonization Society. This, Ross felt, was the only way for the slaves to gain control of their destiny./>

It’s a long story, but after Margaret died, Ross's grandson Isaac Ross Wade contested the will, not wanting to free the slaves, then sell the plantation and give the money to them. This was in the 1830s, three decades before the Emancipation Proclamation. The will was tied up in court for a decade, after which the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed its validity, which meant that the slaves were freed to emigrate to the region of Liberia known as Mississippi in Africa. But before that happened, midway through the litigation, there was an uprising among some of the slaves who suspected they would be denied their freedom, during which the Prospect Hill mansion was burned, taking with it the life of a young girl. Afterward, a group of slaves was lynched. It’s a grisly story, and it doesn’t end there. Among the more than 300 freed slaves from Prospect Hill who eventually emigrated to Liberia, a small group enslaved members of the indigenous people, who were themselves involved in the slave trade, and continuing conflicts between descendants of the two groups contributed to Liberia’s horrendous civil wars in the 1990s and early 2000s./>

Isaac Ross Wade managed to regain control of Prospect Hill – it appears he may have bought it himself or co-opted it from the estate, and because a group of Ross’s slaves chose not to emigrate, and Wade had his own slaves, he continued to farm the plantation. In 1848 he built the existing house on the site of the original, a short distance from the family cemetery, where the Mississippi chapter of the colonization society erected a monumental obelisk in tribute to Ross, and where Wade is also interred, though his tombstone was installed backward. The slaveholding family and their descendants were divided over the issue of repatriation, and it’s hard not to see the backward-facing tombstone as a recognition that Wade was essentially the villain of the story./>

After buying Prospect Hill from its absentee owner, the Archaeological Conservancy hosted a homecoming-reunion of all the groups related to the plantation -- descendants of the divided slave holding family, the slaves who remained in the area, and the slaves who emigrated to Liberia. It was a remarkable gathering, illustrating the breadth of Prospect Hill's story. The Archaeological Conservancy has plans to replace the roof on the house and undertake other measures to stabilize it, to be paid for by individual donations and a state grant that will cover a portion of the cost. />

In addition to a rare opportunity to tour one of Mississippi's most storied houses, the admission fee -- $10 for adults, $5 for kids -- provides entertainment in the form of music by the Delta Mountain Boys. There will also be a food truck from Natchez on hand, and I’ll be there to sign copies of Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today./>

The following map shows how to get to Prospect Hill. Jessica also offers these directions:/>

"It's right down Tillman Chapel Road (1.7 miles on the left). I have put blue stars next to the turns. There are two ways to get there from Highway 61, depending on what direction you're coming from. If you're coming from Port Gibson, you'll get on Woodvine Road not far outside of town and you won't go all the way to Lorman. BUT, if you're coming from the direction of Natchez, you will go to Lorman, then turn east on Highway 552 and then take a left onto Woodvine at the Red Brick Church. If you are coming from 552, your turn onto Tillman Chapel Road from Woodvine Road will be a right, if you are coming from the Port Gibson direction, your turn onto Tillman Chapel Road will be a left. If you are on a laptop or PC, you can hold the cursor over the bottom of the picture of this map and download it. If you're on an ipad, you can hold your finger on the map, then choose 'save photo' and email it to yourself and print it."/>

For more information, visit the Facebook page for Prospect Hill: https://www.facebook.com/prospecthillplantation />

Finally, sorry for the strange formatting at the paragraph breaks. I don't know where the />s came from, but don't include that in the link to the PH Facebook page.

Publishers Weekly just published their review of Here I Am, which will be released in March. "To begin this compelling account of Tim Hetherington’s harrowing life as a photojournalist, journalist Huffman (Sultana) sketches the scene of his death, which came while covering the 2011 Libyan uprising. Bleeding from a mortar wound to his leg, 'propped against ammunition boxes' in a makeshift ambulance, Hetherington (1970–2011) died under the scrutiny of cameras close enough 'to pick up the stubble on his chin.' As a war photographer, Hetherington captured the subtle as well as the frantic—commonly switching from digital to film for a more intimate effect—on warfronts from Liberia to Sri Lanka. Huffman details Hetherington’s early career, friendships and experiences with rebels in Africa, and influences and aesthetic struggles. These set the stage for his years in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley working on the documentary Restrepo with Sebastian Junger, which earned an Academy Award nomination. Huffman glowingly propounds that '[Hetherington’s] footage and photos in the Korengal would be... among the best produced by any photographer in any war.' It’s this larger-than-life persona that enters Libya in the book’s second half. Following the frenetic group of photographers Hetherington took up with in Misrata, Huffman offers perspectives from firsthand sources to unveil the heroism and errors of his final days." Agent: Patricia Moosbrugger Literary Agency.

Here I Am

The book is basically finished, galleys have been sent out to reviewers, and we're on track for publication and release in mid-March 2013. Here's the publisher's promo (at http://www.groveatlantic.com/?isbn=9780802120908): A compelling portrait of the award-winning British-American photojournalist and codirector of Restrepo, Tim Hetherington, who died while covering the 2011 Libyan uprising. Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer By Alan Huffman 978-0-8021-2090-8 • $25.00 • Forthcoming in Cloth • Mar. 2013 Biography (Military) Tim Hetherington (1970–2011) was one of the world’s most distinguished and dedicated photojournalists, whose career was tragically cut short when he died in a mortar blast while covering the Libyan civil war. Someone far less interested in professional glory than revealing to the world the realities of people living in extremely difficult circumstances, Tim nonetheless won many awards for his war reporting, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his critically acclaimed documentary, Restrepo. Hetherington’s dedication to his career led him time after time into war zones, and unlike some other journalists, he did not pack up after the story had broken. After the civil war ended in Liberia, West Africa, Tim stayed on for three years, helping the United Nations track down human rights criminals. His commitment to getting the story out and his compassion for those affected by war was unrivaled. In Here I Am, journalist and freelance writer Alan Huffman tells Hetherington’s life story, and through it analyzes what it means to be a war reporter in the twenty-first century. Huffman recounts Hetherington’s life from his first interest in photography and war reporting, through his critical role in reporting the Liberian civil war, to his tragic death in Libya. Huffman also traces Hetherington’s photographic milestones, from his iconic and prize-winning photographs of Liberian children, to the celebrated portraits of sleeping U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Here I Am explores the risks, challenges, and thrills of war reporting, and is a testament to the unique work of people like Hetherington, who travel into the most dangerous parts of the world, risking their lives to give a voice to those devastated by conflict.

Abdelkader Fasok

Abdelkader has been missing since Saturday, when he was abducted with fellow Tabacs TV cameraman Yousif Badi while covering the first national election in Libya in 60 years. Abdelkader and I met a little over a week ago while helping a friend, photographer Andre Liohn, stage a photo exhibition in Misrata, Libya, called Almost Dawn in Libya. The exhibition, which moves to Tripoli this week, was conceived as a way to help heal Libya through shared imagery of the war. By all rights Abdelkader should not have been there. As we hung photos I noticed a prominent scar on his neck, and when I asked about it he told an amazing story of personal survival during the 2011 war. Abdelkader is a slightly-built guy, 26, who worked as a documentary cameraman for the rebels during Misrata’s five-month military siege. Last June, as he turned his head while filming, he was shot in the neck by a Kalashnikov at close range. His scar bisects his throat, and there is a corresponding, hand-size exit-wound scar on the back of his shoulder. It was the third time he’d been shot during the war. His cousin fashioned a compress over the wound using his headscarf and they got Abdelkader to the field hospital in time. Along the way, he dreamed of people he knew who have died. He was in a coma for a week. Abdelkader is a bright, hard-working, cheerful guy whose face invariably lights up in greeting. During the exhibition I met one of his brothers, who favors him and has the same high-pitched voice, and when I mentioned Abdelkader’s remarkable survival, he smiled and said, “It was a kind of magic.”

On Saturday, Abdelkader and Yousif were kidnapped by militiamen near the town of Ben Walid while covering the elections there. Their captors have since demanded release of prisoners held in Misrata -- or so it is said; the details are sketchy. There is no effective government in Libya right now, and the National Transitional Council has limited control over the militias that rule the cities and countryside, some of which supported the revolution and some of which didn’t. The consensus among my friends and contacts is that the abduction was an outgrowth of an old feud between Misrata and the Bani Walid-Warfalla desert faction. An attack by the Misrata militia has been discussed as a way to attempt their release, but at this point there are few hard facts aside from the abduction itself. The video his captors posted of Abdelkader trying to negotiate with them is distressing, to say the least. No one expected recreating Libya to be an easy ride, but abducting journalists covering the first elections in 60 years isn’t a good way to start. Illustration by Ahmed Shlak

Postus interruptus

To those of you who've emailed to ask why I've neglected this site in recent months, I appreciate your interest and apologize for the long lapses. I've been consumed with the book tour for We're With Nobody, which I co-authored with Michael Rejebian (that's us in the green room with Jon Stewart before our appearance on "The Daily Show," which was by far the highlight of the tour). Most of my posts have been for the book's website, www.werewithnobody.com. The tour is over, and I had expected to get back in the saddle here, but a new book project has presented itself, so my posts will no doubt concern that, though they will likewise be sporadic because the book project is on a very tight deadline.

The new book is about the work of photographer Tim Hetherington, a great man who was killed in a mortar attack in Misrata, Libya, on April 20, 2011. That's Tim, above, climbing out of a building in Misrata shortly before he was killed. I'll be traveling to Misrata in June, and hope to be able to post from there. For now, I'm immersed in research, so I probably won't be posting much. I appreciate everyone's interest, and again, apologize for the long lapses.

Warren County moves to demolish listed historic plantation house

Ceres Plantation, a rare surviving example of a pre-Civil War plantation house complex, is slated for demolition despite its 2011 listing by the Mississippi Heritage Trust among the state's 10 Most Endangered Historic Properties -- and despite efforts of preservationists to find a buyer to restore or move the buildings.

The Warren County Port Commission in the 1980s bought Ceres Plantation, located near the I-20 crossing of the Big Black River in the community of Flowers, Mississippi, with plans to develop the property into an industrial park, using the Greek Revival house as its centerpiece, hopefully for a corporate headquarters. Afterward, the Port Commission abandoned the house and allowed it to deteriorate, and in 2010 announced its plans to demolish the house and outbuildings.

It quickly became obvious that the commission had little interest in working with preservationists to save the structure, which remains in sound condition despite superficial rot that has occurred in the last decade. That led the Trust to include Ceres in its endangered list.

As preservationists continued searching for a buyer to restore or move the house, the Port Commission announced, though a series of nondescript ads in the classified section of the Vicksburg Post, that it will take bids for "demolition and removal" of Ceres and ancillary buildings. The commission posted the request for bids on March 6, 2012, though the opening date appears to be April 12.

Ceres anchored a large, working cotton plantation as recently as the early 1980s -- one of the few remaining examples in Mississippi where an antebellum home retained the archetypal view of broad cotton fields from its wide front gallery. The resulting Ceres industrial park was largely a boondoggle, with most of its sites still undeveloped after almost three decades. The Ceres house, despite its proximity to the Flowers exit on I-20, affording it a high-profile location for potential appropriate development, was allowed to languish.

Now, unless preservationists can intervene, the house appears doomed, despite the fact that the industrial park was built with federal funds, which cannot be used to destroy a federally listed historic property. The Port Commission has resisted any effort to have the house listed in the National Register of Historic Places, though it is likely eligible, and in many, if not most cases, eligible properties are afforded the same level of protection as structures that are already listed. In addition to its architectural significance, Ceres was used as a refuge by several notable Vicksburg residents during that city's Civil War siege. The plantation was founded in the 1820s by the Flowers family, who sold the house and land to the Port Commission in 1986 for an ultimately underutilized project named the Ceres Research and Industrial Interplex.

To contact the Warren County Port Commission: 601/631-0555; P.O. Box 820363, Vicksburg MS 39182. The executive director of the Port Commission is Wayne Mansfield. The board of directors, two of which are appointed by the county supervisors, two by the mayor of Vicksburg, and one by the governor, are Johnny Moss, Oren Bailess, John Ferguson, Mike Cappaert and Russell Hawkins. Note: The sad end to this story can be found here: http://misspreservation.com/2012/05/14/warren-county-port-commission-spending-29000-to-demolish-recycle-ceres/

We're With Nobody the book: Open Season: Politics, America, and Two Guys Chasing the Truth

If you haven't checked out the website for my new book with coauthor Michael Rejebian, you can find out about it (and watch the book trailer) here: www.werewithnobody.com. The book, which is about doing political opposition research across the U.S., will be published by HarperCollins on Jan. 24.

"Can I help you find something?"

Writers like to think their work confers upon them a kind of immortality – until they come upon their books in the remainder bin, for a dollar.

Publishing today is more about commerce than literary longevity. It’s like everything else: Most of what’s produced is disposable, trafficked in volume. The days of committed editors developing lifelong relationships with writers honing their craft are gone. Instead, we have publishers whose primary (and in some cases, only) interest is in selling gazillions of mostly formulaic books to ready-made markets. Once a book appears to have peaked in sales, they’re done with it.

My book Mississippi in Africa was published in 2004 and got mostly good reviews, though a couple of reviewers attacked it quite angrily, over comparatively minor things. Writing as a guest reviewer for the New York Times, an aging curmudgeon and “distinguished university professor” named Ira Berlin built his case against the book around a citation it contained – someone else’s citation, mind you, which I cited – that got someone’s name wrong. Here was glaring evidence that I had no idea what I was writing about. Professor Berlin, clearly outraged that a non-academic would have the temerity to write history, proceeded to tell the book’s fascinating story as if it were his own and he’d snatched it from my unworthy hands.

But, I digress.

My point is, after two not-insignificant print runs, in hardback and paperback, my publisher, Penguin Putnam, lost interest in Mississippi in Africa, so they chose not to reprint it and the rights reverted to me. Fearful of the prospects of the book going out of print, I sold the rights to University Press of Mississippi, a small publisher that had done my first book, Ten Point, and has an old-school way of keeping its books in circulation. University Press isn’t exactly at the top of the book marketing game, but, if nothing else, they will keep Mississippi in Africa available into the foreseeable future. Which is not to say readers will be able to find it easily, alas.

I have a habit of looking for my books in whatever bookstore I visit, as I imagine most writers do. I note how many copies are on hand and where the staff chose to display them. It is not unusual for a book to be allotted the premium display space near the front door at the time of its release, only to be assigned to the bargain table a few short years later. It’s a brutal business, publishing.

Sometimes, as I wander a bookstore, I’ll find Mississippi in Africa in the history section; at other times I find it in the southern culture section, the African American section, or the “world” section (whatever that is). Wherever I find it, I typically ask the nearest clerk if they’d like me to sign their copies. Most stores are thrilled for me to do so, because for some reason readers really like it when their books are signed by the author, even if they never met them. I don’t really get this, but I oblige, if only because it attracts customers and the bookstores afterward get me to sign their remaining stock, which they can therefore not return to the publisher, and which they embellish with “Signed by the author” stickers and place in a more prominent display area. Once, for example, after my book Sultana was released, my friend Doug and I went into a bookstore in New York City so he could buy a few copies as gifts. As he was paying for the books he mentioned to the cashier that I was the author. She asked if I’d like to sign their stock. I said of course -- I thought you’d never ask! I then stood by the display, doing the equivalent of a drive-by book signing. No one asked me to prove that I was the author of the book. Afterward Doug and I considered going into another bookstore and announcing that I was some other author, and offering to sign copies of his books. We figured I might be able to pass myself off as William Shakespeare at Books-A-Million, where no one knows anything about, you know, books.

So: Finding my books is a favored pastime, and recently, while Christmas shopping at Lemuria, my hometown bookstore, I noticed that Sultana (“regional interest”) was there, but not Mississippi in Africa, nor, for that matter, Ten Point. Lemuria has always been good to me, hosting author events and giving me an author discount on book purchases, but I’ve noticed my books don’t excite them the same way as, for example, John Grisham’s, for obvious reasons: Lemuria is a store. They sell things. They especially like things they sell a lot of. But not seeing Mississippi in Africa on display during the Christmas season, particularly after its recent re-release, was disappointing, and my disappointment grew as I began actually looking for it in earnest and was unable to find it anywhere.

Eventually Joe, who works there and handles author events, asked if I needed any help. I said, “I don’t see Mississippi in Africa.” Mild panic appeared in Joe’s eyes. He began to scour the shelves – “southern writers,” “African American,” etc., but found nothing. Soon Johnny, who owns Lemuria, walked by and asked what we were looking for. “Mississippi in Africa,” I said, with unconcealed gravity. He then joined in the awkward search, noting, as he did so, that his inventory listed nine copies. I was impressed that he knew this off the top of his head, but it was cold comfort, given that the books could not be discovered by the person who wrote them, nor by the store’s staff. Eventually Johnny found the nine, huddled in the dark corner of a nether shelf – the part where perpendicular shelves adjoin, causing the end of one to be hidden entirely from view. In bookstore terms, this was deepest, darkest Siberia. Johnny pulled them to a more prominent spot. I didn’t even bother to ask about Ten Point, a niche market book that I’m very proud of, but which few stores seem to get.

After Joe and Johnny wandered off, I placed copies of Mississippi in Africa and Sultana in even more prominent positions, to catch potential customers’ eyes, as I always do. Typically I place my books in front of other people’s books that I think are getting too much attention.

I am in the business of selling books, and I admit that the serial dating aspect of the current book-selling market distresses me, and apparently I’m a glutton for punishment, because after I left Lemuria I went to Books-A-Million, a store I loathe, ostensibly because I needed something from the grocery next door and thought I’d pop in and see where they had Mississippi in Africa. As it turned out: Nowhere. I couldn’t find it, and when I asked a clerk, she looked it up on the computer and said, without a hint of regret, “We don’t carry that title.” Thank you for confirming everything I suspected about Books-A-Million! As she delivered this news, a man standing behind me, who had heard the title of the book I was looking for, volunteered, “Don’t believe everything your read in that book” – a comment I uncharacteristically chose to ignore, this being Books-A-Million. I later regretted it, of course. How many chances do you get to call out a hostile reader? Here he was, voluntarily instructing a stranger not to believe what I’d written in my book, not knowing who I was. He was a skinny, country-looking older guy. I would not have expected him to be in the book’s demographic, so I was kind of impressed that he’d even read it, even if he came away dissatisfied. Whatever. I satisfied myself that at least someone in Books-A-Million knew the book existed.

Afterward, I strolled over to the bargain bin to see what I could find. Sometimes you find good stuff there -- I once found Shakespeare in a bargain bin, and I took comfort in that, too.

Two Greenvilles

Who knew? After posting the story about the November 2011 reunion at Prospect Hill Plantation and the two Mississippis, I came across a news item from Sept. 11, 2009, announcing that Greenville, Mississippi (in the U.S.) and Greenville, Liberia (in the area originally known as Mississippi in Africa) are now official sister cities.

Somehow I had missed that development. Serendipitously, a few days later I was informed by Evans Yancy, who is from Greenville, Liberia and now lives in Atlanta, Georgia (in the U.S.), that he had tried, unsuccessfully, to contact me in May 2011 about the sister cities announcement. Evans, who responded to an email from me, didn’t say how he had tried to get in touch, but said that he visited Greenville, Mississippi at that time as a member of the Greenville (Liberia) Development Association. The delegation met with Greenville, Mississippi Mayor Heather McTeer Hudson and the city council.

According to the news item, which ran on the website liberianconsulatega.com, the two Greenvilles entered into a sister city trade agreement in Monrovia, Liberia, with signatories including Honorary Consul General Cynthia Blandford Nash, of Atlanta; Greenville, Mississippi mayoral representative Ed Johnson; Greenville, Liberia Mayor Barbara Ann Moore Keah; and various other dignitaries, mostly from Sinoe County, of which Greenville, Liberia is the capital.

In case you haven’t read previous posts on this site about Prospect Hill and the two Mississippis, Liberia was founded by freed American slaves in the early 19th century and today encompasses regions named for various former homelands of the emigrants, including Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi and Virginia. In 2003, I published a nonfiction book on the subject titled Mississippi in Africa.

Typically, for sister city agreements, the Greenvilles’ alliance was described as a means “to further friendly diplomatic relations, enhance cultural and historic understanding and cooperation, and to promote international trade between Greenville, Mississippi of the United States of America, and Greenville, Sinoe County of the Republic of Liberia,” according to the news item.

Greenville, Mississippi is one of the more depressed cities in the U.S., located in the poorest region of the poorest state, yet no doubt seems flush compared with war-torn Greenville, Liberia (the nation was in civil war throughout the 1990s and early 2000s).

Coincidentally, Greenville, Mississippi Mayor Hudson is running for the U.S. Congress for District 2, a post currently held by Bennie Thompson. My friend Jefferson Kanmoh, whom I met while researching my book, represents Sinoe County in the Liberian Congress.

Top photo, of Greenville, Liberia, by Scott Harrison; bottom photo, of Greenville, Mississippi, pulled from the internet at cardcow.com.

Letter from Mississippi

When she mentioned Mississippi, I had to ask which one. Because there are two. There is the one that everyone knows about, in the United States, and there is another, a kind of parallel universe, in the West African nation of Liberia, settled by freed American slaves in the early 19th century.

Evangeline Pelham Wayne is originally from Liberia, where her family owned a plantation-style house on Mississippi Street in Greenville, the capital of the region known as Mississippi in Africa. On a recent autumn day she visited the other Mississippi, in the United States, for an odd reunion of people who had never met, and who were, in a sense, returning to a place most of them had never been.

“When I was growing up in Liberia,” Wayne recalled, “my father always made me spell Mississippi aloud. M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i. If I missed one ‘S’, he’d make me do it again. ‘Try again,’ he’d say. ‘Think about it.’ ‘Think about what?’ I’d say. ‘Why do I have to spell this word?’ His answer: 'One day you'll find out.'”

The recitation of Mississippi’s repetitive crooked letters, humpback letters and “I”s is a childhood ritual in the U.S., but Wayne was baffled by her father’s preoccupation with the word. Years later, as a student at the University of Liberia, she was assigned to write a report about her family history, and by then her father had died, so she convinced her grandmother, Louise Ross Rogers, who was almost 90, to tell her the story. So began a personal journey that eventually led Wayne to the U.S. and, on a recent windy November day, to an abandoned plantation house known as Prospect Hill, in Jefferson County, Mississippi, where she hoped to find clues about her family and her own identity, which is complicated by many factors, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Wayne is a descendant of Africans who were enslaved and taken to the U.S., then allowed to immigrate “back” to Africa in the 1840s, to the freed slave colony in Mississippi in Africa. In 1992, Wayne immigrated “back” to the U.S to escape Liberia’s civil wars, which had begun two years before and would last until 2003, and which were, in many ways, rooted in a long-running conflict between the Americo-Liberians, as the freed slaves and their descendents were known, and indigenous groups, who vastly outnumbered them. Some of the indigenous tribes had been involved in the slave trade when the settlers arrived, and some Americos later enslaved them. Liberia’s history is among the more complicated in Africa, and though Wayne’s family had been there for more than a century and a half, she often felt like an outsider. She spoke no indigenous languages, and neither did any of her family. Now, in the U.S., she said, she is likewise considered a foreigner.

“To be honest, I’m unsure of who, and what, I am, and where I fit in,” she said. "In Liberia or America, I'm considered a foreigner -- someone who does not truly belong."

The event that brought Wayne and her family to Prospect Hill was hosted by the New Mexico-based Archaeological Conservancy, which bought the remote, endangered house in the summer of 2011 in hopes of saving it, along with whatever evidence of its complex history remains buried underground. Jessica Crawford, the conservancy’s regional director, had facilitated the purchase, and afterward was inundated with requests to see the remote, somewhat mysterious property, both from people who had a family connection to it and by others who were simply curious. She decided to hold a private event on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011, for those connected to the house, and a public tour in the afternoon, for a suggested donation of $25 per person to a fund to be used for stabilizing the structure. The conservancy’s goal is to stabilize the structure, then resell it to someone who will fully restore and preserve it, while retaining an archaeological easement so that the buried artifacts – around the big house, in the vicinity of the vanished slave quarters and other plantation structures, and in the former fields -- might one day be unearthed and studied.

Gathered on the lawn that morning, before the looming tableau of the dramatically deteriorating house, was an array of people of mixed races, ages and backgrounds who might otherwise have seemed to possess little in common.

They included descendants of Prospect Hill’s original slave owners; of plantation slaves who had, during an uprising in 1845, set fire to the previous house on the site; of interracial liaisons between descendents of the former slave holders and slaves in the early 20th century; and of freed plantation slaves who had immigrated, more than 150 years before, to Mississippi in Africa. There was no question about who attracted the most attention: Wayne and her family. The crowd broke into spontaneous applause when the group arrived, more than an hour late, after getting lost of the network of poorly marked local roads.

Being at the center of attention made Wayne a little nervous, partly because the gathering was so freighted, and partly because her own part of the story was riddled with asterisks and asides.

She has so far been unable to prove her ancestors’ provenance, though her grandmother mentioned a Mississippi plantation and “Captain Ross,” which Wayne believed to be Prospect Hill and Capt. Isaac Ross, the Revolutionary War veteran who established Prospect Hill and who had enabled the emancipation and emigration of his slaves to Mississippi in Africa in the 1840s. Tracing African American genealogy in the U.S. is a difficult endeavor, because blacks were not included in the census until after the Civil War, but in Liberia it is nearly impossible because most of the nation’s archives were destroyed during the wars. So far, Wayne has been able to document the origins of only one ancestor, who immigrated to Mississippi in Africa from the U.S. state of Georgia. “It seems the connection is there,” she said. “But at this point I can’t be sure.”

Arriving at Prospect Hill brought on a rush of unfamiliar emotions, she said. “Driving in, the closer we got, the odder I felt,” she said. She was exhausted and dazed after driving 18 hours, all night, from suburban Washington, D.C., where she now lives. Her large, expressive eyes were bloodshot, which made her self-conscious because she knew others were observing her closely.

Everyone was looking closely at everyone, but perhaps more so at her and her family, because of who they were, or were believed to be. Wayne’s family represented a sort of triumphal return of the freed Prospect Hill slaves, who had walked away on a cold, rainy winter day in 1845.

Wayne began exploring her family’s possible connection to the place after coming across my nonfiction book, Mississippi in Africa, while researching her family’s history online. She had been researching her family since the early 1990s, but had so far reached nothing but dead ends. It seemed logical that the story would lead from Mississippi in Africa back to its namesake in the U.S., so when she heard about my book she contacted me to ask about Prospect Hill and Capt. Ross.

The subject of the two Mississippis had come up frequently when I visited Liberia in 2001. Roaming the streets of war-torn Monrovia, the nation’s capital, in search of anyone named Ross, I was frequently recognized as an American and asked what state I was from. When I answered “Mississippi,” a common response was, “Me, also!” at which point I would ask, “Mississippi, in Liberia, or Mississippi, in the States?” The answer was almost invariably: “Both.”

Liberians who hailed from the Mississippi region of Liberia were very much aware of the existence of Mississippi in the U.S., and were bewildered that the reverse was not true. Few Americans know anything about Liberia, including where it is. It is often confused with Libya, more than 2,000 miles away. During the civil wars, when Liberians on both sides called for the U.S. to intervene, a smugly ignorant Lou Dobbs warned on his news show that doing so might lead to “another Somalia,” though the two countries are as culturally and geographically distinct as Ireland and Uzbekistan.

Liberia was the first republic in Africa, founded in 1820 (though it did not gain its independence until two decades later) by the American Colonization Society, which was comprised of two groups with seemingly opposed yet overlapping aims: Abolitionists who saw “repatriation,” in the parlance of the times, as a way to make emancipation more politically palatable in the U.S., and slaveholders who were fearful of eventually being outnumbered by free black citizens (some members also saw repatriation as a way to Christianize the indigenous tribes). Liberia is located on the west coast of Africa, where prevailing winds were favorable for ships involved in the North America slave trade. As a result, many of the slaves in the U.S. came from West Africa, which played a role in the decision to repatriate the freed slaves there. Most of the freed slaves had never been to Africa, though, and in some cases were third- or fourth-generation Americans.

The colonial effort, which remains the only one that the U.S. has been directly responsible for, was private, but had the support of the federal government, which occasionally sent warships to quell disputes between the settlers and the indigenous tribes. The settlers, thrust into the wilds of Africa, typically named their communities after familiar places, much like colonial Americans gave their communities names such as New York, New Jersey and New London. In addition to Mississippi in Africa, there are today communities in Liberia known as Louisiana, Georgia and Virginia, and a county named Maryland, all harking to the original emigrants’ home states. The settlers viewed the indigenous groups with a mix of fear, disdain, pity and hostility, much the way British colonials viewed native Americans. Not surprisingly, similar hostilities quickly ensued.

The largest contingent of Liberian emigrants – about 300 – came from Prospect Hill and related family plantations, following a tumultuous decade-long court battle over Isaac Ross’s will, during which a slave uprising led to the burning of the original mansion, the death of a young girl, and the subsequent lynching of a group of slaves believed to have been the perpetrators. Most of the alleged perpetrators were hanged – ostensibly, from a white oak tree on the lawn, part of which momentously fell onto the existing house years ago, and whose dead trunk now lies in the yard, like a menacing stage prop.

The house was built in 1854 on the site of the original by Ross’s grandson, who had contested the will and managed to regain the estate after losing it in court (the will had called for Prospect Hill to be sold to pay the way for those of Ross’s slaves who chose to immigrate to Liberia). The slaves who chose not to immigrate worked in the existing house or in the adjacent plantation fields. The house is one of the few remaining landmarks of the entwined histories of the two Mississippis, and in a sense, everyone who attended the reunion was returning to the spot where their parallel stories had diverged. There are many different versions of what happened at Prospect Hill in the 1840s, and afterward in Liberia, and all of them came into play that day; everyone, it seemed, was working from a slightly different script, though with the same key players.

James Belton, whose father was born near the close of the 19th century, is descended from slaves who were involved in the uprising, though the two who directly participated had escaped into the woods, never to be heard from again. Belton’s great grandmother, Mariah Belton, chose not to immigrate to Liberia with her remaining son because she did not want to leave the other two behind. As a result, James Belton grew up in Mississippi, in the U.S., rather than Mississippi in Africa. When he and Wayne met, they came face to face with a person whose life represented what their own might have been like had their ancestors made a different choice in 1845. Neither was quite sure what to say, so they just embraced.

Everyone at the reunion was playing a stand-in role in a drama of profound historical consequence, which conferred new meaning upon their otherwise ordinary lives. James Belton was no longer simply a retired schoolteacher from McComb, Mississippi. He was Mariah Belton’s great grandson, returned to the scene of a major historical crime, which he viewed with a measure of pride and sadness, in that his family had sought to shake free the shackles of slavery, yet had been responsible for the death of the young girl. At one point Belton ventured alone to the Prospect Hill family cemetery, which is dominated by a marble obelisk erected in tribute to Ross by the Mississippi Colonization Society (a state chapter of the American group), and knelt at the grave of the young girl, whose name was Martha.

Later, as Belton spoke to the group about his research and how he had located the descendants of Mariah Belton’s long-lost sons, he was upstaged by a peacock that emerged from the bushes, strutted blithely behind him, then flew, in an awkward, noisy burst of wings, onto what remained of Prospect Hill’s front gallery and disappeared into the darkened parlor. Watching this, in confused silence, were four middle-aged sisters whose grandmother had been the last family member to live in the house, and whose more distant ancestors had fought against the immigration of the Prospect Hill slaves. Behind them was elderly Betty McGehee, descended from the side of the family that had supported the immigration, and so was divided from the sisters’ side. Then there were the descendants of the slaves who did not immigrate, as well as those who did, and finally, a woman and her children who, though they are African American, trace their lineage to Isaac Ross, the man who had set all their stories in motion.

When Crawford first came upon Prospect Hill, on a hot September day in 2010, the structure was overgrown and had been in serious disrepair for decades. Its eccentric last owner had done little maintenance and made almost no repairs, including to the leaky roof, choosing instead to paint interior rooms while exterior woodwork rotted and collapsed onto the ground. Crawford was aware of the plantation’s dramatic history, but that first visit was less like a typical old-house tour than a probe of once beautiful, now sadly deranged mind. The place had been ransacked numerous times and was in such bad shape that she had a hard time even appreciating its grand architecture. Large chunks of plaster had fallen from its 14-foot ceilings; paint was flaking from the elaborate Greek Revival trim; panes were broken in the towering windows, which were partially shrouded by ripped curtains and sagging, gap-toothed shutters. As she picked her way through the dank, shadowy rooms, Crawford observed signs of decay at every turn: Threadbare, moldering rugs, rat-gnawed tables, overturned and emasculated chairs, piles of rain-soaked, mildewed clothes. An empty bourbon bottle protruded from a mass of sodden debris atop a warped grand piano. An array of cooking pots, placed on the floor to catch water from leaks in the roof, had been overflowing for years. Books and papers were scattered everywhere, as if in the aftermath of looting. “It was as if a bomb had gone off inside,” she said.

Considering Prospect Hill’s torturous history, its transformation to a house of minor horrors struck Crawford as sadly appropriate. But for someone devoted to uncovering and preserving clues about the past, the structure’s disfigurement and the seeming inevitability of its loss were unacceptable. She had come to document what remained of the place, yet had not taken a single photo or note as she prepared to leave. “The scenes were just too ugly,” she recalled. “It made me sick.” Then, as she stepped gingerly toward the front door, wanting only to get out, she saw a patch of brilliant color from the corner of her eye. “I looked to the left, and there was this peacock standing in front of the bookcase in the front room,” she said. For the first time, she pulled out her camera and snapped a photo. In it, the peacock stands before a sunlit window, surrounded by fallen books and strewn bags of trash, its head cocked curiously toward her.

The bird had been left behind by the last occupant of the house, and because it was unaccustomed to visitors, quickly vanished from view, though not from Crawford’s memory. On the way home she thought of something her family’s housekeeper had told her when she was a child: As long as there is life in a house, its story isn’t over. As was painfully obvious, there were plenty of living things inside Prospect Hill -- rats, itinerant snakes, a beehive, at least two bats and an entire self-sustaining universe of insects and spiders. But the peacock hinted at a more engaging tale. Crawford chose its image as her take-away.

In subsequent visits, during which she began to clear the encroaching undergrowth and haul away debris, sometimes with the help of volunteers but usually alone, she began to feel an odd connection with the lonely bird, whose showy displays no one typically saw, and which she named Isaac, after Isaac Ross. He enabled Crawford to see past the enervating squalor of the scene, back to the story that had originally brought her there. She also discovered what she came to see as Isaac’s nemesis -- an unseen, unidentified creature that inhabited the debris of a collapsed rear room and growled whenever someone walked nearby. Together, the peacock and the unseen creature provided an allegory of Prospect Hill: On the one hand, the beautiful, unexpected display, and on the other, the hidden, growling thing.

In her effort to save the house, Crawford has inserted herself into a story full of interesting characters, historical and otherwise. After convincing the owner to sell the house, and her boss at the conservancy to buy it – both impressive feats, under the circumstances, Crawford enlisted the help of friends, strangers, descendants, even jail inmates, to return it to a point where it might at least evoke its outsized history. Slowly the house began to reemerge, as Crawford and company prepared it to reprise its role for the reunion. Among those who stumbled upon the house during the period was Tate Taylor, director of the movie The Help, who saw the near-ruins of Prospect Hill from a helicopter. Taylor had recently bought an antebellum house in nearby Church Hill and saw Prospect Hill while flying there from Jackson. He happened to be traveling with a friend, Charles Greenlee, who was descended from Isaac Ross, and the two subsequently returned with a retinue of Hollywood types. Greenlee recalled the strange effect of coming upon the weathered, overgrown house, framed by moss-draped trees, as Isaac, the peacock, greeted them from inside it with a disturbing cry that sent one of the actresses running back toward the car.

Greenlee also attended the reunion event, at which Crawford and representatives of the state’s historic preservation community spoke of the need to preserve the property. Before the conservancy bought the house, the Mississippi Heritage Trust had included Prospect Hill on its 2011 list of most endangered historic structures in the state, and the trust’s director, David Presiozi, spoke during the reunion, as did Jennifer Baughn, chief architectural historian at the state Department of Archives and History. But the formal presentations at the event were mere monologues. The real action took place in conversations between the guests.

Before the event, some of those who planned to attend had expressed concern that there might be tension, and many of the conversations were, in fact, riddled with tiny red flags. One woman asked, more than once, how frequently rape occurred on slave plantations. But for most of those in attendance, the default setting was to be polite. One of the sisters whose grandmother had lived in the house, and whose ancestors had fought against the immigration effort, had earlier wondered aloud how the Liberians would view them. Old times, clearly, are not forgotten, in Dixie or in Liberia, and she was concerned that her family might be perceived as somehow hostile, or be viewed with hostility. Likewise Betty McGehee, who, though she as descended from Isaac Ross and the side of the family that supported freeing the slaves, wondered if her land holdings and heirloom antiques represented “a kind of greed, really -- for me to have these things, and hold onto them?” The question wasn’t an idle exercise; as Wayne observed, McGehee seemed genuinely concerned about how differently her own life had played out than those of others whose paths ran parallel for a while at Prospect Hill. Laura “Butch” Ross, meanwhile, observed that despite the obvious, the story of Prospect Hill was anything but black and white; she was living proof of that, as a black Ross descended from white Rosses.

The stories the people at the reunion shared while roaming the dark rooms of the house, or the cemetery, or while sitting beneath the aged cedar trees, were personal, but had an epic cast, spanning two centuries and two continents. Everyone existed somewhere along the vast network of interconnected circuits, and now the circuits were all lit up for the first time; everyone seemed to want things to go smoothly.

Most, like Crawford, were surprised that the event received little media attention. National Public Radio had initially planned to cover it but later cancelled, saying the story seemed too complicated to explain in radio. Meanwhile, an NPR correspondent was elsewhere in the county, covering a more conventionally black-and-white story, about an unsolved civil rights era murder. All of which meant that the reunion unfolded more or less in private.

Toward the end of the day, as the crowds dispersed, Crawford, Wayne and I departed for dinner on the riverfront in Natchez, a few hours before Wayne and her family would set off on a midnight, marathon return drive to Maryland. As we sat at our table, debriefing each other about the day, Wayne’s thoughts drifted back to the other world -- Liberia. Each time the waiter approached to take our orders, it seemed she was in the middle of describing something tumultuous, and he politely continued on. During the Liberian civil war, her sister was raped and murdered. Wayne herself was accosted by both government forces and rebels, who attempted to kill her husband and two sons, as she wandered the dark streets of Monrovia, in labor, trying to get to the hospital. Her story is full of dramatic asides, both historical and recent, and everyone who had met her that day seemed intent on helping her nail down the necessary details, and to find a kind of closure at Prospect Hill. But like the bigger saga, the day was complicated, and not entirely satisfying. Connections were made, or reestablished, but many, many questions remained. At the center of the cultural mashup was Crawford, who, in a comparatively short time, became a key moderator of the story, as well as the protector of the house, and in her own right, a character in its saga.

Crawford’s goal, initially, was straightforward: To save the archaeological evidence. It soon expanded to encompass the existing house, without which the story would be disembodied. She noted that given the attention that’s recently been focused on Liberia as a result of the awarding of the Nobel Prize to its president as well as a Liberian peace activist and a political activist in Yemen, “It seems like the perfect time to explore the connections that were made there.”

“What struck me,” she added, “is that the place means so much to so many people, for so many – and often very different – reasons.”

Photos by author or courtesy Jessica Crawford