Minnie Davis

237 Billups St. Athens, Ga.

Minnie Davis, the daughter of Aggie Crawford and James Young, was born around 1859 near Penfield, Georgia. Enslaved to John Crawford, Davis spent her childhood in Athens, Georgia. Time for play was spare; “the only game I can remember playing as a child was a doll game,” Davis recalled, “the Crawford children would use me for the doll.” [1] Instead “those of us who were old enough had odd jobs to do.” [2] Her mother wanted more. When whites asked the “Lord. . . [to] drive the Yankees back,” she prayed, silently to herself, “Oh, Lord, please send the Yankees on and let them set us free.” [3] Her prayers were answered on April 9, 1865. “On the day we learned of the surrender, the Negroes rallied around the liberty flag pole that they set up near where the city hall is now.” [4] Raising their voices in song, they proclaimed, “'We rally around the flag pole of liberty, The Union forever, Hurrah! Boys Hurrah!'” [5] Whites chopped down flag pole the next day.

Denied a formal education in slavery, Davis took full advantage of freedom’s offerings. She enrolled at Knox Institution, a school for black children that had been established by the Freedmen’s Bureau in the spring of 1868. [6] She then graduated from Atlanta University before returning to Athens to teach school for over forty years. An opinionated and articulate woman, she thought often “of Abraham Lincoln; he did a good deed for my race.” [7] Booker T. Washington, however, “was a man of brilliant mind, but he was radically wrong in many of his views pertaining to education of the black race. He lectured here once, but I didn't bother to hear him speak.” [8] Her husband, Samuel B. Davis, published the Athens Clipper, a newspaper catering to Athens's emerging black, middle-class community. After his death, she ran the newspaper for a few years, before selling it.

Fortune had not favored the family and, by 1938, Davis and her nephew, Ed, lived in a “small house might best be described as a ‘tumble-down shack.’” [9] “Once I had a nice home, beautifully furnished,” Davis remembered, but “all I have left of it [now] is this old house and my good bedroom suite. The rest of my possessions have gotten away from me during my continued illness.” [10] Davis, while hobbled with age, still made a lasting impression on those she encountered. Sadie B. Hornsby, a white WPA interviewer, remarked, “Minnie is well educated, and she taught school for so long that her speech is remarkably free of dialect.” [11] “I would be teaching now if it were not for my bad health,” Davis told her. [12] Indeed, Davis’s heath was not good; she died just two years later from a dislocated hip and pneumonia on February 13, 1940. [13] A simple, granite stone marks her final resting place in Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery.

Edward McCree

543 Reese Street Athens, Georgia

Edward McCree was born around 1860 in Oconee County, Georgia. He was one of six children—Silas, Lumpkin, Bennie, Lucy, Babe—born to Louisa and Henry McCree. As a slave of John McCree, he and his brothers and sisters “toted water to de field hands and waited on de old 'omans what was too old to wuk in de craps.” [14] The adults on the sprawling plantation had it far worse. “You could hear dat bugle de overseer blowed to wake up de slaves for miles and miles,” McCree remembered, “He got 'em up long 'fore sunup and wuked 'em in de fields long as dey could see how to wuk. Don't talk 'bout dat overseer whuppin' Niggers. He beat on 'em for most anything. What would dey need no jail for wid dat old overseer a-comin' down on 'em wid dat rawhide bull-whup?” [15] They were never paid for their work. “‘Lawdy Miss!,’” he told the white WPA interviewer, “Who ever heared of folks payin' slaves to wuk? Leastwise, I never knowed 'bout none of 'em on our place gittin' money for what dey done.” [16]

Emancipation “was a happy day for us slaves.” [17] John McCree made the announcement and McCree, as a young boy of just five-years-old, “runned 'round dat place ashoutin' to de top of my voice.” [18] His parents, with children in tow, left the plantation around 1866. “If us had left” before then “it would have been jus' lak swappin' places from de fryin' pan to de fire, 'cause Niggers didn't have no money to buy no land wid for a long time atter de war.” [19] Even so, he valued freedom above all. “I sho' had ruther be free,” he said, “I don't never want to be a slave no more.” [20] “Now if me and Nett wants to, us can set around and not fix and eat but one meal all day long. If us don't want to do dat, us can do jus' whatsomever us pleases. Den, us had to wuk whether us laked it or not.” As a free man, he worked as a labor, helping to build streets in Athens, Georgia. [21]

Sometime in the 1880s or 1890s, he married Nettie Freeman, a washerwoman. [22] On their wedding day, she wore a black silk dress, with a white scalloped overskirt, and matching white gloves. Here, Nettie interrupted: “‘Ed, you sho' did take in dat dress and you ain't forgot it yit.’” [23] “‘You is right 'bout dat, Honey,’ he smilingly replied, ‘I sho' ain't and I never will forgit how you looked dat day.’” [24] During their lifetime together, the couple achieved some degree of prosperity and the WPA interview remarked that their two-story frame house “seemed to be in far better repair than the average Negro residence.” [25]

At ninety-five-years old, McCree died on February 28, 1955. He was buried beside his beloved wife in Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery. [26]

Georgia Smith

Augusta Ave. Athens, Georgia

Georgia Smith was born enslaved around 1855. Peggis Chappell’s plantation in Oglethorpe County didn’t have a whipping post, according to Smith, and “if any of us jes' had to be whipped, Mistus would see dat dey warn't beat bad 'nough to leave no stripes.” [27] As a child, Smith wasn’t whipped; she was poked with a stick. Sleeping on a cotton mattress beside her mistress’s bed, “she used to punch me wid when she wannid someping in de night, an' effen I was hard to wake, she she' could punch wid dat stick.” [28] Despite the apparent abuse and violence, Smith professed to love her mistress when asked by a white WPA interviewer. “Mos' of de slaves stayed with Mistus atter freedom come, 'cause dey all loved Her,” claimed Smith. [29] Then she added an importing clarifying point: “an' dey diden' have no place to go.”[30]

After emancipation, many former slaves—without means and unable to read or write—simply remained on plantations, working for a pittance under their former owners. Smith, too, stayed on with her former mistress until she died and then “I come to town an' jes' wukked for white folkses. I doan' 'member all of 'em.” [31] Over the course of her lifetime, she worked as a seamstress at the Shirt Factory and, presumably, an assortment of other jobs. [32]

Unable to walk after a stroke, Smith spent her final days at her home on Augusta Avenue. “I cain' wuk no mo' now, an' hit woan' be so long 'til I see my old Mistus again, an' den I can still wait on her, an' we woan' have to part no mo’,” she told the WPA interviewer. [33] Smith died on January 1, 1941. [34] When “slaves died dey jes' tuk 'em off an buried 'em. I doan' 'member 'em ever havin' a funeral,” but Smith mostly likely did have a funeral prior to her burial in Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery. [35]

NEXT: Oconee Hill Cemetery