If a Tree Falls in the Forest and No One Takes a Picture, Did it Happen?

I realize that I have about four or five regular followers and it might be easier to just send e-mails, but this is a situation where spreading the word can't hurt. For a long time I've been intrigued by an event I remember from my childhood, the march on Minden City Hall on August 6, 1965 for Civil Rights prior to a brief strike of garbage workers. The most intriguing thing has always been the presence of James Farmer, President of CORE, appearing and making a speech here in Minden on the Friday night after he was at the White House with LBJ for the signing of the Voting Rights Act. Farmer had been invited to Minden by the United Christian Freedom Movement a local group filling the role now held by the NAACP. (Beginning in 1956 in Louisiana and continuing for more than a decade, membership in the NAACP could be a major problem for area residents. The NAACP was on a watch list and each month membership rolls had to be submitted to the Louisiana Secretary of State. In turn the Secretary's office sent lists of members to each parish Sheriff to share with members of the community. NAACP membership was often the trigger to a member losing their job, so local towns created their own independent organizations, too small to merit statewide attention.) After speaking at the 14th District Building on Friday night, Farmer led the march the next morning and then returned to Washington.

I've written about that event before and have long searched for more documented information about that day. J. D. Hampton, head of the UCFM and who would become the first African-American candidate for Mayor of Minden in 1966, spoke to me a few years ago and asked me to help him search for a significant piece of information. Mr. Hampton was certain that on Saturday night, August 7, 1965, the nightly national news on NBC covered the story. We searched but I was never able to locate such footage if it existed.

Today, as I was driving home from Bossier, I got a phone call that reopened my interest. The call came from Billy Wright of Shreveport. Mr. Wright's grandmother lived in Minden on Bailey Street, near the 14th District Building. During that summer of 1965 as a young teenager he was staying with his grandmother as the local protest unfolded. He heard the speech by Farmer on Friday night at the 14th District Building and participated in the march the next day. He had come across one of my articles discussing that story and basically had the same question Mr. Hampton had asked me, but Mr. Wright had an even more personal reason for being aware of television news footage. He vividly remembered getting a call on that Saturday night from a relative in Chicago, calling to tell him that his Chicago family had just seem him on the national news participating in the march. Mr. Wright said that he and a few of his friends had tied white shirts around their heads (the march was interrupted by a downpour) and clearly stood out in the crowd. Mr. Wright wanted to know if I was aware of the footage and I told him what I had learned. But then he asked me a question I had sort of left out of my research. He wondered if perhaps there were existing newspaper photos of the March. He reiterated that he and his friends would be easily visible (there were only about 220 marchers so five young men wearing what might appear to be turbans would be easy to spot. I had to tell him I didn't know. Local news coverage, the Minden Press, the Minden Herald, the Shreveport Times and the Shreveport Journal gave scant mention to the event and certainly no pictures. I had also used source material from the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, the New Orleans Times Picayune, the Washington Post and the New York Times, but none of those papers included images. But I did not check leading African-American newspapers such as the Pittsburgh  Courier or even (I feel really dumb about this one) the Shreveport Sun. I also had not checked the archives at CORE or Mr. Farmer's papers.

So, this afternoon I have sent an inquiry to CORE and am in the process of tracking down Mr. Farmer's papers (his papers from 1980 forward are at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, but I've not yet found the papers prior to 1980). I'm not hopeful Mr. Farmer's collection will be helpful -- his visit to Minden isn't even mentioned in his autobiography (which is understandable, a march of 200 people for a cause that largely failed pales when compared to a Rose Garden ceremony signing transformational legislation the same day as our event), but I find it much more likely that if there were wire service photos, CORE has copies in their files. So, perhaps we will be able to add a visual image of the Civil Rights Era in Minden to our legacy and I hope for our Dorcheat Museum. I'll keep anyone interested updated on any progress

(The picture with this post shows the NAACP's Roy Wilkins, Mr Farmer from CORE, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the SCLC, and Whitney Young of the Urban League meeting in the Oval Office with President Johnson.)

Minden and Mt. Lebanon -- The Ties that Bind

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak about stagecoach travel on the Old Wire Road across North Louisiana at the Jonquil Jubilee in Gibsland/Mt. Lebanon. My program was one of several held at the old Stagecoach Inn in Mt. Lebanon. While there I was reminded again of an old axiom I have found to be true over the years, "you never learn anything while your mouth is open." So, while I enjoyed making the presentation, I learned some very interesting information from one of the later speakers, Mary Claire Kettler of Gibsland. Her topic was a history of the Stagecoach Inn itself and the Mt. Lebanon community in general. For years I have been aware of the many ties between Mt. Lebanon and Minden, including many common families and the fact that the Rehoboth Baptist Church is not only the founding church of the Louisiana Baptist Convention, but also the mother church of the Minden (later First Baptist) Baptist Church.

But it was only yesterday I learned a tidbit that is going to drive me back to the research files. Two of the key founders of Mt. Lebanon were Martin Canfield, who came to Louisiana from South Carolina to pick the site for the community, and his brother-in-law, Reuben Drake, who actually made the first land purchase to facilitate that mass migration of an entire community from the Edgefield District of South Carolina to Claiborne Parish, Louisiana. As mentioned, I already knew about the family ties. Drake's brother Abner settled in Minden and became one of the most prominent citizens of our town. That branch of the Drake family provided the land for the Methodist and Presbyterian churches in Minden, along with the Minden Male Academy. In addition, Reuben Drake also owned land in what is today's Minden and was part of the "land squabble" between our founder Charles Veeder and Adam Stewart. On the Canfield side, a brother of Martin Canfield, was a prominent member of the Minden Baptist Church and provided the material and supervised the construction of the first church home of the Minden Baptist Church, located on the present corner of Broadway and Miller Streets where the Christian Church at Minden's building is today. So, the ties were clear.

However, during Ms Kettler's program she produced a map of the original settlement of Mt. Lebanon and discussed how the town was planned and laid out along a parallelogram, which served as a central greenspace for the community. Immediately I recognized that Minden was also founded along the same pattern, a central parallelogram that served as a greenspace and was unoccupied by structures for many years. Today that parallelogram is the area between Main and Broadway (Front and Back Street for oldtimers like me). From Minden's founding until 1872 when the first Webster Parish Courthouse was constructed, the only part of that greenspace that contained structures was the area between today's Fogle and Union Streets. This pattern is not common in the South, as most towns are like Homer and have a traditional town square as the center.

Finding this commonality between Minden and Mt. Lebanon has raised some questions in my mind. Traditionally we have given credit to Veeder for Minden's layout, but now I want to explore a bit more. It seems entirely plausible to me that the parallelogram layout came not from Veeder but from the Drakes. I want to study a bit about community patterns in the Edgefield District and also in New York and Indiana were Veeder lived before coming South. But we may need to update out town history a bit and shift some credit away from Veeder to the place it truly belongs.

E Pluribus Unum -- Even in Minden

E pluribus unum – out of many, one – for many years was considered our national motto and for most people is the basis of how we view our society. In addition, Turner’s Frontier Thesis, the idea that the merging of people from disparate backgrounds led to the emergence of a distinctly American culture, is a major tenet of American Historiography. However, as a child growing up in Minden during the 1960s, those concepts seemed foreign to the place I lived. Although we were clearly divided along racial lines into two separate communities due to the American apartheid of segregation, it seemed each of those two communities were largely homogenous in their makeup. We seemed to be a very insular and perhaps even xenophobic place, not open or understanding to outsiders and their ideas. The odd thing is that little more than a century before we in Minden were on the frontier and more than perhaps any other community in North Louisiana were the “poster child” for the American “melting pot.”
I began thinking about this because of a suggestion from Thad Andress for a project for the Dorcheat Historical Association Museum (if you look back on this blog you’ll see that Thad often nudges me toward ideas.) On a visit to Nova Scotia, Thad had seen a map showing the eventual “landing spot” of those Acadians dispersed from Canada by the British after 1755. Of course we know that many of them ended up in South Louisiana where they became the Cajuns, but most followed a winding path before reaching that destination. Since the goal of the British in creating a diaspora of Acadian culture was to prevent them coalescing once again, the settlers were scattered across North America. That so many did eventually land in Louisiana was a tribute to the determination of the Acadians.

Thad’s idea was that we needed to create such a map for Minden, showing the points of origin and the path taken by the early settlers of our community. This is a project in its infancy, as he only mentioned this to me last week, but today I pulled out an old newspaper column to get me started on research. I wrote this column for the Press-Herald in 2003 and based it on information in the 1850 Census of Minden. The data reveals that Minden was truly a cosmopolitan settlement in 1850 (I’m not sure many have ever seen those two words – Minden and cosmopolitan – used in such close proximity before.)

I’m still working with the data but some of the facts are pretty surprising. In 1850, Minden was home to natives of 25 of the then 30 states of the United States, plus one resident born in the District of Columbia. Foreign-born citizens listed birthplaces in the following locales: Austria, Bavaria, England, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Prussia, Russia, Scotland and Sweden. As I mentioned in my post about the Ghost Walk, it was likely one could hear three or four languages spoken on one trip down Main Street in those days. Missing from this data is the place of origin of the African-Americans in Minden. We were home to only one free person of color in 1850, but local slaves came from many different places. It seems possible, since it was only 42 years since the end of legal slave importation to the United States, we might have had some slaves who had been born in Africa. But clearly a sizable portion of the local populace had African heritage.

The really fascinating part of such a map will be the path taken to come to Minden. We know of the traditional routes up the Red River and Bayou Dorcheat, across the “Redneck Trail” after the Indian Removal Act and down the Mississippi and across Arkansas and Northern Louisiana. However, there seem to be many other interesting and varied paths to Minden. I’m looking forward to learning more about how out little town became the home of our first residents as this project moves forward.

Ghost Walk 2011

Next Saturday, November 12, 2011, will be our annual Ghost Walk to benefit the Minden Cemetery Association. Several years ago Schelley Brown Francis borrowed this idea from the American Cemetery in Natchitoches and it has become a very popular event in Minden. (I really need to attend the Natchitoches version one day, my great-grandmother is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the cemetery, a victim of the 1918-19 flu epidemic. Her entire family was ill with the flu and local officials buried the body and the family was never able to find out precisely where she was interred.) We normally schedule it on the weekend closest to Veterans Day and use the final resting place of our forefathers and mothers to help tell a little of the story of Minden.

In recent years we have usually had a theme and this year is no exception. In recognition of our newly established Fasching celebration -- which kicks off at 11:11 a.m. on 11/11/2011 -- we are highlighting Minden's German roots in several of our characters. So often we focus solely on Germantown when discussing the Teutonic influence on local history, but despite the significance of Germantown, Minden has strong ties to Germany beyond the Colony. Our founder, Charles Hanse Veeder, was of German descent and evidently named our community after his family's ancestral home in Minden, Germany. In the 1960s, Minden Mayor Tom Colten established a relationship with our sister city, Minden, Germany, it is my hope that in the near future we may reopen that relationship to expand our new focus on our German ties. In the early years of our town, there were many German settlers who were attracted to our town because of the presence of Germantown, but others simply because of the uniquely cosmopolitan nature of our community as it sat on the western frontier of the United States near the Republic of Texas. For many years I have been intrigued by the "accents" of our past. I tell my American History students that it is difficult for me to imagine that our Founding Fathers all spoke with what today we would consider a "British" accent, just doesn't seem right to think of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams speaking that way, but it was reality. I've particularly thought it would be fascinating to be transported back in time to Minden Main Street, 1850. While strolling past the businesses it was likely you would hear native speakers in the following languages: English (with British, Irish and Scottish accents), German, Polish, Russian, French and Choctaw. It was the very presence of those German speakers that brought several residents to our town as they knew someone would understand them. (Well, to some degree -- it is true that the Germantown Colony was more commonly called Dutchtown in both Minden and Homer, as demonsrated by the Dutchtown Road that runs from Homer to the area of the Colony, based on the same mishearing of the word Deustch that led to the misnomer Pennsylvania Dutch in American History.)

In the upcoming Ghost Walk among the characters will be a German immigrant stationed in Minden by the Confederate Army who married a local woman and became a vital contributor to our community and transplant to Minden who brought her German immigrant mother to live with her locally and found the presence of a German community a pleasant surprise. Other characters while not directly tied to Germany will highlight the role that the German connection has played in our town. Working with the Secretary of State's museum system and their control of the Germantown Colony it has been repeatedly pointed out to us that our unique German heritage is something we need to embrace and promote. I'm so happy to see Patti Odom and her office have pushed forward with our Karneval to contrast with the French Carnival and am glad that this year the Cemetery Association is joining in to help on that effort.

I hope each of you will make an effort to attend this year. Here are the details of the event.

The 8th Annual 2011 Minden Cemetery Ghost Walk

Saturday November 12th, 2011
The Minden Cemetery Ghost Walk “Living History Lesson”
Website: www.mindencemetery.blogspot.com
Price: $10 adults / $4 children under 12 (tickets at gate only)
Location: Old Minden Cemetery off Pine St. on Bayou Avenue in Minden, La.
Contact #: Schelley Brown Francis (318) 423-0192 Cell
Time: Noon – last tour starts at 3 p.m.
Email: iluvoldcars@yahoo.com

Skeletons In and Out of the Closet - Follow-up

The two researchers who were here flew back to Boston last night and I wanted to add a bit of information about their work and why they were here.

Professor Margaret Burnham and law student Brett Watson came here as part of the work of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at the Northeastern University School of Law. You can read about that program at this link:  Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project

The goal of the project is to resolve lingering issues from the Civil Rights era and to preserve and memorialize the victims of Civil Rights abuse. The reason for coming here are several in nature. The Jones case was one of a rash of killings of returned African-American war veterans in the Summer of 1946 and gained great attention in the national press, including a discussion in Time magazine that outraged local residents with its description of Minden. More importantly no one was ever convicted of any crime in this matter. The suspects were never indicted on state charges of murder and the Federal trial for violation of Civil Rights ended with acquittals. So, techincally this is an open case.

Some may be alarmed if you go to that link and see that Professor Burnham has an amazing track record of success in her legal career and has actually obtained convictions in some long-lingering Civil Rights cases. However, our case is somewhat different because of the age of the case.  The victim was killed, his only child died in 1978, his widow died at Meadowview in 2006. The victim who escaped the mob left Louisiana and is apparently dead. All of the men tried for the crime have died -- the first a victim of murder himself less than two years after the Jones murder. So there is no one left to try. In addition, Professor Burnham was very willing to not press the issue with the families of some of those involved in the case who are still living. Her major goal was to flesh out the record and fill in the blanks. I have not yet received their summary of what they learned, but yesterday we were able to confirm the burial site of John C. Jones, which had been somewhat of a question for years. They have indicated to me that they did learn much and recieved leads to more information. So, it was a useful trip.

Skeletons In and Out of the Closet

In the past I have indirectly discussed and/or referred to the 1946 lynching of John C. Jones here in Minden. About five or six years ago, Professor Chris Waldrep came to Minden to research the killing. Today, there are two more researchers in the community working on this case. I learned from them that Professor Waldrep has posted all the material he obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests with the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the National Archives to the website for one of his courses. I had been to the National Archives and seen that file before, but never the DOJ and FBI info, so I've been digging up local bones and opening local closets in that material this morning. I wanted to share the link with any local people who might be interested. I can tell you that there are thousands of pages, much of it boring, but the files do provide a fascinating tale of racism, self-preservation and gratefully some heroic behavior by local people of both races 65 years ago in our town.

Jones Lynching Files

If you tear it down, they won't come

Got another reminder today of that nasty habit Minden had of tearing historic structures down. I know that's always a controversial topic and at least one person who likes to pull my chain will probably post a sarcastic comment because in one recent high profile situation I was in favor of something being torn down. But as I said, I'll just need to learn to let folks comment and not try to engage when there's no point in replying.

Monday night at the Night for the Museum program about the Campbell family, Thad Andress asked me if I had ever been to Washington, Arkansas. Thad had visited recently and thought I needed to visit and also had a question relating to Minden history that learning about Washington had created in his mind. Now normally when Thad recommends a place to visit he has just returned from Greece, South America, Alaska or perhaps Jupiter -- places my pocket book will never allow me to visit. So, when he recommended a place I could afford to visit, I decided the trip has added to my itinerary. Plus, I was a little ashamed, particularly after I realized how close it was to home, that I hadn't visited.

So when I got out of classes today I set out for Old Washington. If possible I prefer to stay off the Interstate so you can see (stealing a line from Sarah Palin) the "real America." I did that today driving up La. 3 on to Arkansas 29 through my grandparents old stomping grounds of Lafayette County. Arriving in Washington I checked out some of the buildings and also purchased a book that answered the question Thad had posed. For many years I have explored all the historic figures that came close by Minden traveling on Military Road #11, cut through the North Louisiana wilderness in 1827 - 1828 between Fort Jesup and Fort Towson in what later became the Indian Territory.  Without a specific citation to prove the point, I am certain that future Presidents Zachary Taylor and Ulysses S. Grant traveled the road during their times at Jesup. I can verify that Col. George Armstrong Custer passed by when he was reassigned from occupation duty in Alexandria to fight the Indians on the Great Plains. (I'm not certain, but I don't think that turned out so well.) However, I had never considered the question that Thad raised. At Washington he had learned of a road connecting Fort Jesup to Washington and also found that Washington served as a main dispersion point for that tragic episode known as the Trail of Tears. I was so excited by the possibility that Thad had uncovered a place of Webster Parish in a significant era of American history when he asked, "did the Trail of Tears include the Military Road near Minden."

Today I discovered that it was "close but no cigar." The Trail of Tears, at least part of it, did come through Louisiana, in fact through Monroe. However, it turned north at Monroe and intersected "our" Military Road at Camden, Arkansas, so those Indians making the sad journey did reach Washington by the road that came by Minden, but did not traverse today's Webster Parish on the journey.

Now, in the words of Ron White, "I told you that story to tell you this one", which will explain my title. Today I visited the Hempstead County Courthouse built in 1836, it also served as the seat of government for Confederate Arkansas. Then I went to the Visitor's Center at Old Washington State Park, which is the Hempstead Country Courthouse that was used from 1874 - 1939. I was in such a rush to find the answer to Thad's question that my "light bulb moment" didn't hit me until after I had found my answer and was exploring the old courthouse. Something about that date, 1874, stuck in my mind. Then, as I was looking at the upstairs courtroom, it hit me. The first Webster Parish Courthouse that stood roughly on the site of today's Capitol One Bank downtown, was also completed and put into use in 1874. That meant that while Hempstead County still had both its 1836 and 1874 courthouses, Minden was in a completely different situation. The courthouse we built in 1874, the same year as the "new" Washington courthouse, was torn down in 1905. The building that replaced it, was torn down in 1970. So while that 1874 Hempstead County Courthouse stood "witness" Webster Parish built and destroyed two courthouses. As I stepped outside I suddenly realized something else, the 1874 Hempstead County Courthouse (pictured below) while not identical, resembles the 1874 Webster Parish Courthouse enough to be a "cousin." Hindsight is 20-20 and I don't think folks in Minden had evil motives, but it's a shame so much of our history died with the wrecking ball.