Common Heritage

This exhibit reflects on how the African American community has made change. Throughout the twentieth century, African American women and men gained incremental advances that collectively would transform the race’s agency, the self-determination to act independently and make their own free choices. African Americans, by creating their own organizations and institutions, developed ways to address their needs and aspirations that fostered the values of community, service, and mutual support.

At the center of this community were African American women. Whether engaged in professional or domestic work, or operating simply as members of working-class families aspiring for middle-class status, women played essential roles in the community-building process. African American women structured community life around a core of essential institutions: families, churches, education, clubs, hospitals, and health clinics, from which manifested the potential of social service reform activism. Recognizing these important communities is central to understanding the multiple and important roles of African Americans in the American story. These are stories of perseverance, resourcefulness, and resilience.

About This Project

African American narratives are sorely lacking and often misrepresented in the archival record. The archive is a traditionally privileged space that reinforces the hierarchical structures of society through its power to determine what is worthy of preservation and what is not. This power influences societal conceptions of identity and belonging. This privileging creates a cacophony of silenced voices that directly contributes to the marginalization of communities. Given the historical exclusion of narratives, there exists a need to address this silencing. Georgia College’s Russell Library, awarded with the Common Heritage Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to capture the underrepresented history of the Milledgeville African American community, seized the opportunity to acknowledge and redress the lack of diversity in our institutional holdings. This undertaking is imperative to ensure our collections reflect the diversity of our shared community. We thank the African American community for their partnership in this endeavor to reconstruct a more accurate understanding of the past.

To learn more about the Common Heritage project,  click here . To view the Common Heritage Collection on the Digital Library of Georgia,  click here .

At the center of the African American community are women. African American women have traditionally filled multiple roles: mothers, caretakers and providers, support systems, and jack of all trades. Historically, whether engaged in professional or domestic work or operating simply as members of working-class families aspiring for middle-class status; African American women have played an essential part in the community-building process.

Post-Civil War realities for African Americans promoted a shared responsibility between men and women to obtain financial stability. African American women strived for societal change, and actively defined their importance in the growth of community agency. They structured community life around the core foundational institutions of family, church, education, social clubs, hospitals, and health clinics. Community-focused organizations empowered African American women to assume new roles as leaders, trailblazers, social bridge builders, and advocates.

Organizations, such as the Milledgeville Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (FCWC), evidenced this agency. The FCWC was a part of the Georgia Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, and an affiliate of the National Association of Colored Women, Inc., founded in 1896 and headquartered in Washington, DC. Drawing from their motto, Lifting As We Climb, the organization dedicated itself to uplifting women, children, families, the home, and the community. The organization implemented community service and education to empower African Americans to take their proper and rightful place in society as citizens, community leaders, parents, and family members. Helmed by talented local leadership, such as Essie Slater serving as president of the Milledgeville FCWC, these organizations facilitated transformative initiatives such as forming health clinics, establishing elder care, and growing libraries for African American communities across the rural South.

The club women of this place are very much in evidence. They are interested and actively cooperating with the white club women in an uplift program. Georgia can depend on this band for whole-hearted allegiance. -statement about the Milledgeville Federation of Colored Women's Club, Atlanta Daily World, 1934.

The Boys Scouts of America (BSA), founded in 1910, quickly gained popularity in the United States. In 1919, President Wilson presented the organization with a federal charter. Subsequently, the president created a Boy Scout Week to demonstrate national support of the Scouting mission. The organization aimed to train young boys in the “activities of the great out-doors” and cultivate the qualities of “physical strength and endurance, self-reliance, and the powers of initiatives and resourcefulness.”

From its inception, BSA has grappled with the fine line between inclusion and exclusion. This struggle continues today. Boy Scout administrators defied conservative critics by permitting willing local councils to admit African Americans and other non-white boys in the 1910s. The formation of the first African American Boy Scout Troop occurred in 1911, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. The troop continued to meet and grow, despite white opposition. The first officially sanctioned troop was founded in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1916, and by 1926, there were 248 all-African American troops, with 4,923 scouts. By the mid-1930s, only one Scout Council in the South refused to accept African American Scout Troops. BSA desired to soothe racial tensions across the nation by providing a neutral ground upon which whites and African Americans might interact without malice.

Despite the established BSA position on the inclusion of African Americans, communities were allowed to follow the policies that dictated their local school systems, thus ensuring the continuation of segregation. African American communities strived to provide the Scouting experience for their children, even though some troops in the South threatened to leave BSA and burn their uniforms if African American Scouts were permitted. These factors framed the period during which Troop 103 existed at El Bethel Church in Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1946. Troop 103 may be the first African American Boy Scout troop in Milledgeville, having formed by the early 1940s; Joseph M. Graham served as its Scoutmaster until he joined the army in 1943.

El Bethel Baptist Church has served a contingent of Milledgeville’s African American community since its founding in 1897. Originally Oak Lawn Baptist Church, the church sat on a one-eighth acre lot on North Wilkinson St. purchased for $1.00. By 1905, the church had become El Bethel Baptist Church. The original structure burned in 1917. After the fire, the congregation purchased the corner lot of West Montgomery St. and North Irwin St. in 1918 for $90. The 1918 church building stood until 2010 when the current brick structure replaced the wooden church. It was during the demolition and construction of the new building that the charter for Boy Scout Troop 103 was unearthed.

It was not uncommon for African American Boy Scout Troops to form from the auspices of the church. No pillar of the African American community is more central to its history and identity than the church. As one of the the first institutions built by African Americans, independent of white society, churches were a symbolic place that served both secular and spiritual needs, nurturing hope for a better tomorrow. The dual function of the church, as a place of worship and as a social center, in a society with a strict demarcation along racial lines, provided a physical and social outlet for African American communities.

African Americans have served in every conflict in United States history. They often found themselves fighting for democracy overseas, despite being denied fundamental freedoms at home. Historically, African Americans have viewed service in the military as a means to illustrate to the nation that they demanded and deserved full citizenship in their country, with all entitled liberties. They were willing to sacrifice their lives in the service of the United States to prove this point and to better their communities. World War Two saw 1.2 million African American men and women serve across every theater of the war and on the home front. By this point in our nation’s history, the systemic social and economic disadvantages facing African Americans had not improved. Understanding that African American support and participation in the war effort were vital to American success, President Roosevelt petitioned Arthur B. Spingarn, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), for their assistance in securing African American support.

The African American community felt the irony of the plea. Stephen Ambrose framed this sentiment well by stating, “the world’s greatest democracy fought the world’s greatest racist with a segregated army.”

As the war progressed, African American troops proved their worth in combat. Serving in all-Black tank and infantry units and as pilots, African Americans fought valorously, challenging the perceptions of their fellow white service members. Despite this, many African American servicemen and women were subject to Jim Crow laws, such as nonentry to white food mess halls and being relegated to the back of the bus. On many occasions, African American service members were treated more poorly than German prisoners of war. These prevailing prejudices led to the assignment of the majority of African American troops to non-combat or service units. Tirelessly serving in these logistical roles, such as the Red Ball Express, the famed truck convoy system that supplied Allied forces moving quickly through Europe after breaking out from the D-Day beaches in 1944, African Americans were instrumental in the success of the war.

Two naval ordnance plant sites were operated by the Reynolds Corporation in Milledgeville and Macon; these two facilities worked in conjunction manufacturing explosives that included flares and detonators. After the war, the Milledgeville plant was leased to J.P. Stevens & Co., which produced dye worsted suitings and dress fabrics.

African Americans saw World War Two as a means to foster change through their service to the country. The Double Victory Campaign initiative was launched in 1942 by the Pittsburgh Courier, an African American newspaper, calling for “Victory Abroad and Victory at Home.” The tenets of the campaign were to champion military success overseas and demand equality for African Americans in the United States. This defiant rejection of systemic racism at home contributed to laying the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. The hard work and sacrifice by African Americans during World War Two, coupled with the conflict against fascism bringing the inequalities in the United States into focus for many Americans, led to Executive Act 9981. In 1948, President Truman abolished racial discrimination and segregation in the armed forces. However, this was not fully enacted until 1953, and the war in Vietnam would be the first combat deployment of a desegregated United States military

The Jackson family is representative of African Americans serving their country during times of war. Willie Jackson served during World War One as a member of Company A, 516th Engineers Battalion in France. Willie L. Jackson Sr. (pictured on right with his wife, Donette) enlisted in the U.S. Army on May 31, 1944 and served overseas during World War Two. Willie, Sr. and Donette’s son,  Willie Jackson Jr. , served during the Vietnam War as a member of 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry, 101st Airborne division. He was wounded in action in August 1969.

Roosevelt Woolfork, Jr., of Milledgeville, (pictured below) served in the U.S. Army for 22 years, participating in two wars. Enlisting at the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, Woolfork served as a truck driver delivering ammunition to the front lines. He went on to serve a tour of duty in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Sergeant First Class Woolfork retired from the military in 1972.

Education is a cornerstone of creating agency, and African American communities emphasized this importance in the aftermath of the American Civil War. Wilkes Flagg, a formerly enslaved blacksmith who purchased freedom for himself, his wife, and his son and became a successful Milledgeville businessman and minister, established a school in the Flagg Chapel Church in 1865. The immediate success of the school attracted the attention of the American Missionary Association (AMA). The AMA, with land donated by Flagg, and the assistance of Freedmen’s Bureau, an organization established by the federal government after the war that attempted to assist the approximately four million displaced formerly enslaved African Americans and the thousands of impoverished white citizens of the South, founded the Eddy School in 1867.

Milledgeville is distinguished from similar rural Southern communities in that the Eddy School was one of only 14 schools for African Americans established by the AMA before 1876. The organization would found more than 500 across the South, including institutions of higher learning, such as Berea College, Fisk University, and Atlanta University. The AMA provided the Eddy school five white teachers to instruct the 350 students. The school was an inspiration for the parents seeking a better life for their children, and a vibrant community sprung up around the school and Flagg Chapel.

The original three-room Eddy school building was replaced in 1900 by a larger structure, Eddy High School, which housed grades 1st through 11th. The school burned in 1925 and was rebuilt. The school again burned down in 1946. The decision not to rebuild meant its students were in limbo until the Board of Education built a new school, George Washington Carver High School, completed in 1949. Separate buildings for elementary, middle, and high school classes were built for the first time. The elementary school remained unnamed until 1967 when it became the Sallie Ellis Davis Elementary School.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, small schools to serve the rural communities appeared throughout Baldwin County. One of the earliest was the Harrisburg School (pictured right), established in the Harrisburg community in 1871. The three-room schoolhouse and detached kitchen were in operation until 1952. Other African American Baldwin County schools included: Rocky Creek School (circa 1917), Sandtown School (circa 1896), Spring Hill School (circa 1905), Buck Creek School (circa 1896), Friendship School (circa 1896), Town Creek School (circa 1896), Union School (circa 1896), Walker’s Chapel School (circa 1896), Harper’s Mission School (circa 1903), Jordan’s Crossroads School (circa 1899), Morgan’s Chapel School (circa 1896), Rock Mills School (circa 1896), St. Mary’s School (circa 1896), St. Paul’s School (circa 1896), Vaughn’s Chapel School (circa 1896), Antioch School (circa 1896), Bonner’s School (circa 1896), Brown’s Grove School (circa 1896), Hooper’s Chapel School (circa 1896), Fishing Creek School (circa 1899), Nazarene School (circa 1896), Proctor’s School (circa 1899), Walker’s Grove School (circa 1896), Black Creek School (circa 1896), Freedman’s High School (circa 1869), Hopewell School (circa 1899), Scottsboro School (circa 1896), Shiloh School (circa 1896), Wrights Grove School (circa 1896), County Line School (circa 1899), Mitchell Zion School (circa 1917), and Steven’s Pottery School (circa 1899).

After the Supreme Court of the United States determined that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal and unconstitutional with their ruling on Brown v. Board of Education, the J.F. Boddie High School opened in 1958 to serve Milledgeville’s African American students. The school, named after Julian Franklin Boddie, Sr., who for some time was the only African American doctor in Baldwin County, was an extension of Carver High School and for the first time included the 12th grade. The Boddie High School facility contained twenty-six classrooms, a science laboratory, a commercial department, an industrial arts department, a library, a home economics department, and a combination gymnasium/auditorium. Like its predecessors, the Eddy School and the Carver School, Boddie High School hired highly revered African American educators and, at one point, employed 36 teachers, a student counselor, and a full-time librarian. The school served as the African American high school until 1970. That same year, integration of Baldwin County High School was fully implemented, effectively ending segregation in Milledgeville schools.

In December 1842, the Georgia State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum opened its doors, becoming the first psychiatric hospital in the state. Over its 178-year history, the institution has operated as the Georgia State Sanitarium, Milledgeville State Hospital, and Central State Hospital (CSH). From the beginning, the sanitarium exploited African American labor. Initially, this was through the existing aberration of enslaved servitude. Post-Civil War, African American labor was continually leveraged to the greatest extent with little concern for quality of life. Much of the physical labor for making improvements to the campus and tending the farm fields was undertaken by African American patients. African American attendants were responsible for caring for the African American patients, male and female. Throughout the early and mid-20th Century, African American employees faced discriminatory hiring and promotion practices at the hospital.

On September 23, 1977, three African Americans, Crawford Finley, James White, and Sherard Kennedy, filed a discrimination lawsuit against Central State Hospital. The plaintiffs charged the hospital with racially discriminatory hiring and promotion practices. They demanded retroactive pay and the seniority in position due them, filing an additional motion to prevent CSH from hiring or promoting white employees until the case’s conclusion, which was approved by the court. The plaintiffs stated that the education and age requirements were stricter for African Americans than those afforded white applicants or employees and claimed the hospital affirmative action recruitment program was ineffective due to its lack of authority in implementing the responsibilities of the initiative.

In July 1978, Federal District Court Judge Wilbur Owens declared the case a class action suit, opening the lawsuit to all African American employees who resigned, retired, were terminated, or otherwise separated from employment on or after May 8, 1972. The number of plaintiffs quickly rose from the original three to approximately 2,000. From the community sprung the Committee for State Employee Rights, founded by Zelma Jarrettee and chaired by Geneva Taylor. The group met monthly to keep the African American employees informed of the status of the lawsuit and to provide education on the rights entitled to them as employees of CSH. The committee, assisted by the Law Project in Atlanta, undertook negotiations with state attorneys to reach a settlement. A list of proposals was drawn up and presented to the state by the plaintiffs asking for an on-the-job training program to help African Americans receive promotions and upward mobility, a program to place African Americans in decision and policy-making positions above the level of ward leaders, a set of consistent rules applied systematically throughout the hospital, a functioning Affirmative Action Office, and a permanent grievance committee.

In January 1979, state attorneys turned down the proposals, effectively ending the settlement negotiations. Judge Owens was notified of the cessation of talks and set a trial date of July 23, 1979. The testimony of the plaintiffs uncovered what Judge Owen termed a buddy system, in which white supervisors favored white employees in the hiring and promotion process. In 1982, after five years, the plaintiffs scored a total victory. Judge Owen’s decision required CSH to settle with potential plaintiffs, which now numbered between 3,000 and 4,000 Milledgeville African Americans. The resulting financial settlement assisted in deterring future racially discriminatory practices at CSH and affected employment policies across all state organizations.