Writer Shares Part of Family History in Celebration of Black History

February is Black History Month. As I reflect on my family's heritage, I want to share excerpts from the family history that I researched and published in 2007. As I went on the hunt to discover my maternal ancestral roots, I learned some amazing things about my family. One of the most wonderful things for me to find out was that my great-great grandfather was a former slave who learned how to read and write. He also owned property. This was forbidden and unheard of during the 1800s. Blacks were considered property. Anyone caught teaching them to read and write put their own lives in danger. Blacks who were caught with books in their possession were punished as if they were thieves.

Finding My Roots

It was a two-lane, tree lined curvature of highway that facilitated my road trip west across the state. There were times I felt like I was driving on open, picturesque, uninhabited road. At other times, it seemed I was heading straight into Alabama's past in view of antebellum mansions, weather-worn estates and farm houses which dotted the landscape on both sides of the road.

Pass the county line, and there it was sprawled out before me: Wilcox County. This place had been the home of my ancestors and their families. Wilcox County had been one of the richest, most important areas in the state of Alabama and in the United States 175 years earlier.

In the 1800s, cotton was king in America. During this era, thousands of families migrated from the Carolinas, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia to settle Wilcox County, Alabama. Rich white planters brought with them their multitude of slaves in search of acreage that promised to increase their riches. There were not so rich white farmers with just a few slaves who sought opportunity to advance to the next economic level.

Two things brought them to Wilcox and neighboring counties: 1) the rich black soil which bragged of its ability to kiss any seed that was put in it with abundant life and fruitfulness, 2) the Alabama River which snaked its way through the county in such a way that paddle-wheel boats and ferries were the everyday transit system.

The soil and the river brought them here and kept them here. The soil and the river made them rich.

It was of this scenery and scenario that my great-great parents were forced to live as slaves. In spite of adverse conditions they lived within, like the acorn, somehow, they were blessed by God to grow where they were planted to become a mighty oak -

Our family tree.

There are not many of us left in Wilcox County and west Alabama. We have lifted our branches to the sky and spread our leaves. We have lived and will continue to live all over the world. We are a people who excel in politics, medicine, business, ministry, the arts and music. There are thousands of us. We owe a part of our heritage to Wilcox County, and to our great-great grandfather - Morris Boykin.

Morris Boykin

Morris Boykin was born in Kershaw County, South Carolina. He was a mulatto. He and his wife Sally were two of hundreds of slaves brought to Wilcox and surrounding counties by their master - Francis Boykin. At the time of the 1870 census - the first United States Census that listed former black slaves individually by name - Morris lived in Camden, the county seat of Wilcox County. During his lifetime, he had nine sons and four wives.

Great-great granddaddy Morris Boykin was a landowner in the late1800s during the time when most blacks in the area were sharecroppers and tenant farmers. He purchased land on Nov. 12, 1883 and again in Feb, 1891. Landownership among blacks was almost non-existent in the Deep South at this time. Most blacks and many whites lived in poverty after the Civil War.

Morris had also learned to read and to write at some point in his lifetime. Regrettably, that was not the norm for Alabama blacks in the late 1800s and into the mid 1900s. In this part of the state known as the Black Belt, the illiteracy rate was higher than any other area of Alabama. The term "Black Belt" was given to the area due to the color and rich content of its soil. Ironically, this area had the highest concentration of black people.

Source: Reflections: The Family History of Bertha (Roberta) (Boykin) Lankster Russell compiled by Jane Russell Ward. c2007, p.26-29.

Please contact the author for more information about this book.