MY CONNECTION TO TWO FREEDMEN SETTLEMENTS . . . by Lori D. Johnson

                                

                                       

       Calhoun County, MS

 

Have you ever heard of Freedom colonies, Freedmen settlements or Freedmen towns?  Probably not, huh? 

Freedom colonies and freedmen settlements/towns were the all Black communities established by the formerly

enslaved after the Civil War.  Apparently, I hold the honor of being a descendant of two such communities--

one on my mother’s side of the family and another on my dad’s.  

The one created by my mother’s side of the family was located in Calhoun County, MS near the town of

Paris (not far from Water Valley MS where my mother and her folks were born).  The community was

founded by a former slave (name unknown)  who’d been allowed to work for pay during his

enslavement.  After Emancipation, he purchased land in the area and from it grew a vibrant community. 

They established a school (Bryant School) and a church (Mt. Pleasant Church).  They had a cotton gin,

a blacksmith shop, a grist mill (a mill that grinds grain into flour) and they raised sheep from which

they spun wool and made clothing.  Some of their descendants (Hawkins, Pearson, Reese, Shipp & Steen) erected a marker near what once was the entrance of the church’s cemetery.  (See photo above) Sadly, not that long ago, that marker “mysteriously” disappeared.

JOHNSON CHAPEL, CME

Memphis, TN

The Freedmen settlement established by my dad’s side of the family was founded in 1903 by my great-great

grandfather, Prince Johnson who purchased 48 acres of land in Shelby County, TN (in the Peter Mitchell

Subdivision of Memphis) and resold individual lots to the formerly enslaved and their offspring.  The

residents of Johnson Sub formed a community that thrived well into the 1990s.  For me, Prince Johnson, the

man my grandmother called “The Mayor” of Johnson Sub’s 48 acres is a figure shrouded in mystery. In spite

of my research, I still don’t really know who he was or what he truly had in mind for Johnson Sub.  Given

Prince’s affiliation with The Knights and Daughters of Tabor, I suspect he may have had a self-sufficient

community like Mound Bayou, MS in mind. 

Even though today Mound Bayou is considered impoverished by many, it was once prosperous and even

described by Theodore Roosevelt as “the jewel of the Delta.”  Mound Bayou was a freedman settlement

founded in 1887 and at one point had dozens of Black businesses, 3 schools, 6 churches, a bank, a

Carnegie Library, and even a hospital.  

Nothing of that magnitude ever materialized in Johnson Sub, which for years was basically a farming

community and residential area. But the Sub was full of talented folks and crafts people, like brick masons

and carpenters, some of whom built or helped build many of the homes in and outside of the area.  In the

1920s, an uncle who lived in the Sub was instrumental in raising funds for a Rosenwald school,  Brooks

Avenue School (grades 1-8) which for decades educated Black children who lived in the Sub and

surrounding area. Several family members and residents with Johnson Sub ties taught at Brooks Avenue.

Johnson Sub also was once home to a church (Johnson Chapel CME) and in later years a small general

store (owned and run by my Aunt Vina & Uncle Fugerson) and a chartered civics organization (TheJohnson Subdivision Civics Club).

Not only is it sorta, kinda ironic that I descend from not one, but two Freedman settlements.  But even more

ironic, perhaps, is that my mother and father first met as children and while my mother was in Johnson Sub visiting her relatives. As it turns out, my mother’s relatives were Hawkins (yes, originally part of that freedmen community in Calhoun County, MS) who’d relocated from MS to TN only to settle in another freedmen settlement-- Johnson Sub.  

Just one of the many odd and interconnecting tidbits I’ve discovered in my research of my family’s history.  

SN: If you want to know more about Freedom colonies and Freedmen settlements, check out THE

BLACK TOWNS (1979) by Norman L. Crockett or FREEDOM COLONIES: Independent Black

Texans in the Time of Jim Crow (2005/2010) by Thad Sitton.   If you want to know more about

that Freedmen community in Calhoun County, MS, check out the book BLACK HERITAGE SITES: The South (1996) by Nancy C. Curtis, Ph.D. If you want to know more about Johnson Sub, you need to pray or keep your fingers crossed that I find a publisher for my manuscript. 😏I’ll keep you posted.