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