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    Haywood County, Tennessee
    Haywood County, Tennessee
    Haywood County, Tennessee
    Ebook200 pages45 minutes

    Haywood County, Tennessee

    By Sharon Norris

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    About this ebook

    Surviving slavery, Reconstruction, poverty, and the Civil Rights tensions of the twentieth century, Haywood County s black community has done much to shape the identity of this historic West Tennessee county. This volume, containing over 200 black-and-white images, highlights the county s settlement, the early slave culture, the legacy of its many soulful and talented musicians, such as Anna Mae Bullock (better known as Tina Turner), the hard-fought strides in bringing education to African-American citizens, the importance of church in
    molding the social and spiritual elements of life, and some of the county s most recognizable faces and names.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateAug 28, 2000
    ISBN9781439610824
    Haywood County, Tennessee
    Author

    Sharon Norris

    Author and historian Sharon Norris has composed a wonderful tribute, in word and image, to the black experience of Haywood County, capturing life of yesteryear in Brownsville and some of the smaller communities, such as Nutbush and Stanton. A visual treasure, Haywood County serves as fitting testimony to a community that has persevered through much of the South�s darkest moments and has created a truly special place, full of spirit, fellowship, and melody.

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      Book preview

      Haywood County, Tennessee - Sharon Norris

      Rawls

      INTRODUCTION

      The black residents of Haywood County, Tennessee, did not come to this newly developing community, located north of Memphis, of their own free will. From the late 1700s to its incorporation in 1826, hundreds of blacks were barged in via the Mississippi River from St. Louis and New Orleans into Brownsville via the Hatchie River. They walked, rode wagons and horses, or were pulled in chains from West Virginia or North Carolina. Nearly 500 slaves, the largest amount recorded, were brought into Haywood County by Thomas Bond. Through the institution of slavery, the Southern blacks were the major contributors of their own developing and emerging black heritage, and they maintained the Old South heritage as well, for the majority of the beautiful antebellum homes, roads, and gardens of West Tennessee were built through the toils and struggles of slavery. Slavery made cotton king for the West Tennessee farmer and plantation owner.

      Haywood County is nestled between the growing thoroughfares of Memphis, located just above the Mississippi border, and Nashville. Following the American Indian displacement in 1818, Memphis established itself in 1826 and created its slave trade to help man the newly settled farms of Haywood County. Some 3,000 blacks, many runaways, had found refuge or were purchased as equal tribal members in the Cherokee Nation in Middle Tennessee, and some 3,000 blacks were found in the Chickasaw Nation in West Tennessee. Those who were not shot or who did not escape during the migration to Oklahoma were soon reenslaved.

      The few black slaves in Haywood County settled into this new frontier and began their contributions and influences to West Tennessee’s musical, religious, cultural, and educational heritage. Black Americans of Haywood County still show influences today from their slavery roots through their legacy of musicians, educators, and businesses.

      From the churches and cottonfields, songs of hardship and abuse rang forth from the voices of the blacks that resided in the white-owned antebellum plantation houses, slavehouses, rural sharecropper shacks and shanties, and black-occupied urban houses. To ease their pain and make their work easier, spirituals, gospels, country blues, and blues, characteristic of West Tennessee music in general, were written and performed, many of which have been recorded following emancipation. Well-known artists were taught the craft of music from mothers and fathers, who brought their gift with them from their mothers and fathers. The blend of music from residents and traveling musicians helped to create the Memphis sound. Through the 1940s, two Woodlawn Baptist Church bands and one Bootsie Whitelow (Jimmie) String Band from Nutbush proved quite popular, playing not only on Sunday mornings in the choir, but during Friday and Saturday socials, the Negro County Fairs held in Brownsville, and events in the surrounding towns. The bands were required to play from behind a drawn curtain, which would shield the black performers from the white patrons, who initiated their musical services for little more than 5¢ or a drink of water. The bands performed at the Brownsville Opera House, located on the square, or in private homes, and used a variety of instruments: the harmonica, slide trombone, guitar, piano, drum, mandolin, fiddle, jug, washboard, or whatever instrument they could acquire. Hambone Wille Newbern, Sleepy John Estes, Reverend Clay Evans, and Tina Turner are descendants of the Nutbush musical heritage; Hammie Nixon and James Yank Rachell were Brownsville natives. Even today, a listener can attend any of the African-American churches in Haywood County and enjoy the sounds of a musician descended from this longstanding tradition.

      Aware of their capabilities while slaves, they sought secret avenues of developing consciousness and intellectual abilities. A major contributor to this effort was Hardin Smith, a young slave brought in from Virginia in 1840. He would learn carpentry and help develop property owned by General William H. Loving, minister and one of the founding fathers of Haywood

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