Fact-finding Mission in Memphis
I’ve always wanted to experience the thrill of uncovering some little known fact or unearth a lost relic through research. I’ve read of the experience of other writers, but I wondered if I would ever get to feel the
SHEER JOY AND EXCITEMENT.
It finally happened at our last trip to Memphis! I can’t even explain how exciting it was to feel the thrill of uncovering a mystery from history.
In his book, DON’T CALL ME BOY; A Black Man's Quest for Freedom, AC talks about going to school in a small “colored school,” because blacks and whites couldn’t go to school together. Since he was just six years old, he was not sure where the school was or if it was even still standing, but he did draw a picture for the book, from memory. In the picture he is looking out the window at his dog, Trixie who is waiting by the well…..
In a visit with AC’s Aunt Verlean, we learned that he went to school in a church building, which 6-year-old AC remembered only as a school.
We drove all over the little town of Como, Mississippi, where AC’s life story began. Eventually we spotted a dilapidated building on the lot of a newer church. AC said, “That looks just like my school!” I too, had noticed the similarity to the picture he had drawn.
We got out a walked through the weeds and poked around a bit. The siding was falling off, the windows were broken and the door was rusted. Then we saw it. A capped-off pipe sticking out of the ground, right where the well would have been and a dip in the ground, as if a hole had been filled-in.
The supposed capped water line and sunken ground was right where AC had drawn it in his picture. Could this be the church AC attended in 1952?
It was time to do the research. I dug through records at the small Emily J Pointer Library in Como, where all the historical records were housed in a glassed-in bookcase and a four-drawer filing cabinet. Pouring over pages and pages of old records was fun for me, but not so much for everyone else on the trip. However, with the help of AC’s wife, Jean, we found this information:
In 1922, when a new white school was built, the old white school building was moved across the highway to become the colored school. In the early spring of 1950, the Como Colored School burned, abruptly, ending the 1949-50 school year. After missing the final part of the 1950 school year, the 1950-51 session began in September of 1950 with classes in the Como Methodist Episcopal Church, Cherry Street Missionary Baptist Church, First Baptist Church and the Masonic Hall. *
We then, with the help of the librarian and an old hand drawn Como map, found where each of the schools seemed to be located. Though it seemed the building we found was the First Baptist Church, in subsequent searches, we found that though this building seems to sit on the property owned by what once was First Baptist, this was, in fact the Masonic Lodge.
I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. We had found the school, and though the inside had been fitted with electricity and ceiling fans sometime after its use as a school, the building was just as AC had drawn.
It was a new experience to me, to take this walk with AC through his childhood town, hear his memories and see where his family toiled in the cotton fields. Though all the memories for AC are not good ones, the thrill of this find seemed to lift everyone's spirits.
I hope you are looking forward to AC’s book, Don’t Call Me Boy; a Black Man’s Quest for Freedom, coming in 2023. I promise more historic photos and info connected with AC's fascinating life story.
