From: Kerry Madden <kiffnkerry>
Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 10:19:23 -0700 (PDT)

This passage about "Gee's Bend, Alabama" is another section that did not make it into the book. I tried to make it work, but it really is its own story and one that I am still interested in trying to write. I took the Gee's Bend Ferry in February 2009, since I never had time when I was in Monroeville doing the interviews and research in 2007 and 2008. The ferry ride is an easy fifteen-to-twenty minute ride across the Alabama River just outside the town of Camden.?

To set the story, here is a link to my blog with very recent pictures of Gee's Bend and Burnt Corn, Alabama as well as Birmingham and Thomasville.?

KNOXVILLE GIRL BLOG (mountainmist) http://mountainmist.livejournal.com/158281.html

This is the Gee's Bend section that did not make it into the book. In the following passage as in the book, I refer to Harper Lee as "Nelle."

GEE'S BEND, ALABAMA But change came hard for
 some people in the Black Belt region of Alabama. The Black Belt of Alabama is a ?crescent-shaped swath of dark, prairie soil that bisects central Alabama from Mississippi to Georgia. Nationally, the Black Belt stretches from Virginia to Texas. Originally named for its dark soil, the region has taken on a political and social definition because of its large African-American population.??

Both Nelle?s hometown of Monroeville in Monroe County and the African-American community of Gee?s Bend in the adjacent Wilcox County are part of Alabama?s Black Belt. Nelle grew up only thirty miles from Gee?s Bend, a place that traditionally depended on a ferry service to get across the Alabama River. The ferry ride took just ten minutes, while it took an hour to travel the rough road to Camden. In 1962, approximately during the same time as Hollywood began shooting the film of 'To Kill A Mockingbird,' the Gee?s Bend ferry service was stopped by
 local white officials hoping to discourage civil rights protests. The ferry?s closure isolated all Gee?s Bend residents from their jobs, emergency services, hospitals, shopping, and most significantly, voting.

P.C. ?Lummie? Jenkins, the sheriff of Wilcox County, said, ?We didn?t close the ferry because they were black. We closed it because they forgot they were black.? Jenkins?s grossly racist words were given to journalists at the peak of the civil rights movement. In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. visited Gee?s Bend on Valentine?s Day, the day before a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama was to take place. He told the crowd, ?I came over to Gee?s Bend, Alabama to tell you ? You are somebody.?

Jenkins and others opposed the march. A Gee?s Bend woman Lucy Mingo said, ?No white man gonna tell me not to march. Only make me march harder.? But the march didn?t happen, because participants were beaten
 back by state troopers. It did, however, take place a month later, from March 21st to 25th, and this time the marchers were escorted by the National Guard all the way from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma to the capitol steps in Montgomery.

When King was assassinated, mules from Gee?s Bend hauled his casket in the funeral procession in Atlanta, Georgia.

But still the ferry service was not restored. In the 1960s Camden Judge Hollis Curl published editorials in favor of keeping blacks and whites segregated, while a group of Gee?s Bend quilters organized the Freedom Quilting Bee in 1966, drawing attention to their plight. They made pot-holders, aprons, sunbonnets, and quilts. Word began to spread about these artists from Gee?s Bend who were a proud but isolated community. The items began to sell, which meant the women were able to make a living for their families. In the 1990s, Curl had a change of heart, after watching a Gee?s Bend
 house burn down across the Alabama River. Curl petitioned to bring back the ferry. Ferry service was finally resumed in 2006 with the help of Earl Hilliard, the first black congressman in Alabama since Reconstruction.

Nelle has ridden on the ferry to visit Gee?s Bend as recently as August of 2008, according to Sulynn Creswell, Director of Black Belt Treasures in Camden.

With Nelle?s passion for Alabama state history and art, Wayne Greenhaw is quite certain that she traveled to Gee?s Bend a number of times and wrote:? ?She used to travel through the countryside where she'd visit with people whom she knew, like Mr. Lowery at the country store at Burnt Corn and the old couple who ran a store west of Monroeville near the river. When Capote came back to visit his relatives, after they'd both grown up, they would travel through the back roads together. I remember seeing a photograph once of them together in his snazzy Jaguar
 convertible.?

* * *

(A follow-up note to the "snazzy Jaguar convertible"... According the curator, Jane Ellen Clark, when Nelle Harper Lee saw the photograph hanging in the Monroe County Heritage Museum last November 2008 at Patricia Neal's and Joel Vig's reading of A CHRISTMAS MEMORY, she said, "Oh, he loved that car. That was the second trip to Kansas.")

* * *

Finally, here is a link to the Penguin blog with more pictures and stories of Gee's Bend. I'm very interested in Artelia Bendolph, whose photograph I discovered in my research. She was very close to Harper Lee's age. Stories just kept leading to more stories with this book in the most unexpected places.

"Two Alabama Girls" http://us.penguingroup.com/static/html/blogs/two-alabama-girls-kerry-madden

"The Quilts of Gee's Bend" (a wonderful resource site.) http://www.quiltsofgeesbend.com/

I would like to thank the CCBC librarians for the chance to share these stories with you.

Sincerely Kerry Madden

UP CLOSE: HARPER LEE
"My needs are simple: pen, paper, and privacy." Harper Lee, 1961 www.kerrymadden.com
 
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Received on Thu 21 May 2009 12:19:23 PM CDT