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| UDC Picnic at Pennytown: Photo by Marlan Warren |
United Daugthers of the Confederacy visit first black
settlement site in Missouri:
"Our mother told us if there was ever a fire, grab a box of records and run..."
There isn’t much left
of Pennytown anymore. But when Virginia Huston looks at its vacant landscape, she
sees more than just meadows, a church and a house. She sees memories that must
be preserved.
Huston was the last
person born in Pennytown, a black settlement located eight miles southeast of Marshall that was started
by Joe Penny in 19871 when he managed to purchase eight acres for $160.
“What is unique
about Pennytown is that it was started by a freed-slave,” Huston said.
As times changed,
people began to move elsewhere and by 1943, the town had all but died. Huston’s
mother Josephine Jackson Lawrence devoted herself to building public awareness
of Pennytown. It was finally listed as a national historical site and in the Marshall register. The
University of Missouri-Columbia and Marshall
Public Library now house the town’s records.
“Our mother told us
kids that if there was a fire, we each had to grab a box (of records) and run
out,” says Huston. In fact, one day there was
a fire, and she ran out with a box and left her glasses. “My brother had to go
back and get them.”
Huston took her
mother’s place as tour guide after her passing 14 years ago. Many organizations
ask for tours, but until this month, the United Daughters of the Confederacy®
had not been one of them.
On March 11, Huston
welcomed the UDC, Marshall Chapter, to the Pennytown site. Members unloaded
food, children and cameras. Some had brought friends. All looked ready to live
up to their motto: “LOVE, LIVE, PRAY, THINK, DARE.”
Their presence
stemmed from a phone call UDC member Judy Frerking made to Huston, asking her
to speak at their March meeting. Frerking had read about Pennytown and thought the
group might like to learn more about it.
“She said some of
the members had never been to Pennytown,” recalls Huston. “So I suggested they
have the meeting there.”
After lunching in
the unseasonably warm sunshine, the group gathered around the table next to the
Pennytown Freewill Church
and grew attentive as Huston began her oral history presentation. She passed out
documents (“Here’s Aunt Penny’s slave record…”), showed scrapbook photos and
award certificates. The attendees pored over them.
Pennytown was once the
largest Saline County black hamlet. It boasted farms,
stores, two churches and a close-knit community. Now only the (recently restored)
red-brick church remains, and only open for special occasions. Huston can still
recall the baptisms that went on in the pond behind it.
UDC members began
to interject their own stories. Raylene Cornine recalled that when she was a
little girl, she was very sick and Huston’s father brought a folk medicine that
cured her. The medicine turned out to be skunk oil.
Was he a doctor?
“No, he just heard I was sick,” Cornine said.
Huston’s revelation
that Joe Penny is buried in an unmarked grave on private property garnered the
biggest reaction. Members expressed concern and said someone should look into getting
a marker.
The lone Pennytown house
is falling apart. It used to belong to Huston’s uncle. One UDC member’s grown
daughter offered to help look into grants for a renovation project.
Huston smiled. She
said Friends of Pennytown Historical Site is open to suggestions.
In closing, Huston
read her mother’s favorite hymn “We’ve Come a Long Way, Lord.” Then she read her
own handwritten thoughts, scribbled the night before:
“It has been a
struggle to get where we are but we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished,”
Huston read. “And there’s still more work to be done. We can sit and be a
spectator…or learn from our fears and walk together.”
Everyone said,
“Amen.”
President Bonnie
Keyserling presented Huston with a donation from UDC, Marshall to the Friends
of Pennytown. Then they started their meeting.
Frerking said the
event was a success because “you don’t learn unless you’re educated,” and this was
an opportunity to “mend fences.”
==========
Reporter's Note:
I grew up in Florida with "Yankee" parents, and a mother who despised racism. I remember separate drinking fountains, restrooms and schools. Mom loved to tell the story of when she asked our very Southern neighbor for the name of her African American cleaning lady. "We don't call them ladies," Mrs. Cochran replied, unwittingly giving Mom the anecdotal ammunition she craved to shoot Mrs. C down behind her back by imitating her "dumb drawl" every chance she got to tell this to anyone who would listen.
My high school yearbook, senior year, shows the boys from the Key Club proudly standing around a Volkswagen Bug that was painted like...a Confederate flag. I knew those white males and there might have been one or two who was a prejudiced jerk, but the rest were blithely unaware the flag meant "slavery" to those who suffered it.
I'm not defending the Confederate Flag. Mom used to say, "These ignoramuses are still fighting the Civil War." Our high school was eventually integrated with a few African Americans before I graduated. One of them was in a play with me. No big deal. Or so I thought.
Now, in light of this latest heinous crime--the mass murder of good, decent African Americans in their own church during Bible Study by a complete moron who loved his Confederate flags and was driven by the desire to ignite a "race war," our country is re-evaluating the Confederate flag, the Confederacy, the dead Southerners at the end of that awful war.
May we all do the right thing.
Amen.
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