The Family Tree

by Karen Branan

  AFTERWORD

  August 1994

  I am at the Jefferson Memorial with my granddaughter, who is eight years old. We have taken turns reading all of the magnificent Thomas Jefferson quotes inscribed upon the walls. She looks at me quizzically and says, “But didn’t he own slaves?” This is the kind of question I have dreaded ever since she was born.

  We sit down on the steps and I make some stumbling explanation about how sometimes people can do things that are very wrong while, at the same time, doing other things that are quite noble. But I also tell her that he was a hypocrite. This is hard stuff for an eight-year-old, even a very bright one like her, but I know I should use the opportunity as a teaching moment: “You know that you are descended from both slave-owners and slaves, don’t you?” I say.

  She sinks into thought, and when she emerges she looks into my eyes and says, “Yes, I know. But, if I ever have to choose, I’ll choose the slaves.” I tell her that I hope she never has to choose. And yet I realize that in writing this book, I have had to make that choice again and again. I have not relished revealing my forefathers’ crimes, but in order to face history squarely—my nation’s, my family’s, and my own—I have had not so much to “choose the slaves,” but to choose the truth, which in many ways is the same thing. Most important, I have had to find my voice, and to choose honesty and truth over the feelings and opinions of friends and family. I have also chosen to break that ancient, ironclad rule that women must keep the family secrets. This breaking of official silences is still regarded as shameful, even monstrous, by many people, something I learned at my fiftieth high school reunion. At the dance, which was held on Confederate Memorial Day in the Confederate Naval Museum in Columbus, the band played Dixie and former classmates chided me for not standing with my hand over my heart. There I told some old friends about my book. “No!” some of them gasped. “Surely you wouldn’t!”

  Well, surely I have. I have done it not only for the descendants of those enslaved and otherwise victimized by my ancestors, but for men and women like me who want to know the truth of our families’ and our region’s histories, with all of their treachery and dishonor, as well as their occasional greatness. I believe it is only with such knowledge that we and our own descendants can heal and move forward to build a nation and a world where all humans can be free.

  Today, twenty years later, as I plan a retreat in the Cascade Mountains with my beautiful twenty-seven-year-old granddaughter and friend, I shudder at how close I came to rejecting her, the way so many beautiful mixed-race babies were rejected by my family in times past. I now know well the riches I’d have cast aside, including my mother’s loving relationship with her only great-grandchild, and my own with dozens of newfound “cousins” (by blood or by choice), descendants of the people my people once enslaved. Through their Williams-Hudson Family Association, which welcomed me as one of their own, and through Coming to the Table, I have found ways to rebuild and work for change. I realize, as never before, how much the white South lost when it embarked, at its dawning, upon a wicked and brutal course of rejecting and repressing not only its own flesh and blood, but all its precious black citizens.

  As I bring this book to a close, America is once again aflame with racial violence and discrimination. There is no question that, as a nation, we have yet to honestly face our history and to truly embrace African Americans as full-fledged citizens and members of our human family. I believe this is the only way we can heal, as individuals and as a nation.

  The author at age eleven, around the time her father confessed his “killing” of a young black woman. Unless otherwise noted, all photos are from author’s family archives.

  The author and her sister, Barbara, at ages three and four, just before their parents divorced.

  Edna Allen Armstead, the author’s “black mamma” who cared for her and her sister from kindergarten until adulthood and remained close to them until her death in 2013 at age ninety-one.

  The author’s mother, Betty Hadley, as a young teenager, sometime before she discovered her mother’s drug addiction.

  Betty Hadley Williams, around the time of her marriage to Ben in 1934.

  Betty Hadley Williams in her late seventies.

  The author’s father, Ben Williams, and his little brother, Snooks, around 1913.

  Ben Williams as a medical student, just before he married a Native American woman in a drunken blackout.

  Dr. Ben Williams near the time he told his daughters he’d accidentally killed a young black woman.

  Ben Williams as a counselor at Hazelden Drug Treatment Center, shortly before his death.

  Sheriff Buddie Hadley, the author’s maternal great-grandfather, with Ben Williams, Jr., the author’s paternal great-uncle, cutting up in New Orleans. Date unknown.

  Sheriff Douglas Hadley and his wife, Berta, on their farm near Hamilton in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

  Will Williams, the author’s grandfather, as a young college student circa 1890.

  The author’s “Big Mamma,” Ethel Harris Williams, wife of Will Williams. Date unknown.

  Will Williams around the time of the 1912 lynching.

  Will Williams sometime after the murder of his brother, Dock, and shortly before his election to the Georgia State Legislature.

  “Miss Lula” Mobley, leader of the Missionary Society Ladies, organized her fellow church women in their protests against the unjust murders. Date unknown. Permission from John Bunn

  Members of the Moore family at Mountain Hill. From left to right: Lige Pierce, Foundland Moore Pierce, Bose Moore (first cousins of Sheriff Buddie, Douglas, and Norman Hadley).

  Moore family picnic at Mountain Hill. Date unknown.

  Georgia Ann Hudson Williams, born in slavery to Hamilton’s Hudson family. Courtesy of Deborah Daniels

  Isaac Williams, born in slavery to the author’s third great-uncle Britain Williams. Courtesy of Deborah Daniels

  Judge Stirling Price Gilbert, the vociferous foe of lynching who decided not to protect the four prisoners in January 1912. Gilbert went on to become a Georgia Supreme Court Justice. Photo courtesy of Georgia Department of Archives and History

  The Harris County Courthouse, built in 1908 at the strong urging of Judge Gilbert. This is where Louis “Sugar Bear” Murray and Albert Curry were sentenced to death. Photo courtesy of Cholly Minton

  Anna Julia Cooper, the author’s distant cousin. Cooper was one of the most prominent African Americans of her era, but members of her white family burned her highly acclaimed book A Voice from the South. Courtesy of Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

  Leading African American intellectual and activist W. E. B. Du Bois. Residents of Harris County feared Du Bois and the NAACP would send investigators to uncover the truth behind the 1912 lynching. Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections & University Archives, W. E. B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

  Confederate statue on Hamilton’s Monument Square. Judge Cooper Williams, Miss Lula Mobley, and Governor Hoke Smith presided over its historic unveiling on November 29, 1910. Photo by Cholly Minton

  It was beside the outdoor baptismal font at Friendship Baptist Church that a woman and three men were lynched in 1912. Photo courtesy of Deborah Dawson

  Hamilton residence of the Beall, Mobley, and Williams families from the 1850s until the 1990s.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  At the top of my gratitude list is my family—my sister Barbara, son Brad, granddaughter Fallon, nephew Ben, cousins Bill, Bobbie, Jennifer, Em, Cholly, Sallie, Diane, Peggy, Alex, Deborah, Betty, Tommy, Tommy, Jr., and Mack. They gave me family stories and photos, hugs, a hot meal, and a good bed at the end of a long day. They listened and often urged me on. More important, they provided psychological space to discover what I would and ears that listened quietly to my tales.

  Special thanks for invaluable editing advice along the way from dear friends Barbara Mowat, Suzannah Lessard, and
Vincent Virga.

  There are more friends, who have stuck with me through these many years, cheered me on, and reminded me of my reasons for writing this book. These include Randy Gamble, Dorothy Sauber, Kaia Svien, Bob Lyman, Margaret Veerhoff, James McCourt, Carole Look, Pat Moore, Celia Morris, Elizabeth Hagerman, Patsy Sims, Bob Cashdollar, Deanna Marquart, Alec Dubro, Kim Fellner, Noel Brennan, Alison Day, Patricia Gray, Rae Bayer, Karyn Fair, Arlene Gottfried, my 10th Street neighbors, Kevin Flood, Jimmy McCourt, my Hill Lunch bunch, Bill Turnley and family, the Coming to the Table folks, and all you out there who “know who you are.”

  I am forever grateful to those who provided me with a peaceful “room of her own”: Blue Mountain Center, Lillian E. Smith Center for Creative Arts, the Apple Farm Community, Sweetapple, the Turnley cottage at Good Harbor Bay, and the Library of Congress for its generous gift of an office for many years. Heartfelt thanks to the Sapelo Foundation, which supported me with a grant in the early stages of this work.

  I could not have undertaken this investigation without the resources of many archives and their staffs, including the Library of Congress, Columbus State University Archives, the Georgia Department of Archives and History, the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and East Point, Georgia, and Stacy Haralson, clerk of court in Harris County.

  Many thanks to researchers Barbara Stock and Gwen Lott, editors Carole Edwards and Alice Falk, graphic designer Sally Murray James. For excellent advice along the road: Steve Bright, Bernice Reagon, Joe Hendricks, John Egerton, Randy Loney, Fitz Brundage, Rose Gladney, Woody Beck, Carolyn Karcher, Diane McWhorter, and Laura Wexler. For more wise counsel, Pamela Wilson, Bobbie Holt, Jane Bishop, Kay Koch, Sandy Geller, Bruce Heustis, and Jim Hollis.

  To my incredible agent Charlotte Sheedy goes my deepest appreciation and admiration for so graciously sharing her wisdom when mine ran out and for always being there; and to my Simon & Schuster editors Malaika Adero, Peter Borland, Daniella Wexler, and Carla Benton, my sincere appreciation for making it all come together.

  I wish to pay profound tribute to the many Harris County elders, the “Ancient Mariners,” who so graciously welcomed me onto their porches, into their parlors, and unflinchingly shared stories that had haunted them for years. To them and to my dear Edna, the “black mamma” who “raised me up right” and told me at the end that she was glad that I was “different,” I dedicate this book.

  karen branan is a veteran journalist who has written for newspapers, magazines, the stage, and television for almost fifty years. Her work has appeared in Life, Mother Jones, Ms., Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, the Star Tribune (Minneapolis), the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and on PBS, CBS, ABC, CBC, BBC, and CNN.

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  NOTES

  Epigraph

  Ancient Negro folk curse quoted by Alice Walker in “Only Justice Can Stop a Curse,” In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (Harvest Books, 1983), 1.

  Prologue

  “Four Negroes Lynched”: Atlanta Constitution, January 23, 1912, 1.

  “a Well-to-do Planter”: Atlanta Constitution, January 23, 1912, 1.

  Chapter One: My Sweet Village

  “Red and yellow / Black and white”: “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” words by Clare Herbert Woolston (1856–1927), sung to the 1864 Civil War tune “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp” by George Fredrick Root.

  Chapter Two: Plantation Politics

  Georgia history information from James C. Cobb, Georgia Odyssey: A Short History of the State (University of Georgia Press, 2008); Columbus history from Nancy Telfair [Louise Jones Dubose], A History of Columbus, Georgia, 1828–1928 (Historical Publishing, 1929).

  Harris County and Hamilton history from the Organ, the Enterprise, and the Hamilton Journal; Louise Calhoun Barfield, History of Harris County, Georgia, 1827–1961 (Columbus Office Supply, 1961).

  Williams family information from family charts prepared by Welda Williams Shuford and Britain Williams Walton; Hadley genealogy from charts provided by Louise Murrah Teel and Clara Bailey Daniel.

  “to point an argument”: Hamilton Female College program dated July 4, 1858, Chipley Historical Center, Pine Mountain, GA.

  “moral, intelligent, and refined citizens”: recruitment brochure, Chipley Historical Society.

  Slave information: 1840, 1850, 1860 U.S. Censuses, Slave Schedule, Harris County, Georgia; Last Will and Testament of Britain Williams, Inventory and Appraisement Sales, Returns of Vouchers, Book 53, 47–49, Harris County, Georgia, microcopy DDC-9L, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Morrow. Other estate matters: September Term of Ordinary Court of Harris County, 1863, Harris County Courthouse.

  “1 negro man Dick”: Estate Listing for Britain Williams, Inventory and Appraisement Sales, 1863.

  “The man must be a prodigy”: Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: Writings: Autobiography/Notes on the State of Virginia/Public and Private Papers/Addresses/Letters (Library of America, 1984).

  Slaves in Greene County: Jonathan M. Bryant, How Curious a Land: Conflict and Change in Greene County, Georgia, 1850–1885, 2nd ed. (University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

  “In the buck”: Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, vol. 4, Georgia Narratives, part 2 (Library of Congress, 1941), 25.

  Dr. E. C. Hood strings freedman up by thumbs: National Archives, Freedmen’s Bureau papers, A.C. 632 8 Mar 1866, M1903 Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1872, RG105.

  “J. Curtis Beall, a mulatto”: I surmise, given the heights he attained and the white protection he was afforded, that J. Curtis Beall was an offspring of a white Beall. He became active early in the Republican Party, twice ran unsuccessfully for the legislature in the 1880s, and served on the Georgia Republican state central committee for several decades. White newspapers, calling him “spirited,” reported regularly on his efforts, mostly omitting the usual derisiveness accorded most black Republicans. Only in 1880 did Columbus papers seek to cast him as a “dangerous” character, who “works crowds into a frenzy,” when reporting his support for a white Democrat for governor. In 1882, Georgia Republicans passed Beall’s resolution to support no office seeker who did not favor the inclusion of blacks on juries. In that same year, President Chester Arthur appointed him postmaster in nearby Lagrange. A year later, however, Beall was replaced with no explanation. The next year he attended the Republican National Convention in Chicago as a Georgia delegate. His reputation in the Republican Party remained untarnished and his leadership in its ineffectual Georgia chapter remained steady into the 1890s. I found no information about his death.

  George Ashburn information: New York Times, April 6, 1868; Atlanta Constitution, July 4, 1868.

  First biracial vote: Returns of Qualified Voters under Reconstruction Act of 1867, vol. 84, District 25, microcopy RG4-360, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Morrow.

  Camilla massacre: Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (Harper & Row, 1988), 342.

  “state constitutional convention”: Journal of the Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the People of Georgia Held in the City of Atlanta in the Months of December, 1867, and January, February, and March, 1868. And Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted (E. H. Pughe Book and Job Printer, 1868).

  “Sam Williams remained in office”: A plaque on the grounds of the Georgia Capital in Atlanta
memorializes those first African American legislators, including Samuel Williams.

  “gang system”: Susan Eva O’Donovan, Becoming Free in the Cotton South (Harvard University Press, 2010), details ways in which southwest Georgia planters drove their workers in freedom more viciously than most.

  “at this trough”: Another illicit source of family wealth, lawyers using their positions to cheat clients out of land, was described by Lewfay Mobley, speaking of his great-grandfather James Monroe Mobley, in an interview (Columbus State University Archives, 1972).