Heads up readers! This column was hastily written to meet my self-imposed deadline. In desperation, I made several dashes to my mailbox hoping that Melvin Ely’s book “Isreal on the Appomattox” had finally arrived. My plan was to speed read what I figured was a short book – 100 pages max maybe – and extract nuggets from it to flesh out the piece you’re now reading. Well, as poet Robert Burns once wrote, “The best laid plans of mouse and men” often go awry. So here I am, self-imposed deadline met, sans my hoped for nuggets. Stuff happens, huh?
Okay to Isreal Hill.
I came across the Israel Hill bit of African American history on February 5th during a visit with 15 others to the Moton Museum in Farmville, Virginia. This new knowledge confirmed to me – and others on the trip – how little we knew about Black history in the state of Virginia and, disturbingly, something that took place less than a two-hour drive from where we were all born.
Huh? Upset! Embarrassed! Chagrined! – who on Earth do I blame for this gap in my knowledge of my own history? Incompetent former teachers? Racially biased history books? The forlorned man in the mirror? Or maybe all three.
Anyway, there’re two things I want to say here. First, given that we are well into African American History Month 2025 and – if the current administration has its way – this heritage month may no longer be celebrated on the national level in the future.
Second, given the uncertainties of our histories during the turbulent road ahead, yours truly and many others intend to double down and continue digging up and publishing our histories no matter how uncomfortable. If we don’t, who will?
So, how did we get to this conversation?
“Israel Hill? Say more please.
That was the question and request posed that lined up on the faces of many of us as we listened virtually mesmerized by the Moton Museum executive director who gave us a splendid history of the museum and the events that led to its founding. Clear evidence from his experience in answering this question many times before, his answer was unrehearsed, succinct and authoritative. Thus, his overview of the history of Israel Hill got us thirsting for more as we jotted down notes for later follow up.
But first to put this into historical perspective, President Thomas Jefferson, who owned over 600 slaves during his life, denied that whites and freed Blacks could live together in harmony. After all Jefferson was a strong believer in the inherent inferiority of Black people as well as an ardent foe of miscegenation – sexual contact between Blacks and whites; that despite the fact that he fathered children by Sally Hemmings, one his slaves, a reality that maybe in his mind exempted him from his own beliefs.
As an interesting aside, like Thomas Jefferson, the late South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, who made opposition to racial integration the centerpiece of his career had no qualms about “integrating” his family with a 16-year-old Black girl he impregnated, something that happened more than we dare to realize back then. Thus, it seems that Messrs. Jefferson and Thurmond, the foes of integration did a fair amount of, shall we say, racial “integrating” on their own, huh!
I’ll leave it right there.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Thomas Jefferson’s nephew Richard Randolph not only disagreed with Uncle Thomas on Black and white relationships but made it possible by freeing ninety African American slaves to prove him wrong. Yummy, yummy, yummy, yours truly would love to have been a proverbial fly on the wall at Jefferson’s Monticello when that news broke.
Back to Israel Hill, an unincorporated community in Prince Edward County, Virginia along the Appomattox River. Founded in 1810 as a community for free Black people in the area, Israel Hill has since become part of Farmville, Virginia. The will of Richard Randolph emancipated all the slaves at his death in 1796. The will was executed by Judith Randolph after the death of her husband Richard who inherited land and slaves from his father. In the aftermath, newly freed Blacks and whites In Isreal Hill did business with one another and worked side by side.
Now the interesting thing is that while rigid segregation rules existed in nearby Farmville, no such restrictions existed in Israel Hill, a similar observation shared with me by “Mrs. Clara,” an 86-year-old woman who travelled with us to Farmville and who grew up in a rural Augusta County 125 miles north of Farmville.
Said she, “What I learned about Israel Hill reminded me about my upbringing, Whites and Blacks I grew up with took care of each other. We shared vegetables from each other’s gardens and the kids in the neighborhood played together without any problems.”
I’ll end with a historical connection between Israel Hill and, a two-hour drive away, Southampton County, Virginia, the latter the site of an armed slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. Like many Southerners during that time, afraid that Black people in Israel Hill would be motivated by the rebellion led by Nat Turner in nearby Southampton County in 1861, authorities in Farmville unarmed the Black folks in Israel Hill, sold them to people in Farmville, then returned proceeds from the sales to the Black people in Israel Hill.
Oh my, a closing heads up readers. The “Israel on the Appomattox” book finally arrived as I was writing this – in all of some 640 pages with 40 pages of footnotes. Well, so much for my ambitious plan to speed read the book to meet my self-imposed deadline.
So yes, you are spot on poet Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Count yours truly as a case study. Terry Howard is an award-winning writer, a contributing writer with the Chattanooga News Chronicle, The American Diversity Report, The Douglas County Sentinel, Blackmarket.com, the Augusta County Historical Society Bulletin and recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award, and third place winner of the Georgia Press Award.