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Appendix฀A:฀ ฀ Methods Although this study reflects rural Hancock as a whole, it focuses on three socially distinctive sections in the county. Much of Hancock’s best land, lying in a wide horizontal swath across the center of the county, was controlled predominantly by the wealthiest planters. This zone was distinguished by large plantations, impoverished and almost exclusively black tenants and wage laborers, and relatively few small landowners. The southern tip and eastern edge of the county contained many white tenants,often intermixed with black tenants.A high concentration of black and white small landowners could be found in the northern part of the county,which,with few exceptions, was home to the county’s only wealthy black landowners as well. Each area seemed to have its own patterns in race relations. When starting this oral project I had hoped to systematically interview survivors or immediate descendants from a random sample drawn from three different Hancock militia districts in 1910. (Georgia counties are divided into militia districts for purposes of polls, census, and taxation.) Doing so would have given me a cross-section of the experiences of Hancock citizens from the period under study—including the testimonies of those whose experiences led them to leave the county, something I might not have learned speaking only with lifelong residents. I enlisted assistance from SamuelWilliams,a retiredAfricanAmerican county extension agent,and David Dyer, who had served in a number of county positions, to locate three communities that would best represent Hancock’s variation. They steered me toward the districts around the villages of Powelton, Devereux, and Linton, for the northern, middle, and southern sectors of the county, respectively. After obtaining a random sample from the 1910 census manuscript for these areas, I set to work locating descendants, working primarily through churches, school reunions, and networks springing from previous contacts. As I read my list to different community elders during the early 1990s, some, such as Solomon Harper and 08.APP.225-238_Schu.indd฀฀฀225 1/4/05฀฀฀9:22:14฀AM 226฀ .฀ appendix฀a Newton Boyer, displayed uncanny memory in naming the children in most families as soon as I read the names of the household’s “head.” Significantly, however, few blacks and very few whites remembered many long-gone names from across the race line. Additionally, recall in some sectors of the county far outstripped others. Not surprisingly,the relatively stable black and white small farmowners around Powelton remembered far more names and offered more leads than did the planters and black and white sharecroppers around Linton. The great disappointment proved to be Devereux,where many of the poorest inhabitants from eighty years ago seem to have been forgotten completely. Solomon Harper, who remembered more than anyone else in Devereux, helped me understand why they were so hard to find. “Dead and gone,” he kept repeating, as I recited the names of families, “dead and gone.” Some families had literally died out, leaving no descendants. For the rest, entire extended families—many of whom he remembered well—had moved to Detroit, New York, Cleveland, and so on, leaving only the oldest behind. Many of them never returned to Hancock once their rural grandparents had died. Furthermore, I discovered that many of the black sharecroppers whom I located through friends and extended family in Hancock lived farther away than my budget allowed me to travel. Finally, in the age of telemarketing, I guess that most people share my general dislike of unsolicited phone conversations with strangers. When referred by family members, I called a few elderly contacts who I believed had critical information on a specific topic, and in these short interviews I often found success. Nevertheless, I did not think that calling “out of the blue” for extended conversations with elderly migrants would prove to be a good experience for either of us. It is too hard to establish trust, too tiring for them,and sometimes too difficult for me to understand the varied Hancock accents without visual cues. I did make interviewing excursions out of Georgia to Baltimore, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C. For the most part, however, I gave up this part of the original project. Still, the endeavor taught me that Hancock’s black sharecroppers are widely scattered across the country,whereas most landowners and white sharecroppers seem not to have moved far from Hancock. I soon realized that without corrections, my data would be skewed toward more affluent families. I thus began...

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