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Preface and Acknowledgments this book spans history and ethnography, moving back and forth between the ethnographic present and multiple points in the past. Drawing on spoken recollections, published and unpublished documents, as well as architectural and landscape forms, I document the history of powerful myths about freedom and unfreedom. I simultaneously attempt to reconstruct historical happenings that these evocative, proliferating narratives may have obscured. As such, this study has been enabled and supported by a great range of communities, institutions, and persons, whom I can only begin to acknowledge or thank adequately. The Emory University Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life (Alfred E. Sloan Foundation), the Emory Office of University-Community Partnership, and the Norman Fund of Brandeis University funded field and archival research for this project. Parts of chapter 5 were published, in a somewhat different form, as “The Other Side of Paradise: Glimpsing Slavery in the University’s Utopian Landscapes,” in Southern Spaces (May 2010). Parts of chapter 9 were published, in a somewhat different form, as “Saying Something Now: Documentary Work and the Voices of the Dead,” in Michigan Quarterly Review 44, no. 4 (Fall 2005). Permission to republish is gratefully acknowledged. I remain deeply grateful to my students at Oxford College of Emory University during 1999–2001, and to our many community partners in Oxford and Covington, Georgia, including Allen Memorial United Methodist Church in Oxford, the historically African American congregations of Rust Chapel United Methodist Church and Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Oxford, and St. Paul’s African Methodist Episcopal Church, Bethlehem Baptist Church, and Grace United Methodist Church in Covington. Our shared labor restoring and documenting the historic African American sections of the Oxford City Cemetery has been the enduring inspiration for this study. This work is also anchored in the deep wisdom and historical insights of Newton County’s African American community historians , including Mary Gaiter McKlurkin, Mildred Wright Joyner, Sarah Francis Hardeman, Sarah Francis Mitchell Wise, and Emogene Williams. In the local faith community, Rev. Avis Williams, Rev. Hezekiah Ben- xii Preface and Acknowledgments ton, Deacon Forrest and Sharon Sawyer, and Deacon Richard and Polly Johnson have been valued sources of support, historical knowledge, and encouragement. State Representative Tyrone Brooks has been a firm supporter of this work and a champion of social justice initiatives in the region . Virgil and Louise Eady shared remarkable family papers that cast the history of slavery in the community in new light. John Pliny “J. P.” Godfrey Jr. has been a tireless and intrepid partner in all these inquiries and allied activist adventures; I cannot imagine how this book could have been written without his insight, curiosity, optimism, and friendship. In Dallas County, Alabama, I am grateful for the support and generosity of the Wayman Chapel ame church membership and to the many other residents of Summerfield, Valley Grande, and Selma who kindly gave of their time, family records, and knowledge. Alston and Ann Fitts, Brenda J. Smothers, and Sister Afriye Wekandodis have been invaluable and generous guides to Selma’s storied history. In Augusta, Georgia, I am grateful to Joyce Law, Travis Halloway, and the congregations of Springfield Baptist Church, St. John United Methodist Church, and Trinity Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, all of whom are linked to the story of Miss Kitty in different ways. In Iowa, Doris Secor generously welcomed us to Keosauqua and its Underground Railroad history; Lynn Walker Webster kindly guided me in uncovering Buckner-Boyd family history and the related history of the ame church in the state. In Rockford , Illinois, Rev. Virgil Woods, pastor of Allen Chapel ame Church, kindly guided me to the local descendants of Miss Kitty. I wish to think the staff at many institutions, including Jane M. Aldrich at the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture (College of Charleston); Sharon Avery of the Iowa State Archives; the Georgia State Archives; the South Carolina Department of Archives and History; the Alabama Department of Archives of History; the Arkansas History Commission and State Archives; the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Library (marbl) of Emory University, especially Ginger Cain and Randall Burkett; Kitty McNeil and her staff at the Oxford College of Emory University library; Debra Madera at the Pitts Theology Library, Emory University; Probate and Superior Court staff in Newberry (South Carolina), Covington, (Georgia), Dallas County (Alabama), Augusta–Richmond County (Georgia), Morgan County (Georgia), and Greene County (Georgia); Nic Butler at the Charleston, South Carolina , public library; the public libraries in Newberry (South...

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