from Stop Dat Moda: A Canvas of Colors or Elevating the Culture

Lucille Jones's Stop Dat Moda (1997, Literary World Publications, 1ser Electronic) is a modernist folkloristic novel. Excerpts have been published in Callaloo ("Minnie B. and Duney"), BOP (originally published at Brown University) and Obsidian. Says the blurb on a privately printed copy of the novel, "Stop Dat Moda uses every technique from oral tradition—storytelling, slave narrative, folklore, legend, tall tale, jokes, riddles, songs, etc.—to create a richly textured novel set in Kentucky in the 1920s and 1930s. A multi-racial canvas of characters, men, women, and children—Kate, Olga, Ijacks, Mag, Max and Maxine, Big Mike, Mr. Gonzales, Santurna, Inez, Hi Tyson, The Jensens, Dang Ober, Nat Perrison and many others—also create a vivid and richly textured world."

Stop Dat Moda is an historical novel set in Hickman Settlement, an imaginary settlement in Central Kentucky. However, Hickman Settlement is based on Warthumtown (or Wathamtown), located in Woodford County, Kentucky. Warthumtown, like a number of similar towns in the South,was founded by a New World African. Peter Warthum (sometimes spelled Watham), after emancipation from slavery, purchased land from his former owner that became Warthumtown. Peter Warthum was Lucille Jones's maternal great-grandfather, the grandfather of Amanda Warthum Wilson, her mother. Says Jones, "The land is no longer in the family. But there are similar histories in other similar settlements in the South." That is, throughout the South among New World African landowners and in other countries, like in Latin America, for example, whenever the culturally, socially, and politically dominant groups covet someone's land, they usually find ways of obtaining it that appear legal on the books or in the official documents. I do not know the whole story here, and only have one document that records anything of Wathamtown, an agreement between Amanda Wilson and the City of Midway, Kentucky, drawn up by D.L. Thornton, an attorney-at-law in Versailles, Kentucky. Says the document recorded November 14, 1949, in excerpt: "Witnesseth: That for and in consideration of the mutual promises hereinafter expressed, the party of the first part, Amanda Wilson [the name of Kate Watham, Amanda Wilson's mother, is scratched out and Amanda Wilson's name written in as the surviving heir of John Watham] (in her own right) and as (agent for all the heirs) of John Watham, deceased, does now and hereby let and lease unto the City of Midway, Kentucky, that tract of land containing 7+ acres, more or less, on the North side of the Spring Station Road in what is known as Wathamtown about two (2) miles from the City of Midway, Kentucky, and the same land owned by the late John Watham at the time of his death. . . . Said tract of land is leased to the City of Midway, Kentucky, for a period of five years and the annual rental of Twenty ($20) Dollars per acre. . . ." This is the only document I have which tells the location of the land which Peter and John Watham had intended to be kept for their heirs. However, Hickman Settlement, the interracial Kentucky Settlement founded by a New World African is a re-imagining of Warthumtown (Wathamtown). I used to imagine buying back that land that Peter Warthum had wanted kept for his African progeny as their legacy in the New World. It would have to be bought back, of course, since all legal documents would state that it was obtained legally rather than illegally. Many slaves throughout the South purchased land after emancipation, but when whites decided they wanted the land, they simply took it; this should be read as distinct from the current controversy over foreclosures on black farmland which often cannot be distinguished from foreclosures on small farmers in general. Or perhaps it is just the "cover of legality." For example, there is an historic African-American theatre, the Lyric, which had been owned by an African-American company that wanted to...