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  • The Garden of Eden: The Story of a Freedmen’s Community in Texas by Drew Sanders
  • Michael Frawley
The Garden of Eden: The Story of a Freedmen’s Community in Texas. By Drew Sanders. (Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2015. Pp. 220. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.)

While many historians have attempted to explore on a large scale what life was like for African Americans from the end of the Civil War until today, Drew Sanders, in his book The Garden of Eden: The Story of a Freedman’s Community in Texas, does it on a personal scale, providing a perspective that is often lost in larger works. Sanders tells the tale of his family, and other related families, who settled in a community called Garden of Eden near Fort Worth. He explores the struggles of the community in navigating the Jim Crow era in Texas while also showing the importance of community and self-sufficiency to survival and prosperity for African American communities in the South.

Sanders is a member of this community. He brings first-hand knowledge of the subject to his work while adding an emotional element that shows how important a community like Garden of Eden is to its members. He begins with the Loyds, who were brought to the area as slaves before the Civil War, then weaves in the stories of others, such as the Cheneys [End Page 266] and his own Sanders family. All of these families intermarried, creating an extended kinship group that is the backbone of Garden of Eden. Moreover, these early inhabitants kept close relationships with the white families they had been connected to, which helped them get their footing and form the community during Reconstruction.

Sanders takes his story through the Jim Crow era and the civil rights movement up to attempts to reinvigorate the area today. Garden of Eden formed a safety net for its inhabitants that allowed them to navigate the trials and tribulations of American society, so much so that the major issues of the day never seem to touch the people about which Sanders writes. Moreover, Sanders highlights how certain members of the community, such as Dollie Cheney, passed family stories through generations, serving as an institutional memory and providing strength through a shared heritage that all members were aware of and could draw upon. In recent times, the community has faced many problems, including encroachment by businesses, community members moving away, and run-ins with the law. But today there is a major effort to restore the area, ensuring that the people who can trace their lineage to Garden of Eden will still be able to return.

The only drawback of this study is also one of its strengths. The author so tightly focuses on the community that the reader can lose track of the time period and have difficultly placing events in the greater stream of American history. In the end, though, this is a wonderful source of primary information on an African American community in Texas. This work expands our understanding of how African Americans created their own communities, leaning on one another to make a mark in the larger world.

Michael Frawley
University of Texas at the Permian Basin
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