Carolina Piedmont Country

Introduction

I N T R O D U C T I O N The drive through the beautiful autumn-tinted countryside wasawelcome relief from the intense interview I had just conducted. Rounding a bend in the blacktop, I suddenly sawa rare sight in the Carolina Piedmont today. There, glittering in the late afternoon sun, wasa small field of cotton. The contrast of colors immediately struck me: the shimmering white cotton bolls, the brownish-black plants, the reddish-orange soil, the pale green pines beyond, and the clear blue sky above. The colors blended together like strands in cloth: a cloth spun from cotton and woven through time. While the folklife of the Carolina Piedmont has deep and diverse roots, cotton production has significantlyinfluencedit for the past century, forming a frame upon which to weave more recent threads of tradition. Following the Civil War, the loom consisted of small cotton farms near quiet crossroads towns, with a warp of cultural groups and social interaction, through which have been woven fibers of behaviors and beliefs from both Anglo and African Americans. Later, the introduction of cotton mills modified the weaving process by adding new industries to the loom and new groups to the warp. After World War II came contrasting materials such as those of northerners, further changing the texture of the cloth. Today, the folklife of the Carolina Piedmont consists of a tapestry of overlaid traditions from a varietyof fibers, which yet retains the older pattern. Thisbook examines the way in which the loom of Carolina folklife became established after the Civil War and then reviews the process that, through the course of time, blended a variety of traditions into contemporary Piedmont folklife. Beginning with the post-Reconstruction period about 1880, AngloAmerican Piedmonters invigorated cotton production with an antebellum set of values and behaviors. At the same time, the recently freed AfricanAmerican slaves retained their own separate traditions, which, because of legally and socially reinforced racism, remained somewhat separate from those of their white neighbors. These groups9 beliefs and practices became irretrievably interwoven, as black and white sharecroppers worked side by side, as white townspeople hired black cooks, and as black midwivesdelivered babies alongside white doctors. Despite overt and covert racism, in fact, this commingling of African- and Anglo-American folklife traditions has continued to this day. While it is thus possible to separate somespecific xt xii Introduction group beliefs and behaviors, in order to appreciate Piedmont folklife in general, one must recognize the thorough blending of black and white ideas that has today created an extremely rich and colorful fabric. The "things" of the folk, folklorist John Vlach argued, are typical, commonplace , ordinary, and familiar; they are also patterned and duplicated over and over again. In short, folklife reflects the commonviewsandbehaviors of ordinary people. Specifically,folklorist William Ferris wrote, southern folklife includes oral lore such as sermons, tales, and music; customary behaviors such as planting and harvesting, food preparation and consumption , family reunions, rites ofpassage, and religious meetings; and material culture such as folk architecture, folk arts and crafts, and folk medicine and healing. These practices, of course, are not exclusive to the South or to the Piedmont region. However, the region itself gives a special meaning to these traditions by defining the boundaries within which these customs and ideas have taken shape. The South, geographer Carl Sauer stated, "is a major cultural division of the United States, perhaps its most strikingly outstanding cultural unit." Sociologist Rupert Vance continued: "Common traditions, a similar ancestry, common economic interests, and similar climate help to account for its unity." More specifically, as educator Carl Epting explained, "the climate of Maine will never produce cotton, neigher [sic] will the environment of South Carolina produce aYankee." In less deterministic words, residents within the Carolina Piedmont share what folklorist BarbaraAllen termed "a sense of place," a distinctive regional identity expressed through cultural elements such as folklife. Others as well have noted the essential connection between a regional sense of place and the folk expressions ofthose in that place. Regionalculture, Allen suggested, "provides the vehicle for inhabitants to express both personally and collectively their sense of regional identity and regional consciousness ." In this way,regional folklife reflects the thoughts, views,and behaviors of those within that region. Regional culture, Allen continued, is formed by the geographical features of the place and shaped by the inhabitants, whose lives are in part influenced by the land's physiology. Of course, as Sauer cautioned, people also transform the landscapes that they...