My friends - Today, I am sending along another segment taken from Professor Gordon Wilson's little book entitled, "Fidelity Folks". Fidelity was an earlier name for New Concord in Calloway County. Professor Wilson relates, in his inimitable style, what it was like growing up in Fidelity. This segment is titled, "Fourth Sunday in May at Mount Zion", and relates the annual homecoming of many of the African-Americans of the area to the Mount Zion Church every year on the fourth Sunday of May. It is also something of an interesting commentary on the relationship of the races to one another in that earlier time and its narrative should be read with that context in mind. Tomorrow, we will move over to Hickman County. -B ==================================================================== FIDELITY FOLKS -Gordon Wilson Fourth Sunday in May at Mount Zion "As the Negroes were a definite part of our lives and had lived in the Jackson Purchase since its settlement, it would be unfair to them and to us to omit them from this picture of the old-fashioned village. They were nurses for us when we were small, they washed and ironed our clothes, they helped us clean house, and in many homes they were cooks and housekeepers. We grew up with Negro children quite as casually as with white children. We "went in a-washing" with the Negro boys in Beechy Fork or Blood River and vied with them in sports. Though we had separate schools, we loved to quiz our darker friends about what went on in the school at Mt. Zion and were surprised to find that they were taught the same things that we were and often quite as well. Negro mammies saw to it that their white charges knew where the line between white and colored should be drawn. Not to draw it properly would have branded us as "'poor' white trash," about the worst thing that any person could be called. Father as the country doctor knew the Negroes well, from the most honest and industrious to the "low-down." He brought their children into the world and doctored their ills throughout their sometimes hectic lives. Some of the Negroes owned land and had other Negroes for tenants; others were shiftless and desperately poor. But a great bond held them together, the bond of a common history and a common menial position. Nothing in their whole history near Fidelity ever impressed me so much as did their annual homecoming at Mt. Zion on the Fourth Sunday in May. When Marse Peter Rowlett came to the Purchase from North Carolina, he settled between Fidelity and the Tennessee River. In 1848 he established on his plantation a tobacco factory and worked his own and his neighbors' slaves there in the winter months. He bought up all the tobacco in that area and manufactured twists, plugs, and sacks of smoking tobacco on a rather large scale. After the Civil War the ex-slaves remained, and others flocked from distant areas to work for hire in the factory. In my boyhood Marse Peter died and was succeeded by Marse Jeffy. It soon became evident that older things had passed and that it would be better to have the factory on the railroad rather than several miles away from the declining river traffic. When the factory was moved to the county seat, the Negroes followed en masse, so that only a few who owned farms or were not connected with the factory remained in the neighborhood. Long before the exodus there had been a custom of having an annual big day on the fourth Sunday in May; this custom was continued, becoming now a homecoming for those who had moved to the county seat or even farther away. Before the days of automobiles all the horse-drawn vehicles owned by the livery stables at the county seat were rented long in advance. The few remaining Negroes in the old community prepared for the big day by butchering pigs, and sheep, and goats, in addition to preparing the usual fried chickens and all the other delicacies of meeting all day and dinner on the ground. New clothes were bought or old ones carefully washed and mended. You could tell by the tunefulness of the hired hands that great things were being anticipated. There was no other topic of conversation for days in advance. Early on the morning of the big day the procession started down the "big road," the one leading from Fidelity to Tennessee River: pedestrians, often carrying in their hands their precious shoes, to be put an at the branch just before they reached the church; buggies, farm wagons with spring seats or split-bottomed chairs for the adults and quilts thrown over hay for the younger ones, surries, double rigs from the livery stables; horseback riders, frequently two or more on a horse. To give the occasion thorough respect and safety, an officer of the law would be invited to spend the day there. The women saw to it that he got an abundance of fried chicken and barbecued lamb and cake. Only rarely was there any disturbance, when some bad white boy had come seeking trouble or when two colored boys had staged a razor battle. The officer was largely for form's sake, but something embarrassing might have occurred if he had not been there. All day the preaching went on, with a brief intermission for dinner on the ground. just like our dinners at Sulphur Springs and Mt. Carmel. And in the late afternoon we children watched the long line of dust-covered vehicles filing back along our main road. For a week or more afterwards we heard various comments on the occasion, for the hired hands acted it all out for us. They imitated the preachers, or sneered at some hypocritical or worldly sister who was too obviously dressed, or shouted like Sister Lucy, or prayed like Brother Blanton, to the great delight of us children, who were forbidden by our stern Scotch-Irish father to go near the Negro church on this occasion. How often since I left Fidelity have I thought of this annual event and how much it reveals of the faithfulness of these black neighbors of ours! The older ones had grown up in slavery and had found in their church life a way out. From the hard work in the new ground or the factory they had come to the little old, church to feel what can never be described by any one not gifted with the Negro's imagination and tropical fervor." ==========================================================================