This story is part of the ongoing Civil Wrongs project by WKNO in Memphis and in collaboration with the Institute for Public Service Reporting and Report for America.
Though rural America is often used interchangeably with “white” America, the number of people of color living in rural areas has increased in the last decade from one-fifth to about a quarter, according to the Brookings Institution.
Growing racial diversity in small towns has led to efforts to improve racial understanding there. The Weakley County Reconciliation Project in Northwest Tenn. is one such group.
During a recent virtual call, discussion leader Joyce Washington led six attendees in a group meditation, inviting participants “to sit in all that love and peace, compassion and empathy and forgiveness.”
They were about to dive into an hour-plus conversation about the book “Biased” by Jennifer Eberhardt. One chapter debunks a pseudo-science myth that for centuries claimed white bodies were physically superior.
It’s an intense, emotional topic, and the monthly ritual before each meeting helps set the tone for deep listening and accepting each other, even if they disagree.
Washington lives in Martin, in northwest Tennessee, and is one of the founders of the Weakley County Reconciliation Project, which began in 2018.
“It’s about working through the pain,” Washington said. “It’s not about pushing the pain down, it’s not about ignoring the pain. It’s about being able to open your heart and accept what is and was, and then be willing to say, ‘OK, how do we move forward and be better?’”
85 percent of Weakley County’s population of 33,000 is white, according to census data. Black people make up 8 percent with other races at 3 or less.
In addition to the book group, the Weakley County Reconciliation Project holds monthly community meetings. Members share experiences with race and learn about America’s past to move toward racial healing.
For some Black members of the group like Robert Nunley, who grew up in the area, it was hard to shift his view of the region. To his mind it felt stuck in the 1960s, when he and others were among the first to integrate local schools. To him, healing has to be deliberate.
“And if it’s not facilitated and you don’t have people being intentional in small communities and larger communities, there’s a price to pay for that,” he said.
And then there are white members of the group. Linda Ramsey is 74 and from neighboring Obion County. Growing up, none of her family members ever talked about the Civil Rights Movement unfolding all around them. She still gets emotional remembering how her grandmother put a stop to her friendship with a Black girl when she was 11.
“And I never got to be with Juanita again, and it just broke my heart,” Ramsey said. “I don’t think today even folks realized how people of my age were uneducated about so many things. I didn’t know about Juneteenth till about three years ago. You know, I never heard of it.”
This year, the group held its third annual Juneteenth celebration at Discover Park of America in Union City. It’s grown from 100 to about 300 people.
Booths for vendors and community organizations flanked the museum’s outdoor stage. Music was constant, with one performer noting it was rare to see Black life celebrated in the broader northwest Tennessee community.
The museum’s president and CEO, Scott Williams, said before the event partnership began, he’d been observing their efforts from afar.
So, when the opportunity came to host, “it was a no-brainer,” Williams said. “My personal opinion is, you know, my museum that I work at now has to be a place where people can come together and feel comfortable having these conversations without anyone being, you know, feeling threatened.”
There are still obstacles, though. When the group tried to memorialize a lynching victim in Weakley County’s town of Greenfield, they met resistance.
Washington said that Black residents were reluctant to dredge up the past, fearing white residents would oppose the memorial. Their livelihoods depend on them.
“And they are not willing to push back because pushing back creates problems that most of them don’t want to have to deal with,” Washington said.
Race and labor historian Melinda Meador attributes the unwillingness to a geographic divide — a difference between town and country. Her family has farmed in Weakley County for generations. She says grassroots efforts to bridge divides need to have leaders countywide, not just in towns like Martin, the biggest in the area.
“There is a social class structure here that people don’t acknowledge,” Meador said. “And a lot of that division is between town people and rural people. People still look down on farmers.
Meador has researched the area’s racial violence in historical archives. She found 41 lynchings had occurred in the region in the 50 years after the Civil War.
“People seemed to simply believe they had the right to take the law into their own hands, period,” she said. “And they did it freely.”
Even if some change at home is challenging, members continue to study the broader story of racial terror in America. Last fall, they traveled to Montgomery, Ala. to visit the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
Several students from UT Martin, including sophomore Madison Jones, joined them. She said the trip cemented her desire to become a lawyer and to fight the racial discrimination she has faced.
“This is all about the history of racism and how I can be an impact on the justice system,” Jones said. “And that even though that’s the past, I can be the future.”
And to Washington, healing wounds of the past so that the future can be better is what the Weakley County Reconciliation Project is all about.
“This work is not for the faint of heart,” she said. “I think what’s important is to remain visible and consistent. And you have to not get discouraged. And it’s easy to do that in this work.”
More Civil Wrongs Stories
The Elaine Massacre: a small town in Arkansas deals with the ghosts of century-old racial brutality.
Reflections of a Massacre: Just after the Civil War, a mob attack in Memphis would shape Reconstruction.
The Lynching of Ell Persons: Accused of a grizzly axe murder, a Black man is killed in a notorious public lynching in a rural area just off what is today Summer Avenue.
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