Boykin, also known as Gee's Bend, is an
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
majority community and
census-designated place
A census-designated place (CDP) is a concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only.
CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counterparts of incorporated places, such ...
in a large bend of the
Alabama River
The Alabama River, in the U.S. state of Alabama, is formed by the Tallapoosa and Coosa rivers, which unite about north of Montgomery, near the town of Wetumpka.
The river flows west to Selma, then southwest until, about from Mobile, it un ...
in
Wilcox County,
Alabama
(We dare defend our rights)
, anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama"
, image_map = Alabama in United States.svg
, seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery
, LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville
, LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Al ...
.
[ As of the 2020 census, its population was 208. The Boykin ]Post Office
A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...
was established in the community in 1949 and remains active, servicing the 36723 ZIP code.
Gee's Bend was named for Joseph Gee, an early large land owner from Halifax County, North Carolina
Halifax County is a county located in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 48,622. Its county seat is Halifax.
Halifax County is part of the Roanoke Rapids, NC Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is al ...
who settled here in 1816. Gee brought 18 African American slaves with him and established a cotton plantation within the bend.
Demographics
2020 census
''Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race.''
History
Boykin is a block of land enclosed on three sides by the Alabama River, within a horseshoe shaped turn of the river named Gee's Bend. It is within the Black Belt of Alabama. The plantation started by Joseph Gee passed to his nephews Sterling and Charles Gee upon his death, along with 47 slaves. The brothers then sold it to their relative Mark H. Pettway in 1845 to settle a $29,000 debt. About a year later, the Pettway family moved from North Carolina to Gee's Bend, bringing about one hundred slaves with them. When slavery was abolished many of them continued working for the Pettways as sharecroppers. Many of the black tenants Arthur Rothstein
Arthur Rothstein (July 17, 1915 – November 11, 1985) was an American photographer. Rothstein is recognized as one of America's premier photojournalists. During a career that spanned five decades, he provoked, entertained and informed the Americ ...
photographed were named Pettway. The white Pettway family owned the property until 1895, when it was sold to Adrian Sebastian Van de Graaff. Van de Graaff, a lawyer from Tuscaloosa
Tuscaloosa ( ) is a city in and the seat of Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, United States, on the Black Warrior River where the Gulf Coastal and Piedmont plains meet. Alabama's fifth-largest city, it had an estimated population of 1 ...
, then operated it as an absentee landlord
In economics, an absentee landlord is a person who owns and rents out a profit-earning property, but does not live within the property's local economic region. The term "absentee ownership" was popularised by economist Thorstein Veblen's 1923 book ...
.
The Resettlement Administration
The Resettlement Administration (RA) was a New Deal U.S. federal agency created May 1, 1935. It relocated struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal government. On September 1, 1937, it was succeeded by the Farm Se ...
reports of the 1930s emphasized the isolation of the community, describing the unreliable ferry
A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...
that approached from the east and the muddy road that entered from the west. The community had received public assistance from the Red Cross
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...
in 1932 and federal and state aid in 1933 and 1934. Beginning in 1935, the Resettlement Administration made agricultural loans and offered farm and home management advice. In 1937, the average rural rehabilitation loan to Gee's Bend families was $353.41, and the agency reports speak of possible cooperative undertakings; a building campaign for houses, barns, a schoolhouse, and a sawmill. Residents were also encouraged to replace oxen with more efficient mules.
The agency's programs at Gee's Bend continued after Rothstein's visit. During 1937, the agency purchased the old Pettway plantation, and two adjacent farms, totalling over 10,000 acres, for $122,000. The agency then sub-divided the land and rented it to 92 families. The following year, a nurse
Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life. Nurses may be differentiated from other health c ...
began working in the community, and construction began for a school, store, blacksmith
A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from #Other metals, other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such ...
shop, and cooperative cotton gin. By 1939 enough visible change had occurred for Roy Stryker
Roy Emerson Stryker (November 5, 1893 – September 27, 1975) was an American economist, government official, and photographer. He headed the Information Division of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the Great Depression, and launc ...
to send Marion Post Wolcott
Marion Post Wolcott (June 7, 1910 – November 24, 1990) was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression documenting poverty, the Jim Crow South, and deprivation.
Early life
Marion Post ...
to the community to photograph the signs of progress—to get the "after" pictures. During the 1940s, many families at Gee's Bend bought their farms from the government for an average of $1,400 each. This was about $2,600 less per farm than the eighty-eight units had cost the government, a subsidy that seems to have been fairly typical for Farm Security Administration projects of this type.
Gee's Bend continued to fascinate outsiders. In 1941, New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
speech professor and folklore collector Robert Sonkin Robert Sonkin (1910–1980) was an American scholar of speech, language, and music.
Life
Sonkin was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in the Bronx, New York, on December 25, 1910. Sonkin, who held degrees from City College (CCNY) (now the Ci ...
recorded music, recitations, discussion, and a Fourth of July
Independence Day (colloquially the Fourth of July) is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the Declaration of Independence, which was ratified by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, establishing the United States ...
program at Gee's Bend.
Ferry service
Gee's Bend became an important part of the mid-1960s Freedom Quilting Bee The Freedom Quilting Bee was a quilting cooperative based in Rehobeth, Alabama, that operated from 1966 until 2012. Originally begun by African American women as a way to generate income, some of the Bee's quilts were displayed in the Smithsonian In ...
, an offshoot of the Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
designed to boost family income and foster community development by selling handcrafts to outsiders. When large numbers of residents began taking the ferry
A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...
to the county seat of Camden to try to register to vote, local authorities reacted by eliminating ferry service in 1962. The lack of ferry service forced the residents of the community to drive more than an hour in order to conduct business in Camden. The people of Gee's Bend would be without a ferry service for forty-four years.
In the 1990s, Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of a ...
allocated money to pay for a ferry service and operating costs, but the project floundered when the Alabama Department of Transportation hired Hubert Bonner, a boat builder who had never built a ferry. Bonner's ferry, completed in 2004, got stuck on a sandbar and did not pass Coast Guard inspections. Alabama then hired Hornblower Marine Services
to rebuild the ferry that Bonner completed, fixing the problems to allow the ferry to pass the Coast Guard inspections. Hornblower completed retrofitting the ferry in May, 2006. The ferry service began anew on September 18, 2006, after dredging of the route was completed. By 2020, the ferry carries up to 15 cars and 132 passengers, and its diesel propulsion system has been Electric boat, replaced by electric motors and 270 kWh batteries being recharged at the docks.
Link to Google's Maps page showing the routes between Camden and the Gee's Bend community
Gee's Bend Quilts
Calvin Trillin
Calvin Marshall Trillin (born 5 December 1935) is an American journalist, humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist and novelist. He is a winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor (2012) and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts an ...
devoted a 1969 ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' piece to the opening of the community's new sewing center, paid for with quilting bee revenues. In 1983, an exhibit in Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
sponsored by the Alabama Humanities Foundation included several of Rothstein's photographs of Gee's Bend, and an oral history project at the Birmingham Public Library
The Birmingham Public Library, one of the largest library systems in the southeastern United States, consists of 19 branches and a main or central library located in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. The main library is composed of two buildings, th ...
sent new researchers and a photographer to document a new generation of residents. Nevertheless, the residents themselves have expressed some doubt that the attention they have received has improved their lot in life. In 1985, local historian Kathryn Tucker Windham
Kathryn Tucker Windham (née Tucker, June 2, 1918 – June 12, 2011) was an American storyteller, author, photographer, folklorist, and journalist. She was born in Selma, Alabama, and grew up in nearby Thomasville.
Tucker got her first writin ...
reported: "They say, 'Ain't nothing ever happened.'"
And then in 2002, an exhibition of their art work opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...
, organized by the Tinwood Alliance and everything changed. The show went to the Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude ...
in New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
and their art was hailed as "some of the most miraculous work of art America has produced." The show subsequently traveled to numerous other museums and the women have found gallery representation for their art. In June 2006, a second exhibition of quilts opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, also organized by the Tinwood Alliance, called "Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt." It traveled to seven additional museums, including the Smithsonian, the final stop of the nationwide tour was the Philadelphia Museum of Art at the end of 2008. Many of the quilt makers have become well known and have traveled extensively to talk about their community and their art. Many now have real incomes for the first time and their work, and its success, has helped to reunite and revive a dying community. In August 2006, the United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...
released a sheet of ten commemorative stamp
A commemorative stamp is a postage stamp, often issued on a significant date such as an anniversary, to honor or commemorate a place, event, person, or object. The ''subject'' of the commemorative stamp is usually spelled out in print, unlike def ...
s bearing images of Gee's Bend quilts sewn between c.1940 and 2001. The quilts and quilters are featured at their website.
Quilters lawsuits
In 2007 two members of the Gee's Bend quilting community filed lawsuits in US Federal Court in Selma, Alabama
Selma is a city in and the county seat of Dallas County, in the Black Belt region of south central Alabama and extending to the west. Located on the banks of the Alabama River, the city has a population of 17,971 as of the 2020 census. About ...
. The suit filed by Annie Mae Young alleged that dealers falsely claim to own the intellectual property rights to quilts made in Gee's Bend before 1984, including her work. They also improperly used her name and image to promote sales, the lawsuit alleges. The suit filed by Loretta Pettway, claims "gross exploitation" at the hands of several defendants. Both suits also list as defendants Kathy Ireland
Kathleen Marie Ireland (born March 20, 1963) is an American author, entrepreneur, fashion designer, philanthropist, and former fashion model. Ireland was a supermodel in the 1980s and 1990s, initially known for appearing in 13 consecutive ''Spo ...
Worldwide who have licensed the designs from some of the famous quilts for use in Kathy Ireland products.
Kathy Ireland Worldwide defends their handling of the Gee's Bend quilter's royalties in a statement on their website:
''Our agreement assures us that the quilter’s representatives are the proper place to send all quilt related earnings. This week a careful review of our files indicates that Kathy Ireland Worldwide has paid more to these representatives than our company has earned from the quilts project.''
Other members of the quilters group are unhappy with the lawsuits and felt they are an attempt of some members to go out on their own.
U.S. District Judge Callie Granade of Mobile dismissed the suits and said the parties would pay their own legal costs.
Notable people
*Robert Petway
Robert Petway (born c. 1903, date of death unknown) was an American blues singer and guitarist. He recorded only 16 songs, but it has been said that he was an influence on many notable blues and rock musicians, including John Lee Hooker, Muddy Wat ...
, blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
singer and guitarist
See also
* J.R. Moehringer
John Joseph Moehringer (born December 7, 1964), known by his pen name J. R. Moehringer, is an American novelist, journalist, and ghostwriter. In 2000, he won the Pulitzer Prize for newspaper feature writing.
He collaborated on the 2021 film ...
* Arthur Rothstein
Arthur Rothstein (July 17, 1915 – November 11, 1985) was an American photographer. Rothstein is recognized as one of America's premier photojournalists. During a career that spanned five decades, he provoked, entertained and informed the Americ ...
* Robert Sonkin Robert Sonkin (1910–1980) was an American scholar of speech, language, and music.
Life
Sonkin was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in the Bronx, New York, on December 25, 1910. Sonkin, who held degrees from City College (CCNY) (now the Ci ...
References
External links
Gee's Bend Ferry Website
by Shaila Dewan New York Times July 29, 2007
Soulful Shapes
Multimedia story on the quilters of Gee's Bend, with images of the quilts and audio from one of the quilters.
The Ferry: A Civil Rights Story
a documentary from Retro Report
Retro Report is a non-profit news organization that produces short-form documentaries for historical context of current news stories. The organization describes itself as a counterweight to the 24-hour news cycle. They have covered topics includi ...
{{authority control
Census-designated places in Alabama
Unincorporated communities in Alabama
Census-designated places in Wilcox County, Alabama
Quilting