Promise, Promise Land or Promised Land was an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

founded in rural

Dickson County Dickson County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 54,315. Its county seat is Charlotte. Dickson County is part of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN Metrop ...

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, north of Charlotte soon after the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

by formerly enslaved people. At one time the settlement included stores, two church buildings (housing three congregations), a

school A school is the educational institution (and, in the case of in-person learning, the Educational architecture, building) designed to provide learning environments for the teaching of students, usually under the direction of teachers. Most co ...

house and around thirty houses. The community began to dissipate during the era of the

First First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...

and

Second Great Migration In the context of the 20th-century history of the United States, the Second Great Migration was the migration of more than 5 million African Americans from the South to the Northeast, Midwest and West. It began in 1940, through World War II, and ...

s. By 1957 the Promise Land School, which at its 1905 peak had boasted 97 students of all grade levels, was consolidated with a school in Charlotte, although the school building was re-purposed as a

community center A community centre, community center, or community hall is a public location where members of a community gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may be open for the whole community or for a sp ...

and still stands, as does one of the two church buildings. While Promise Land no longer exists as a recognizable entity, heirs of the original

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

settlers still own land in the area, and the annual Promise Land Community Festival brings back former residents and their descendants on the first weekend of June. In 2007, the Promise Land School was placed on the

National Register of Historic Places listings in Dickson County, Tennessee __NOTOC__ This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Dickson County, Tennessee. This is intended to be a complete list of the properties and districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Dickson County, ...

References

External links

Promise Land Heritage Association
African-American history between emancipation and the civil rights movement Unincorporated communities in Dickson County, Tennessee Unincorporated communities in Tennessee {{DicksonCountyTN-geo-stub