by Leslie Lytle, Messenger Staff Writer

“Be willing to tell your stories,” Minister Devron Holman insisted at the Feb. 15 annual Black History celebration hosted by the Cowan Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church. The stories told that evening testified to the critical role of storytelling, offering rare and intimate glimpses of both local and global truths, some never before publicly shared.

Author and historian LaNetra McLemore recounted highlights from her book “100 Years of Black Franklin County.” The book chronicles the life events and circumstances of African American Franklin Countians from 1865-1966, post slavery to integration. “Newspapers used to be like social media,” McLemore said, citing the Nashville Globe and Chicago Defender as publications that gave voice to the black community.

McLemore focused her remarks on three eras, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Integration. During the Reconstruction era, Blacks working land as tenant farmers were bound by labor contracts, but the black community defied these contracts to attend church Sundays. “The black churches connected and built community,” McLemore stressed. Black schools also thrived, providing not only education for children, but night classes for adults. By 1871, 66 black men qualified to vote, meeting the criterion of owning land to do so.

Although many regard Jim Crow as a dark time, McLemore called attention to the loud and resonant heartbeat of the black community then. “These are people who should have been in history books,” McLemore stressed. From 1900 to 1947, the Sewanee Black Tigers’ community football and baseball teams were the champions of the south, winning every game they played. Eighteen-year-old Liber Miller from Winchester served in the navy in WWI and was the first black man to go on a naval ship overseas. A graduate of the segregated Townsend Training School was among the first 76 women recruited into the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp (WAACs). A. M. Townsend who graduated from Townsend Colored School, the school named after his father, went on to become a physician, esteemed member of the American Medical Association, and president of Roger Williams University. “There was a thriving black culture, and yet this was the Jim Crow era,” McLemore said, pointing to black literary societies and social clubs, black doctors, black farmers, and black business owners, including a black woman motel owner in Estill Springs. And, yes, there were several lynchings, one making national news that brought NAACP members from throughout the country to join the 2,000 who marched in protest.

Martin Luther King, Jr., who studied at Highlander Folk School, established the local branch of the NAACP that led the 1960s lawsuit to desegregate the Franklin County Schools. McLemore noted in closing, “It [the 1960s] was a time of growth and excellence, and yet, then we see integration, and so many black teachers lost their jobs.” McLemore’s book “100 Years of Black Franklin County” with sections devoted to black teachers, black churches, and black sports has many more stories to tell.

Following McLemore’s dynamic glimpse into the backrooms of local history, the Nashville theater company Dream 7 Productions presented excerpts from Olugbola Gubasavi’s new play, “Weusi.” A translator and interpreter who speaks fluent Kiswahili, Gubasavi described the play as “the story of black history from the beginning of the continent until now. Weusi means blackness, but it also means we the people in our community honor the family and the individual.” Designed as immersive theater beckoning audience participation, spontaneous singing and rhythm tapping from the audience joined the performing cast. Dream 7, middle Tennessee’s oldest African American theater company, will perform “Weusi” at Nashville’s Looby Center Theater through Feb. 23. For tickets see <https://www.dream7productions....;. Dream 7’s first musical, produced in 2020, recounted the story of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the behind-the-scenes story about why Nashville is called Music City, which has nothing to do with Country Music — when Queen Victoria heard the Jubilee singers perform, she remarked, “You must be from the city of music.”

Rising to the inspiration of the evening, Minister Holman said in closing, “Knowledge is one of the few things you can give away without reducing the amount. We have to keep educating our own.” A special shout-out to Sandra Brown, longtime organizer and coordinator of the annual Franklin County Black History Celebrations. Several commented that this was the best Franklin County Black History Celebration yet.