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From Slavery to Freedom
ATHENS TEACHER MINNIE DAVIS
By Tracy L. Barnett editorial@flagpole.com
To commemorate Black History Month, the
members of Reconstructing Black Athens
are looking backward into Athens’ past,
to ordinary locals living in extraordinary
times. Opening our monthlong series is a
formerly enslaved woman turned educator:
Minnie Davis.
In 1860, the U.S. Census reported that
11,218 individuals inhabited Clarke County.
Nineteen were free people of color. The
better-off white residents of the county
held the other 5,660 African-American
men, women and children in bondage.
Minnie Davis was one of these enslaved
people. Born in 1859 near Penfield,
she was the daughter of Aggie
Crawford and James Young. Her
enslaved parents, however, had no
legal claim over their own flesh and
blood. At any moment, slavehold
ers could sell, lend out or relocate
their human property, splitting
enslaved families in the process.
Owned by John Crawford, Davis
was brought to Athens and spent
much of her childhood here. Like
most enslaved children, she spent
her days working—tending crops,
toting tools, pulling weeds, hauling
water. In a 1938 Works Progress
Administration interview from
which the following quotes are drawn, Davis
recalled that despite performing such odd
jobs, she “never got any money in slavery.”
Time for play was sparse. “The only game I
can remember playing as a child was a doll
game,” mused Davis. She did not get to have
a doll; instead, she was forced to be the doll:
“The Crawford children would use me for
the doll.”
Her mother, Aggie, wanted more—for
herself, for her daughter, for her family. In
the midst of a Civil War over slavery, white
Confederates asked the “Lord... [to] drive
the Yankees back,” while Aggie prayed,
silently to herself, “Oh, Lord, please send
the Yankees on and let them set us free.”
Her prayers were answered on Apr. 9,
1865, when the Confederacy surrendered.
Union victory ensured slavery’s legal abo
lition. Freedom, though, arrived gradually
across the South. In Athens, “on the day
we learned of the surrender, the Negroes
rallied around the liberty flag pole that
they [had] set up near where the city hall
is now.” Raising their voices in song, they
proclaimed, ‘“We rally around the flagpole
of liberty, the Union forever, Hurrah! Boys,
Hurrah!”’ The following day, enraged whites
chopped down the flagpole.
Reconstruction, the decade following the
Civil War, did not bring social or political
equality for African Americans living in the
South. Instead, it brought economic depres
sion, limited employment opportunities
and Ku Klux Klan violence. Yet freedom
had its benefits. Denied a formal educa
tion in slavery, Davis took full advantage
of freedom’s offerings by enrolling at the
Knox Institute, a school for black children
opened by the Freedmen’s Bureau in the
spring of 1868. After graduating, she con
tinued her education at Atlanta University
before returning to Athens to teach in local,
segregated schools. Over the course of her
40-year career, Davis instructed numerous
African-American children. An articulate
and opinionated woman, she thought
often “of Abraham Lincoln; he did a good
deed for my race.” She deemed Booker
T. Washington, a well-known proponent
of black accommodation and industrial
education, “a man of brilliant mind, but...
radically wrong in many of his views per
taining to [the] education of the black race.
He lectured here once, but I didn’t bother to
hear him speak.”
Her husband, Samuel B. Davis, published
The Athens Clipper, a local newspaper cater
ing to the emerging black middle-class com
munity. After his death, she ran the paper
for a few years before selling it.
Fortune had not favored the family, and
by 1938, Davis, now an ailing widow, and
her nephew, Ed, lived in a “small house
might best be described as a ‘tumble-down
shack’” on Billups Street, not far from
Ebenezer Baptist Church West. “Once I
had a nice home, beautifully furnished,”
Davis remembered, but “my possessions
have gotten away from me during my con
tinued illness.” Davis, however, had made
a lasting impression on the community.
Prior to her retirement, the Banner-Herald
reported: “Mrs. Minnie F. Davis, the only
one of the [teacher’s] corps who was with
the city schools when they began in 1886,
on account of illness, will probably retire.
She has served faithfully and efficiently...
These... are among the most efficient teach
ers in the colored system.”
In 1938, Davis remarked, “I would be
teaching now if it were not for my bad
health.” Indeed, Davis’ heath was not good;
she died just two years later from a dislo
cated hip and pneumonia on Feb. 13,1940.
A simple granite stone marks her final rest
ing place in Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery, an
African-American burial ground located off
Fourth Street in East Athens.
Recently, members of UGA’s Department
of History have begun researching the lives
and deaths of Athenians buried in Gospel
Pilgrim Cemetery. We invite community
members to contribute photos, documents,
leads or memories of the approximately
3,500 individuals whose final resting place
is there. Please contact Tracy Barnett: tracy.
barnett@uga.edu. ©
30 FLAGPOLE.COM | FEBRUARY 5, 2020
TRACY L. BARNETT