Christopher Columbus (C.C.) Davenport, Eliza’s brother, originally published Looking Backward: Memoirs of the Early Settlement of Morehouse Parish in 1911, as a compilation of weekly columns he’d had written while serving as editor of the Mer Rouge Democrat. Lida’s second cousin, Tommy Davenport Rankin, gave us copies of the memoirs, which the local Lions Club had recently reprinted in pamphlet form. Tommy still farms cotton and soybeans on lands that the Davenport family has held for nearly 200 years in Morehouse Parish.

As reminiscences of early life on the Louisiana frontier and as a record of Lida’s family history, C.C.’s memoirs by themselves would be a wonderful treasure of local history and genealogy. But the final chapter reveals why they are so much more than that.

Chapter XV, “Life on the Plantation When the Negroes Were Slaves,” represents C.C.’s careful effort to portray how humanely his father, James Barlow Davenport, treated his 110 slaves on the family plantation. C.C. writes that his father provided the slaves with good housing, food, clothing and medical care. He gave them small plots of land for gardening and paid them cash for some of the cotton they picked. He provided a children’s nursery, and he permitted religious services and marriages among the slaves. After James died in 1858, C.C., Eliza and their brothers took charge of the plantation and even added a “plantation negro band.”

C.C. goes on to write:

There was no law against the whipping of slaves, but it was seldom done, and, when done it was generally inflicted because of fusses—quarrels among themselves. All disagreements and troubles among the slaves were settled by the owners of the slaves. The courts were not troubled by negro trials. It was a rare thing to see a negro in jail or in a penitentiary…As a rule, masters were kind to their slaves. Occasionally there were cruel masters and, occasionally there were bad negroes that required severe punishment.

He concludes:

Those were happy days that can never be recalled, but it was Southern life and the negroes of that day were happier, much happier than I have ever seen them since those days.

And so C.C. Davenport sums up in his memoirs the near universal attitude of Southern whites at the beginning of the 20th century, as they attempted to justify the system of slavery that had existed within their own lifetimes—and in his case within his own life. Although he doesn’t acknowledge it, 1911 marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. Since he ended the memoirs in 1860, he also doesn’t mention that he and his brothers all served in the Confederate army. None were killed in the war, and C.C. went on to become a successful farmer, state representative and active civic leader. But did he don his old uniform of the Twelfth Louisiana Infantry, Army of Tennessee, to commemorate the anniversary? Did his rosy reflections on his own slaves help to perpetuate the myth of the “Lost Cause”—a romantic view of the Confederacy and its defeat—that swept the agrarian South during Reconstruction and reached a crescendo with the 50th anniversary celebrations? Was his pen—innocently I believe—an instrument of Jim Crow? History and family lore don’t point to anyone’s involvement with the Ku Klux Klan, for example.

From the vantage point of another century’s passage, I prefer simply to point out the irony of his writing in 1911. I also hasten to note that his sister, Eliza Davenport Cotten, and her descendants quietly but substantively contributed to Eliza’s adopted city of Birmingham. This includes Lida’s family standing against racism during the city’s darkest days of the Civil Rights Movement. In their journeys Americans—and Southerners in particular—have passed through time as well as space. Along the way, thankfully, they tossed many old ideas into the rushing streams of history.

On July 10 Lida and I attended the opening reception for AHF’s SUPER institute at Spring Hill College in Mobile on “The Alabama Coast: A Sense of Place.” We decided to take a few days to explore areas of Louisiana and Mississippi that we had never visited together, including the charming antebellum Mississippi River towns of St. Francisville, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi. But our ultimate destination was to be the tiny northeast Louisiana community of Mer Rouge. On the first leg we visited historic Oakley Plantation outside St. Francisville, where John James Audubon spent several months working on his “Birds of America” masterpieces. (Oakley is an impeccably restored and interpreted Federal-style home and outbuildings deep in semi-tropical forest. I highly recommend it.) From there we drove along famed Highway 61 to Natchez, where we toured magnificent Stanton Hall (1858) and, from our hotel room at night, watched tugs push long barges up the river.

After 24 hours in such stereotypical Southern splendor, our expectations for the farming town of Mer Rouge — the ancestral home of one side of Lida’s family — were admittedly tempered. No one from the family had been to Mer Rouge in 60 years, when someone took a black-and-white snapshot of trees partially blocking the view of a nondescript farmhouse in the distance. That was our only real image of the town, and it didn’t suggest much to compete with the charming areas we had just left. Moreover, what could we expect to find in a Louisiana burg named for a body of water in the Middle East — the Red Sea?

Still, what Mer Rouge had going for itself, as far as we were concerned, was an authentic connection to us, especially in the person of Eliza Davenport, Lida’s great-grandmother and namesake. Eliza’s hand-painted photographic portrait hangs in our dining room, and Lida has her schoolgirl songbook. Frances Robb, Alabama’s expert on historic photographs, had dated Eliza’s portrait to ca. 1858-60, when we knew she was in college in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Click here to view the portrait.) We also knew that somehow she had made it to Birmingham in the late 19th century. But it took our visit to her hometown in Morehouse Parish to put her and all the Davenports into a more vivid picture than just an image in a frame or names on a family tree.

Coming Soon: Part II of From the “Red Sea” to the Red Mountain

SES institutes are weeklong residential workshops that offer specialized academic enrichment in the humanities. The institutes will assist upper-level high-school students in the development of writing and critical thinking skills necessary for success in secondary and post-secondary education.

2011 SES Institutes

SUPER Emerging Scholars @ Auburn University • Auburn • July 17-23
Kevin Roozen, Ph.D., associate professor of English at Auburn University, will serve as the institute’s lead scholar. This institute will develop students’ writing, reading, and critical thinking abilities by investigating the rhetoric of public discussions addressing the purposes and functions of education. Students will learn the rhetorical principles of effective persuasion and employ those principles to examine a series of readings from ancient Greece to contemporary America that describe the multiple and often competing objectives of teaching and learning. Drawing from those readings and video accounts of their own experiences with formal education, institute participants will draft, revise and publish philosophies of learning that articulate the attitudes toward learning and schooling that will shape their futures as students and public citizens.
In partnership with Auburn University Outreach Office

SUPER Emerging Scholars @ Alabama State University • Montgomery • June 12-18
Bertis English, Ph.D., associate professor of History at Alabama State University, will serve as the institute’s lead scholar. This institute will offer students the opportunity to examine in real time the impact economic injustice has had on marginalized groups. This is a unique opportunity as students will be able to investigate the current economic injustices that are occurring due to the recession in contrast to other periods such as the Great Depression. Students then will be assigned a community to investigate how economic injustice still permeates today. Students will be asked to incorporate any findings into a final presentation.
In partnership with Alabama State University

SUPER Emerging Scholars @ the University of South Alabama • Mobile • June 19–25
Kern Jackson, Ph.D., assistant professor of English and folklorist and oral narrative data collector, will serve as the institute’s lead scholar. This institute will offer students the opportunity to examine the survival stories of the communities affected by the recent oil drilling disaster and Hurricane Katrina. Students will learn about how these two major historical events have defined the Gulf Coast community. Students will engage with persons impacted by each of these events from the Grand Bay and the Bayou La Batre communities. From these lessons, students will collect narratives of survival.
In partnership with the Academic Affairs Office of the University of South Alabama

For application forms and guidelines, please click here.

For the past 20 years, AHF has taken a leading role in the advancement of Alabama education with the SUPER (School and University Partners for Educational Renewal) teacher program. This program provides graduate-level, content-rich, professional development of the highest quality to outstanding 4th-12th grade public and private school teachers, school librarians and administrators who wish to expand and deepen their knowledge of a particular subject or theme within the humanities.

SUPER is provided to Alabama educators entirely free of charge. AHF serves annually an average of 300+ teachers of the humanities, social sciences, and arts, in turn, enriching the education of an estimated 45,000 Alabama students. In its 20-year history, SUPER has served more than 4,000 teachers and reached more than 500,000 students.

Spanish Immersion Institute
Mexico and Guatemala in Crisis: An Ethical and Literary Perspective
Led by: Leonor Vázquez-González, Ph.D., University of Montevallo
Site: University of Montevallo, Montevallo
Dates: June 6-8
Residential (Lodging and all meals provided.)
CEUs: 24 contact hours
For more information and forms for this institute, click here.

Vietnam, Vietnamese-Americans and Vietnam at War
Led by: Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr., Ph.D., Troy University
Site: Troy University, Troy
Dates: June 19-24
Residential (Lodging and all meals provided.)
CEUs: 45 contact hours
For more information and forms for this institute, click here.

Transcendentalism Light and Dark: Strategies for Teaching the Writings of Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Dickinson and Whitman
Led by: Gale Temple, Ph.D., University of Albama Birmingham
Site: Alabama Humanities Foundation, Birmingham
Dates: June 28-30
Three-day non-residential institute (Lodging, breakfast and dinner not provided)
CEUs: 24 contact hours
For more information and forms for this institute, click here.

The Alabama Coast: A Sense of Place
Led by: Frye Gaillard, writer-in-residence, University of South Alabama
Site: Spring Hill College, Mobile
Dates: July 10-15
Residential (Lodging and all meals provided.)
CEUs: 45 contact hours
For more information and forms for this institute, click here.

For more information, see the Programs section of our website.

The presentation by Nick Jones, philosophy professor at University of Alabama-Huntsville, of his paper “Civility, Sincerity and Ambiguity” will be followed by responses from five Alabamians, including noteworthy Alabama historian and Anniston Star columnist Dr. Harvey H. Jackson; media personality Tim Lennox; Birmingham entrepreneur and author Shelley Stewart; Central High School (Phenix City) gifted education teacher Barbara Romey; and David Mathews Center for Civic Life intern/Auburn University student Alexandria Smith. Christopher McCauley of the David Mathews Center will moderate discussion.

There is no cost to attend and light refreshments will be served beginning at 9:30 a.m.

The Whetstone-Seaman Faculty Development Award is an initiative of the Alabama Humanities Foundation (AHF) meant to offer Alabama junior scholars professional development opportunities. Deans of arts and sciences at accredited institutions across Alabama were invited to nominate the most promising junior humanities scholar to participate in an essay contest. The topic of this year’s contest was “Civility: What Does Civility Mean in the 21st Century Debate?” Nick Jones will receive a $3,000 award for his paper. The runner-up, Clifford Lee, a philosophy professor at Troy University, will receive a $1,500 award for his paper titled “The Courage of Civility: Taming Public Discourse and Ourselves in the 21st Century.” Funding for this award is provided by AHF board member Bob Whetstone and former AHF board member Janet Seaman.

A selection committee composed of humanities scholars reviewed the papers blindly and selected the top six for publication in the Alabama Humanities Review (alahumanitiesreview.wordpress.com).

To hear more about the topic of civility and the March 25 forum, please listen to our interview on Troy Public Radio’s Community Focus program.

For more information, contact the Mathews Center at (205) 665-9005 or the Alabama Humanities Foundation at (205) 558-3993.

With the support of the Alabama Humanities Foundation, the Southern Literary Trail will soon begin three months of programs in Alabama to conclude with the Alabama Writers Symposium in Monroeville on May 7. The Alabama programs are part of the Trail’s tri-state “Trailfest,” which is celebrated in Alabama along with events in partner states of Georgia and Mississippi. All events and programs, plus printable schedules for each state, are listed within the Trailfest section at southernliterarytrail.org.

The Southern Literary Trail is the country’s only literary trail to encompass three states. Trailfest officially began with the Carson McCullers Conference in Columbus, Georgia, on February 17, attracting hundreds of participants for a weekend of panels about McCullers and her use of the town and local settings in her novels such as “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.” Suzanne Vega attended the conference and provided musical performances.

The Savannah Book Festival followed on Saturday, February 19, and again, hundreds of SBF patrons visited the Southern Literary Trail table hosted by Jane Thimme, who represents the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home on the Trail’s Steering Committee for Georgia. Jane reported that SLT received enthusiastic attention with “many commenting that it was a terrific idea and every area should follow the example.”

Trailfest begins in Alabama this weekend in Hartselle with a speech about William Bradford Huie by Pulitzer Prize winner Hank Klibanoff on Friday night, February 25, at 7 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church. The speech will be followed on Saturday, February 26, at 10 a.m. with a panel of contemporary journalists to discuss the reporting of William Bradford Huie during the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. The program at Hartselle City Hall is entitled “Journalism Today: Covering Controversy.” Both programs are free with sponsorship by the Alabama Humanities Foundation. A diverse menu of literary programs continue with Trailfest thereafter in every region of Alabama and the two neighboring states.

For upcoming Trailfest events in Alabama, check the AHF event calendar here.

Napoleon Bonaparte, probably the foremost figure of the 19th Century, once cynically observed: “What is history but a fable agreed upon?” Sir Winston Churchill, arguably with Hitler the central figure of 20th-Century history, similarly said that “History is written by the victors.” Why, then, do many people today regard the study of history as an essentially irrelevant memorization of static facts and figures, dates and disasters, wars and woes? History and, more to the point, the study of history, whether academic or casual, is an ever-changing discipline, a moving target, if you will. Historical understanding is rarely firmly fixed.

Consider the following excerpt from the standard Bettersworth 1964 school text account of the forced removal of Indian tribes from Mississippi in the 1830s:

“The Indian cessions had an electric effect upon the state. In just two years, Mississippians had managed to secure for white settlement a tremendous expanse of desirable land in the northern part of their state. At a great banquet staged in Natchez in October 1830, President Andrew Jackson was toasted as a man who ‘found our territory occupied by a few thousand wandering Indians. He will leave it to the cultivation of thousands of grateful freemen.’”

History, like the Bible, never changes, but our own knowledge, appreciation and understanding certainly may, and should. The quest for historical knowledge is ongoing, and only the most intellectually narrow cling to a close-minded, unquestioning certitude.

It is unimaginable that any mainstream historian writing today would reference the Choctaw “Trail of Tears” in the optimistic language employed by Bettersworth. Indeed, even within his own lifetime (mid-1970s), Bettersworth’s increasingly archaic account was challenged by a new generation of historians, James W. Loewen and Charles Sallis, in Mississippi: Conflict & Change, their own school textbook considered highly provocative when first published:

“Americans resented the fact that relatively few Indians controlled much more land than they ever used for farming. White Mississippians were accustomed to the idea that one person owned a definite piece of land. They could not understand the Indians’ idea of the entire tribe owning all the land together. Whites considered the land almost vacant, unowned and unused. They did not see—or if they did see, did not care—that land to the Choctaws and Chickasaws was more than just a farm. It was their homeland, the resting place of their ancestors and the center of their religion. Finally, many Americans simply wanted the chance to grab part of the new land, resell it at a profit and become rich.”

Same facts, but assessed from a strikingly different cultural perspective, and obviously yielding a vastly different interpretation. Was Bettersworth right or wrong in his assessment, interpretation and presentation? If wrong, how wrong was he? Is judging right or wrong even an appropriate inquiry to make at all? Unless the study of history really is the stale, static exercise many assume it to be, these always are pertinent and timely questions (among many) by which to vet any historian’s body of work.

History, like the Bible, never changes, but our own knowledge, appreciation and understanding certainly may, and should. The quest for historical knowledge is ongoing, and only the most intellectually narrow cling to a close-minded, unquestioning certitude. Curiosity and humility in equal parts are essential if one truly intends to understand the present through the ever-shifting lens of the past.

Summersell knew well the truth of this, as I personally can attest. Bettersworth did as well, I suspect. All of us, bar none, necessarily are limited by our own life experiences–our innate and acquired prejudices, if you will. Though molded by past eras, history’s writers and readers alike, not less than history’s participants, ultimately are the products of their own time.

New learning and fresh understanding becomes available to us every day, even (perhaps especially) in the study of history. Prepare for it, seek it out, embrace and cherish it. This is history’s gift, and God’s, to you and to your children.

For further reading: You may enjoy “Much More Than A Textbook,” an article by Richard Coles in the Spring 1976 issue of The Virginia Quarterly Review, available online here.

Written by: Greg S.