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The Great Golden Gathering: African-Americans Living History through School Traditions

Exhibits History Museum

November 19, 2018

Posted on November 19, 2018October 19, 2021 by Rene Rodgers

The Great Golden Gathering celebrates the 14 former African-American elementary and high schools in upper East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and the surrounding areas that all closed for integration in 1965. Formed in 2015, the Great Golden Gathering reunites all of the alumni, bringing them together every two years to relive friendships, camaraderie, and their shared heritage.

Two alumni hold a large white banner with gold lettering announcing the Great Golden Gathering 2015. — Banner welcoming the participants to the first Great Golden Gathering in 2015. Photograph courtesy of Calvin Sneed

The 14 former African-American schools are:

Austin High School, Knoxville, Tennessee
Arty-Lee High School, Dante, Virginia
Bland High School, Big Stone Gap, Virginia
Douglass High School, Bristol, Virginia
Douglas High School, Elizabethton, Tennessee
Douglass High School, Kingsport, Tennessee
George Clem High School, Greeneville, Tennessee
Langston High School, Johnson City, Tennessee
Morristown West High School-Morristown College, Morristown, Tennessee
Nelson-Merry High School, Jefferson City, Tennessee
Prospect Elementary School, Gate City, Virginia
Slater High School, Bristol, Tennessee
Swift High School-Swift College, Rogersville, Tennessee
Tanner High School, Newport, Tennessee

While many of the individual school alumni associations occasionally hold their own get-togethers, the idea of a universal mega-reunion was introduced in 2015 as a way to celebrate former football and basketball rivalries between schools in the all-black former Tri-State Athletic Conference. Through those competitions, young African-American children got to know their neighbors in nearby cities pretty well. The rivalries quickly grew to include academic competitions like spelling bees, art competitions, and high school band and choral concerts.

The relationships forged years ago live on during the Great Golden Gathering, as alumni celebrate their connected histories and the legacies of the schools they attended.

“After all, we have always been really good friends,” says Langston High School graduate Bill Coleman. “By attending the Great Golden Gathering, we are celebrating the opportunity to come together one more time while we still can.”

The first Great Golden Gathering was held in Bristol, Virginia in 2015 on the 50th anniversary of the schools closing for integration. Alumni came from several states to renew friendships, laugh, joke, and rekindle – with good humor – old rivalries. It was also a chance to share displays from the alumni associations and to recognize achievements.

Calvin Sneed poses with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who holds a clear plaque honorarium. — Great Golden Gathering President Calvin Sneed presenting an honorarium to Reverend Jesse Jackson. Photograph courtesy of Calvin Sneed

The Reverend Jesse Jackson, noted statesman and founder of Rainbow/PUSH, sent a video message to the group banquet, commemorating the Gathering’s purpose and congratulating the participants for keeping the spirit of their schools alive. The 2015 guest speaker was Ms. Gloria Sweet-Love, president of the Tennessee NAACP. Both received honorariums from the alumni for their service to the cause of civil rights. Enthusiasm was so high among the alumni at the inaugural event, that they all agreed to schedule a Gathering every other year, as many individual African-American school alumni associations do.

Purple Great Golden Gathering 2017 banner with yellow lettering including the names of the schools and a map of upper east Tennessee and southwest Virginia. — Welcoming banner for the 2017 Great Golden Gathering. Photograph courtesy of Calvin Sneed

The Great Golden Gathering 2017 was held in Kingsport, Tennessee, with the goal of “keeping all of the visiting alumni so busy, that they would forget they were tired”! After many activities, alumni were spellbound by the banquet speech of Tennessee State Representative Johnnie Turner of Memphis, a soldier in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1950s for which she was also given an honorarium from the group. Her speech on the struggles of African-Americans during segregation and integration was a familiar story, one that everyone identified with and understood.

“Each Great Golden Gathering is a good fellowship with people that you love,” says Douglass-Kingsport graduate Douglas Releford. “We’d had folks on walkers, in wheelchairs, and on canes attending the Gatherings, and some of them bring their grandchildren and great-grandchildren with them. We always have activities for them, and through displays, they can learn about the heritage of the schools their ancestors attended.”

“It’s not just our history,” he continues. “It’s their history, too.”

Several tables filled with alumni at the Great Golden Gathering banquet in 2017. — The second Great Golden Gathering in 2017 in Kingsport, Tennessee. Photograph courtesy of Calvin Sneed

Many Gathering attendees have lamented the fact that their collective histories are vanishing with the passing of alumni, and when that history is gone, it could be gone forever.

Larry Bell, who graduated from Slater High School, told the Bristol Herald Courier at the first Gathering reunion that in the past, many younger African Americans would respond in disbelief when he told them he “grew up in an era when blacks and whites attended separate schools. They could not understand that at one point in our history, blacks could not sit at the same lunch counters as whites, use the same restrooms, or drink from the same water fountains.”

A line of alumni hold hands as they gather together in prayer at the Great Golden Gathering. — School alumni forming a Prayer Chain after the Great Golden Gathering’s Memorial Prayer Service. Photograph courtesy of Calvin Sneed

I know that how we overcame those inequities is wrapped in the histories and legacies of these wonderful schools that taught us that we are people too. It is the single most important thing that we as alumni can pass on to our descendants through the Gathering. Along with reading, writing and arithmetic, life itself was taught to us in our schools, as integration loomed ahead. We were taught how to survive outside segregation.

And so there is an urgency to the Great Golden Gathering mega-reunions. Our numbers are deteriorating fast, and we don’t want to not be able to see each other – and of course, there’s going to be a time when we want to see each another and cannot. That’s why we have got to enjoy each other now, the hugs and laughter as we once did, right now, because tomorrow is not promised.

Three alumni post for a selfie together. — School alumni saying goodbye after the Great Golden Gathering Memorial Prayer Service in 2017. Photograph courtesy of Calvin Sneed

The next Great Golden Gathering is scheduled for Johnson City, Tennessee, in 2019. The idea is to rotate each Gathering among the schools’ alumni bases. You can learn more about a few of the African-American schools in this area at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum’s current special exhibit, For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, which includes a supplementary display on Slater and Douglass schools in Bristol, Tennessee-Virginia.

The Devil Has All the Best Tunes

History Museum Music & Songs

October 22, 2018

Posted on October 22, 2018June 17, 2021 by Leah Prater

You may have heard that A. P. Carter could play the fiddle, but refused to do so on record because it was “the devil’s box.” And just about everyone knows Charlie Daniel’s 1979 hit song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” about a demonic fiddling contest. But here’s the question: Out of all the instruments, why is the devil so taken with the fiddle? Why not the accordion? The saxophone? I mean, surely the kazoo was born from hellfire, right?

Close up of fiddle in its case. — This fiddle from our collection looks pretty free of fire and brimstone… © Birthplace of Country Music; Photographer: Haley Hensley. Gift of Ruth Roe

Where there is fiddle music, though, there is often dancing, and where there is dancing, the devil is surely at play. I have stories of this in my own family – my grandmother’s Uncle Willard was very musical, but Grandma and her sisters would only dance to his music when their very religious Aunt Eugie wasn’t around to see them. The link between dancing and the devil is an old one in fact. Way back in the 4th century, St. John Chrysotom said that “where dance is, there is the devil.” Countless preachers over the centuries have espoused the same.

While the fiddle and its link to dancing was seen by many as the devil at play, the devil’s prowess with a fiddle and bow also brought inspiration. In the early 18th century, the Italian composer and violinist Giuseppe Tartini claimed that his most famous work, the “Devil’s Trill Sonata,” was delivered to him by the devil in a dream. This, of course, led to some imaginative depictions of what that might have looked like…

Illustration of the legend behind Guiseppe Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill Sonata.” Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons

Scotland’s favorite poet, Robert Burns, wrote “The Deil’s Awa Wi’ The Excise Man” a few decades later, in which the devil fiddles into town and dances off with the tax collector. The townsfolk react thusly:

We’ll mak our maut, and we’ll brew our drink,

We’ll laugh, sing, and rejoice, man,

And mony braw thanks to the meikle black deil,

That danc’d awa wi’ th’ Exciseman.

In case your Scots dialect is a bit rusty…basically everyone extends their grateful thanks to the devil, for with the tax man gone, they can booze it up all they want and have a big time!

With that rollicking party in mind, here are a handful of the most devilish tunes I know:

“The Devil’s Dream”

“The Devil’s Dream” is a standard Appalachian fiddle tune. Laura Ingalls Wilder remembers hearing this tune as a child in the 1870s, so it’s probably safe to assume that it was also a familiar one to fiddlers in our region at the time of the Bristol Sessions. It originated in Scotland as “The De’l Among the Tailors,” and it was also noted in an English folk tale from the early 1800s. It is played here by the Whitetop Mountain Band (featuring Radio Bristol DJ Martha Spencer and family).

“Did You Ever See the Devil, Uncle Joe?”

“Did You Ever See the Devil, Uncle Joe?” is another good fiddle tune. Fiddlin’ Cowan Powers and his family, who play it here, were the first family string band to record commercially…three years before the 1927 Bristol Sessions! I learned this tune as “Hop High Ladies,” and some may know it as “Miss MacLeod’s reel” – another import from the British Isles. Click on this link for an extra treat: Pipe Major Willie Ross playing both of these tunes in the early 20th century!

“Never Let the Devil Get the Upper Hand”

Speaking of the 1927 Bristol Sessions, here’s another devil-fueled tune recorded a decade later by Bristol Sessions artists The Carter Family: “Never Let the Devil Get the Upper Hand” – which just seems like good all-round advice! Spoiler alert, however: the devil DOES get the upper hand of the young man in this song and convinces him to murder his lover. This story might sound familiar if you’ve ever heard the old murder ballad “Knoxville Girl.” It’s basically the same tale, though the latter adds a lot more gruesome detail.

“The Old Lady & the Devil”

In contrast, a woman gets the upper hand of Old Scratch – and her husband! – in “The Old Lady & the Devil,” recorded by Johnson City Sessions artists Bill & Bell Reed. In this tune, a farmer happily lets the devil carry off his wife, but she raises so much hell in Hell that the devil brings her back home again. Dave Rawlings included a fantastic version of this song on his 2017 album Poor David’s Almanack… though he shortens the chorus and leaves out the bit where the woman whacks her husband with the dasher from the butter churn.

That gives you just a few of the devilish tunes out there, but I hope the music and the links between the devil and the much-loved fiddle get you in the mood for a very Happy Halloween!

Appalachian Ghost Tales and Stories to Help You Get Your Halloween On!

History

October 13, 2018

Posted on October 13, 2018October 19, 2021 by Rene Rodgers

The Appalachian Mountains are some of the oldest mountains on Earth – and if these mountains and valleys could talk, one can only imagine what stories they could tell!

The rich history and culture of the region is also home to many supernatural tales and folklore that stem from a culture that for many years was geographically isolated from the outside world. Long before settlers found their way into the Appalachian region, only dense, uncharted and rugged mountain wilderness was found. Being located in such an isolated and difficult-to-reach area resulted in the formation of a unique style of people, culture, and heritage – including storytelling.

A story’s origin is often taken from one’s own experiences, and for mountain folk, daily life had its own hardships that played into the creation of their tales. They often lived a self-sustaining lifestyle, which is represented in symbols and archetypes – like the mountaineer, who represents individualism and self-reliance. This way of life is featured in countless songs and stories to this day. At the same time, the isolation in the Appalachian Mountains also inspired its residents to carry on and create stories focused on the strange and the supernatural.

Let’s take a step back in time: Imagine you are living in rural Appalachia over 100 years ago, and one of your main forms of entertainment was storytelling – you might hear stories of a ghostly experience or something spooky that might not be able to be fully explained! Over time tales are passed down from generation to generation, and the subject matter in these early ghost stories was often said to have been inspired by personal experiences with the unexplained. After all, it’s human nature to relate something you can’t fully explain to something you understand, even if it is supernatural!

And so, with Halloween approaching, what better time to dive into some of these strange tales of Appalachian ghost stories? Today I’m featuring a few tales and mysteries that are sure to leave you in spooky spirits. Once your appetite has been whetted, check out this link for more on Appalachian history and culture.

The hills of the Appalachians are seen in this image, full of green trees and layers of fog. — Fog on the mountains is beautiful — but it’s also spooky! Courtesy of Toni Doman

The Brown Mountain Lights

“In the days of the old covered wagon
When they camped on the flats for the night
With the moon shinin’ dim o’er the old canyon rim
They watched for that brown mountain light.

High on the mountain
And down in the valley below
It shines like the crown of an angel
And fades as the mists come and go”

(Partial lyrics to “Brown Mountain Light,” courtesy of BluegrassLyrics.com)

Our first tale is one of mystery. The odd and alluring “Brown Mountain Lights” are known as a supernatural phenomenon and have been the inspiration for many songs in folk music. The mysterious lights can be found in Burke County, North Carolina, in the Pisgah National Forest. For centuries tales of these lights have been recorded, but no one has yet to uncover what is causing the puzzling event.

There have been multiple versions of the lights’ origin story throughout the years. For instance, one legend stems from the native Cherokee people where it’s told that the lights are actually the souls of women who are searching for the men they had lost in a war on Brown Mountain. In the 19th century, another version of the story claims that the lights were the spirt of a young woman who was murdered by her husband. And in a country music song of the early 1950s, a version of the story tell us of a man who went hunting on the mountain and never returned home. In this legend, a slave was sent to search for the missing man, but neither were ever seen again, and the lights are said to be the light of the lantern used to continue the search beyond the grave (today this version in song is problematic with its romanticization of slavery).

Even the U.S. Geological Survey investigated the myths surrounding the lights, and in 1922 they published an extensive report concluding that the lights were a combination of automobile and locomotive lights, light from natural brush fires, or light emitted from other explainable sources. While the study might be correct for the time, the legend does date back much further than the time of automobiles, and the lyrics in the song state “In the days of the old covered wagon,” leading one to believe the mystery may have been around much longer.

Even though sightings of the lights are now a rarity, many people still flock to the mountain to try to catch a glimpse of the strange occurrence. Check out the Country Gentlemen’s version of “Brown Mountain Light” below. I’ll leave it up to you to decide the true origins of this mystery!

The Bell Witch

What’s October without tales of witches? Arguably the most famous witch to come out of the state of Tennessee is the Bell Witch, now a familiar tale in American folklore. The story takes place in the early 1800s when John Bell and his family moved from North Carolina to Tennessee. Bell was a very successful farmer, but his family was burdened with strange and unexplainable occurrences that ended up haunting and terrorizing the family and children for several years. The first notable events began in 1817 when Bell saw a strange creature in the fields. During this time unfamiliar noises in the house occurred and the family began to experience terrifying hauntings, including voices, various afflictions, being pinched or hit by an invisible entity, and more. All of these activities were blamed on what became known as the Bell Witch, who seemed particularly focused on father John Bell and daughter Betsy – eventually Bell died from what was claimed to be a poisoning by the witch and Betsy broke her engagement to a young man based on the witch’s entreaties and actions. Check out this link for more details of this well-known Tennessee tale.

The First Ghost of Bristol

Bristol, Tennessee-Virginia, like many southern and Appalachian towns, has a fair share of unique and strange tales. The town exists primarily because of railroads, bringing people and trade to the region for decades. The book Ghosts of Bristol: Haunting Tales from the Twin Cities by V. N. Bud Phillips features ghost stories and lore of the local region and relates an intriguing tale of an early ghost in Bristol.

The story is set in 1854 and features a man by the name of John H. Moore who owned a store and a small smokehouse located near Lee and Moore Streets in Bristol. While in preparation for opening the new store, the family made arrangements to dig a new well. One morning Mrs. Moore went to the smokehouse with a butcher knife and was alarmed to see the apparition of what appeared to be a Native American spirit who was advancing towards her as if to attack her. The spirit disappeared and was never seen again, and the knife also disappeared after the incident. Mrs. Moore then protested the digging of the new well, saying that the spirit she saw was a warning not to disturb this area. Chalking this all up to simple superstitions, John Moore proceeded with the digging, and sure enough, after the well was dug a Native American grave was found on the site.

While this might seem like a simple ghost tale, according to Phillips, it’s the first recorded one in Bristol, making it worthy of our October Appalachian ghost tales featured list! I hope you enjoyed a few of these spooky Appalachian ghost tales – and I encourage you to go out and read more of the ghostly tales that can be found in this area – just in time for the Halloween season!

Layers of mountains and mist creating an atmospheric and spooky image. — Fog and mist descend on the Devil’s Courthouse in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Public domain image from the Blue Ridge Parkway Archives

Instrument Interview: The Creole Bania, the Oldest Existing Banjo

History Museum Music & Songs

September 20, 2018

Posted on September 20, 2018October 19, 2021 by Rene Rodgers

“Instrument Interview” posts are a chance to sit down with the instruments of traditional, country, bluegrass, and roots music – from different types of instruments to specific ones related to artists, luthiers, and songwriters – and learn more about them. Ten questions are posed, and the instruments answer! Today we talk with the Creole bania.

What ARE you?

I’m a banjo! I know I don’t exactly look like the banjos you think of today, but I’m actually the earliest known banjo that still exists. I was made sometime before 1777, and at that time, banjos were made of gourds and calabashes.

Since you’re so different from the banjos we know today, describe yourself to us.

My body is a calabash, and my drumhead is made of animal skin held on with wooden pins. I have two S-shaped sound holes (kind of like a fiddle). I also have three long strings and one short string and a very nicely carved peghead. My neck is thinner than banjos today, and it is made of wood.

Left pic: A creole bania as described in the text, made of a calabash with a skin drumhead, charged peghead, and strings. Right pic: A globular green calabash growing on a tree. — The image to the left is a picture of me, where you can see the details I describe above. To the right is a picture of a calabash, a type of fruit that grows on trees; banias are also made from gourds, which grow on vines on the ground. Left: Creative Commons, https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11840/609575; Right: Photograph courtesy of Kristina Gaddy

Where did you come from?

I came from the country that is known as Suriname. Located on the northern coast of South America, Suriname is actually a part of the Caribbean, even though it’s not an island. In the 1770s, Suriname was a Dutch colony, known for the brutal conditions that enslaved Africans and people of African descent faced working on sugar and coffee plantations.

A two-storey, with gable, plantation house, reconstructed. It is white with red stairs and doors on the ground floor, and a green roof. — A reconstructed plantation house at Stichting Openluchtmuseum Fort Nieuw Amsterdam (SOFNA), an open-air museum in Paramaribo, Suriname.
Photograph courtesy of Kristina Gaddy

Wait! I think of banjos as a North American instrument, but you say you’re from South America?

Actually, we’re not just found in North America. Banjos were observed all over the Caribbean, too. In fact, the first record of a banjo is from about 1687 in Jamaica! Instruments similar to me had lots of different names, including bania, banya, banjo, banger, banza, and panja, and were observed in New York, the Carolinas, New Orleans, Cuba, Haiti, St. Vincent, and Barbados, among other places. If you want to know more, you should check out Dena Epstein’s Sinful Tunes and Spirituals. Yours truly is mentioned, but she has accounts of my relatives from all over.

Check out this video of Seth Swingle playing a reproduction of the Haitian banza, a banjo collected in Haiti around 1840. Pete Ross studied the original and now makes reproductions for players and museums.

Who made you?

Almost 300,000 people were forcibly taken from Africa and enslaved in Suriname, and I was made by one of those enslaved people, who based my design on the instruments he or she had in Africa. I wish I could tell you more about the person who made me, but the man who collected me, John Gabriel Stedman, didn’t tell anyone more than that.

Tell me more about this Stedman guy.

Captain John Gabriel Stedman arrived in Suriname to fight formerly enslaved people who had escaped to live in the jungle. Stedman was there to stop two tribes – the Saamaka and Njuka – from attacking plantations. Stedman kept a diary while he was in Suriname, which eventually became a very popular book, and he even drew a picture of me in it! That was when he named me “Creole Bania.”

Left: A earthen path marked with a horizontal wooden branch with hanging elements on it to mark the entrance to a village; right: boards from a house (looks like a ceiling), including carved elements. — Left: The entrance to a Saamaka village in Suriname; right: Detail of a carving on a home in a Saamaka village. Photographs courtesy of Kristina Gaddy

Where are you now?

I live at Tropenmuseum in the Netherlands. For many years I was in the storerooms, but I’ve recently been put on permanent display in an exhibit about slavery in the Dutch colonies, including Suriname.

Ok, so you’re the oldest banjo, but are there any other banjos like you?

Yes! I have a friend from Suriname who lives at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, Germany. That banjo is known as the panja (pronounced pan-ya), and it was collected sometime before 1850. We are very similar in construction, and this panja has a really beautiful peghead.

The panja's dark wood peghead, intricately carved with what looks to be a goat head, in the museum archive. — The peghead of the panja at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, Germany. Photograph courtesy of Kristina Gaddy

Do we know any more about the panja?

No. In fact, for many years, U.S. banjo scholars didn’t know about the panja at all! It was rediscovered by a banjo researcher named Schlomo Pestcoe, and now a couple of people have even been by to visit it.

What type of music did you and the panja play?

Alas, something else we don’t remember! No one wrote down the music that was played on banjos in Suriname, but a note about the panja does give a bit of a clue. The collection note says: “Panja, 4-stringed strummed instrument, particular to death celebrations and to the song Ananhitori.” Recent research suggests that the banjo was a central part of a spiritual/cultural ritual across the Americas. I hear if you want to find out more about this, you should come to this year’s Banjo Gathering at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in November!