Rural Community Inquiry: Reflecting on Research Processes
by Sarah Robbins, KCAC director

When we began to investigate our "Cultivating Homelands" strand, we found that selecting a precise historical moment to focus on for our research was far more difficult than for our other project themes.
The Cherokee Removal story that organized our work for "Recovering Displaced Heritages" could easily be explored as a cultural turning point. Even if we included examination of forces leading up to the Removal and of its complicated aftermath in locations outside Georgia (e.g., North Carolina and Oklahoma), the Removal clearly embodied a specific occasion in line with our KCAC project questions. What were the Cherokee in Georgia doing just prior to the Removal to try to claim status as Americans? Why were their efforts not rewarded? In what ways did the Removal itself jeopardize American values in our region, and how?

Similarly, in studying our "Building Cities" topic, we found a pivotal moment demanding our attention. The 1970s-1990s in Atlanta easily stood out as a time when the city's leaders tried to change its status from a regional to a national center. If the opening of John Portman's then-towering Hyatt Regency marked the start of Atlanta's claim to be a national city, surely the hosting of the Olympics signaled the culmination of that dream, as well as its extension to an international level.
But our wish to honor and critique the complex rural heritage so central to northwest Georgia life did not lead us immediately to a particular turning-point. When did farmers in Georgia start to see themselves as Americans rather than just as members of a local community? Was there, in fact, a specific event, movement, or period when rural life took on a national tenor, or one when it decisively refused to do so?

We talked with historians and long-time residents. We visited museums, historic preservation sites, and landmarks, looking for connections across various diverse locations. We read oral histories and old newspaper articles. We studied award-winning literature like Caroline Miller's Lamb in His Bosom and memoirs like Raymond Andrews' The Last Radio Baby.

We attended events like the Swamp Gravy Institute's annual community play in south Georgia. Though several advisors suggested we focus our efforts on the early twentieth century, considering such important influences as improvements in transportation, we still could not find that one decisive enterprise for good (like the Olympics) or ill (like the Removal) that signaled a shift in community members' perceptions about their place in American life.

We had just about decided that our particular inquiry approach--trying to identify and explore such turning points within the context of each KCAC theme-simply did not hold up in this case. Then, as often happens in the messy world of research, an idea emerged as we re-visited "old" material in light of a new source. During the school year after our first summer institute, someone suggested we read Jimmy Carter's new book, An Hour Before Daylight. The similarities and differences between Carter's portrayal of his boyhood in Plains and Raymond Andrews' parallel story were striking. Carter's father managed sharecroppers; Andrews' family worked as sharecroppers. The differences in social class and race that separated their experiences were not just local issues: they struck at the heart of how "American" ideals have been achieved, and sometimes constrained, in our state and region. At the same time, however, Carter and Andrews also had much in common. Vivid stories of hard work outdoors, mixed with simple fun among friends and affectionate rituals in the family, filled both memoirs.

And sure enough, as we continued reading An Hour Before Daylight, one scene echoed with particular power a parallel moment from Andrews' The Last Radio Baby. In the former president's book, sharecroppers from around the neighborhood ask Mr. Carter (Jimmy's father) for permission to stand in the yard and listen to the Joe Louis fight being broadcast over the only radio in the community, the Carters'. Too deferential to let their joy at Louis' victory out in front of the Carters, the crowd leaves quietly after the broadcast. Only after they've left the area do they begin their exultant celebration. In Andrews' book, the broadcast of the same fight is also a powerful memory. In this case, though, Raymond describes the happy energy of a crowd of black sharecroppers and their families, clustered around the radio in the Andrews home. Now we began to understand something important we had missed on first reading! To be a "radio baby" must have been glorious indeed, if part of what it entailed was an African American family having a radio of its own. What did the coming of the radio mean to families like those of Raymond Andrews, in the formerly isolated rural south? What might having access to your own radio change your relationship with the man on whose land you were sharecropping? What might a radio do to give folks a new access to an "America" beyond their immediate rural environs-the kind of access that led Raymond, at the end of his memoir, toward a more cosmopolitan life in Atlanta, but with treasured memories of his rural heritage nonetheless?
Coming to these questions through a gradual, loosely structured inquiry process taught us an important lesson about research, as well as about rural life in both Georgia and America. Some transformations are grounded more in ongoing process than in obvious turning points. Some communities blend change with tradition in complex ways that may be teased out best through indirect analysis. Some research yields more questions than answers.

With these realizations from our shared "Cultivating Homelands" study in mind, in this section of our website we share, primarily, stories of process at work. Amanda Closs' "I-Search" paper tells the story of a learning adventure that began on the Internet, sent her to a covered bridge, connected her to a charming (and wise) local museum curator, and (eventually) brought Amanda to a small-town festival. Along the way, she learned as much about the appealing passages of rural life as she did about one bridge. Linda Templeton sought information about her current hometown as a preparation for having her students do similar research. She learned as much about HOW they might study Paulding County as about what facts they might find. Peggy Corbett moved from studying community to shaping its identity by forging new connections with partners who could support her students' learning. Making such connections takes time and energy; community-building is an ongoing process, she learned.
Given its steady rhythms and patterns of gradual change, how can we preserve particular records of rural life in all its process-oriented complexity? The Shields-Ethridge farm Stacie Janecki studied has experimented with one way-creating a kind of living museum, where visitors can see AND "do" versions of rural life. Stacie's own record of her research, saved here as a pdf file, embodies in its medium one of the ways we can use technology to tell stories like this one effectively. With its combination of print text and self-generated images, as well as its emphasis on personal discovery and connection, Stacie's research report encourages us all to keep seeking new ways for telling the stories of process like those collected here. Amanda, Linda, Peggy and Stacie have, indeed, made their study of "homelands" a patient and continual "cultivating" indeed.

 

 

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A Selected annotated bibliography for Cultivating Homelands
by Diane Shearer

Studying Community in Canton, Georgia
by Peggy Corbett

A Bridge to the Past:The Euharlee Covered Bridge a pdf document (Acrobat Reader needed for viewing)
by Amanda Closs, KSU Honors Student


The Shields-Ethridge Farm a pdf document (Acrobat Reader needed for viewing)
by Stacie Janecki, KSU Honors Student

 

Content Design/Management: Traci Blanchard,Stacie Janecki and Marty Lamers

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