Washing Our Hands in the Clouds

"During their first century of freedom, farming was the primary occupation of African Americans. Measures taken during the Civil War along with the 13th and 14th Amendments made the slaves African Americans. While providing background on a former slave who became a successful landowner, the reader is introduced to his great-great-grandson in a later period. At the age of 13, this remarkable African American boy left his tenant farming mother to become a tenant farmer for a white man. These were the years of rigid segregation. After an unusual relationship with the landlord's family, and after learning the farming business, the young man acquired land and became a large farmer in Latta, South Carolina. Through his experience we gain valuable insights into several important challenges faced by Black farmers in the South. He struggled with crop allotments, farm loans, farm insurance, crop selection and crop production, as did many other Black farmers. There is useful information on class action lawsuits brought to provide redress for Black farmers. The reader of this book will find valuable information on the life and times of Black farmers in South Carolina."—O'Neal Smalls, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Law, University of South Carolina, and president and chair, Freewoods Foundation

"For so long, writers have focused on African Americans as slaves or immigrants to the North during the early 20th century. Unraveling the story of generations of one farming family whose sense of place kept them rooted in South Carolina, Petersen reveals that an independence despite travails is a story rarely told in South Carolina."—Lee Gordon Brockington, senior interpreter for the Belle W. Baruch Foundation at Hobcaw Barony

"While focusing on Joe Williams, a descendant of free blacks, Bo Petersen uses simple stories that might be heard sitting on a front porch to illustrate issues that profoundly affected the Pee Dee region such as slavery, tenant farming, education, segregation, discrimination in government farm programs, and the values of an era when a man's word was his bond. To one who grew up in the Pee Dee watershed, the book rings true. It offers significant insight into the issues that define the region while remaining a very enjoyable read."—Suzanne Linder Hurley, author, with Emily Johnson, of A River in Time: The Yadkin-Pee Dee River System

"With an easy journalistic style, Bo Peterson relates the story of a South Carolina family. Interweaving past and present, we follow four generations of the Williams family as they face emancipation, reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the challenges of farm families—both white and black—to remain on the land. Washing Our Hands in the Clouds is more than a family history. It is a triumph of the human spirit."—Eldred E. "Wink" Prince Jr., Coastal Carolina University