Civil War

Pennytown

Posted at July 26, 2006 10:13

By Jerre Repass

Sunday August 7, 2005 — It’s a hot one with temperatures dancing around the century mark. Huge thunderstorms are marching across Arkansas and Mississippi, but there’s not a drop of rain near Marshall, a good thing! People are gathering for what is essentially a summer thanksgiving celebration with food, singing, and motivational speeches. Why would nearly a hundred visitors trudge out into the country to meet in a tiny building without the comfort of either air conditioning or inside plumbing? Because they are the descendants of Pennytown.

After the Civil War, freed slaves found themselves in an upsidedown world that offered tumult, uncertainty, and overwhelming personal responsibility. Many of the 117,000 former slaves were refugees on the road — looking for a new life, any life that offered stability.

Saline County was part of Little Dixie, where the majority of slaves had been concentrated, and eventually the home of Kentuckyborn Joseph Penny. He was a tenant farmer who realized the permanent value of real estate and began purchasing land. With that toe-hold, the small hamlet of Pennytown became a reality. Others bought land and encouraged their kinfolk to settle in the tiny community south of Marshall. The economics of a black community helped citizens begin the journey down the long road to being truly free. Penny saw the future of his friends and family in self-help and independence. Land was so important that, in the beginning, their dead were buried in ditches and roadways to save every possible inch for farming and surviving.

Not surprisingly, Penny had dangerous enemies who would like to have done him harm. But the townspeople knew a thing or two about how to get by in difficult situations: They staged a “leaving” party for him, a going-away event to convince outsiders he had actually moved on. That ploy may well have saved his life.

Socially, Pennytown was a grand success. The family circle was restored. Not only did children have both mom and dad, they also had the extended family and community.

Ella Wright, born in Pennytown February 22, 1904, is the oldest living descendant. Her grandparents were slaves, but her parents were farmers who sent their children to school in town. “We lived in a three-room shotgun house,” she said. “Pennytown was a good place to be a little girl.” Church and school were the places to gather then. “Oh, I played lots of games,” she remembers. “We jumped rope, played jacks, and brought in the wood for the stove.”

Education was important to Pennytown parents. The children walked to school in the river bottoms taking along chicken sandwiches and enjoying the intense heat of the wood stove during cold Missouri winters. Children got their basic education in black elementary schools and then transferred to the black high school in Sedalia.

James Madison explained how it was to live in rural Missouri in those days, “Teachers made sure you learned, or you didn’t pass. They’d keep you back until you did pass. My schooling prepared me for how life really is. I never did get the idea that all I had to do was to come out of high school, and a job would be waiting for me. All the jobs were saved for the whites. We understood that.”

When World War II broke out, Madison joined the army. He was one of many young men who would see a bigger world and move out of their rural setting. When he returned, he settled in Kansas City. “I always wanted to be a lawyer because I wanted to ask questions, wanted to know how things worked. I finally got to the point in my life where I could do that,” he says. Instead of going to law school, he began work for the U.S. Post Office and eventually became a regional grievance arbitration advocate serving thirteen states.

Virginia Huston was the last person to be born in Pennytown, in 1944. That was about the time people began to go to bigger cities that offered more opportunities. Her mother, Josephine Lawrence, was afraid the contributions the town had made to black history would be lost. Around 1982, she started working, digging, prodding, plotting, and cajoling to save the memories. After years of work, she and other generous citizens were able to get the original site of Pennytown put on the National Historic Register. During Ms. Josephine’s funeral, the procession swung by the church in tribute to her work in restoring it.

Today, supporters of Pennytown come from surrounding communities, and the color line has blurred. Every year, homecoming is planned for the first Sunday in August. The descendants of Pennytown want their own children and grandchildren to remember and honor the past.

Visit the Friends of Pennytown Historic Site web site at www.penntytownchurch.com.

June 2006

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