Smoot’s House and Highway 27

by Cassandra Rose Hindman

Committee Chair:
Professor Sally Schauman

2001

This study examined the history and meaning of a black owned family farm outside Vicksburg, in Warren County, Mississippi using interviews, courthouse documents, and deed records. Purchased by a freed slave in 1905, the farm passed through successive generations with continued subdivision. The study focused on the remaining 100 acres from the original 460 acre farm.

This study had two primary objectives. First, it documented the history of the farm and thus adds to the meager recorded history of black owned and managed farms in the American South. Second, the study examined the various meanings of the farm to members of the surviving generations. These objectives were met by interviewing thirty-three descendants with a series of open ended and close ended questions.

After conducting a content analysis of the interviews, respondents’ answers were related by gender, generational, and geographical groupings. The analysis addressed three main questions: what made the farm important, what made the farm important to their sense of family identity, and how this would affect future action towards the farm. In answer to the first two questions, it was determined that intangible characteristics, such as history and personal ties, were more important than physical characteristics. In answer to the last question, it was determined that the family actions towards the farm were not influenced solely by what they felt, but out of consideration of the entire family unit. The study found that although differences in answers were found among each grouping, the farm remained important to almost everybody.