Preface
Im not big on the word serendipity. Its a little too happy-go-lucky a notion of chance, which is spontaneous, sure, but seems to come directed to you as much as out of nowhere. I like Albert Einsteins saying, Coincidence is Gods way of remaining anonymous.
I didnt know Randy Moody, but I met Joe Williams because Randy Moody thought he knew me. It happens in the business. I work for the newspaper he reads. He liked my writing and thought he recognized my name as a fellow church member. Well, I wasnt, but in the course of the conversation talk turned to Joe, the kid who had come to live on Randys family farm. Joes story riveted me: raised in a tenant shack, taken in as a young teen by a white family in the racial turmoil of the 60s, goes on to farm some of the biggest acreage a man could farm singlehandedly, while holding down a full-time job. I didnt know yet about Scipio Williams and Joes singular heritage.
A few months later I sat in a bookstore coffee shop with Randy, Joe, and Jimmy Moody, the farmer who took Joe on as a worker, then as a brother, and now as a lifelong friend.
A few things struck me right away about Joe. He was quiet at first, letting Randy do a lot of the talking, but quick to jump in to correct something if Randy hadnt quite gotten it straight. Joe has a mind for numbers, recollecting years and sometimes specific dates uncannily, considering these were things that happened almost a half-century before. His memory is vivid, something that shows particularly when he talks about machines. He doesnt just remember a car or a tractor from forty-some years ago; he sees in his mind its color and interior and details about its engine.
When I got to talking with him, something else struck. He and I are about the same age, born within days of each other a year apart. So, despite the different circumstance of our upbringings, we share what the brains like to call a world view. We came along through the same times, with vantage points that werent all that far removed. We know each other. We share a lot of core values, despite those different circumstances.
I originally titled this book simply Joe. What fascinates me about his story is that to all appearances hes an ordinary guyand what a life.
Joe is the great-great-grandson of a freedman farmer who came into his own during the Civil War years when freedmens very freedom, not to mention their land, was in jeopardy. Scipio Williams became a wealthy man in the midst of land and crop crises and is said to have met with Abraham Lincoln in the White House.
Joes life turned out remarkably similar. He was pitted against a market that squeezed the little guys until they couldnt breathe and struggled against discriminatory federal lending practices that were supposed to help him, practices that led to the signature Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit.
His tale is the ways of the people who know him, of the storied Little and Great Pee Dee Rivers, where he lives, Its a story the ranges across bladderworts, grape Kool-Aid, and the Cape Fear Arch. It peels back a few layers of the obscure history of Lincolns interactions with freed people.
Its staggering how profoundly his experiences echo larger, and largely undertold, social issues of when and where he came along.
These days are hi-def times. We blow up celebrities as heroes and exalt them like icons. In real life there are people you meet who wouldnt stand out in a crowd but astound you as you get to know them. They are your real icons, the markers in your life. Joe Williams is one.
Heres your chance to say, hey.
Washing Our Hands in the Clouds isnt your usual academic work and isnt meant to be. Its designed to read the way stories get told on a porch in conversation, the way I heard a lot of it: One thread opens up on another, eventually to wind up a complete quilt. I have a naturalist bent, and I wanted to put Joe Williams completely in his environment, telling his story in with tales of the Pee Dee itself and the history of the region that created the place where he lives. To see someone whole, I believe you have to see him or her in situ.
I didnt footnote because nobody footnotes a porch conversation. A lot of the information that would be footnoted in an academic book I wove into place using multiple sources, including my own background knowledge and experiences. The sources are listed in at the end of the book. When information came from a single source, I noted the source in the course of relating the information.
I am indebted to so many people for Washing Our Hands in the Clouds that a list would read like one of those interminable Oscar speeches. Among them are the late Celestine Williams; my wife, Cathy; and our respective families, who put up with this out-of-town collaboration for four years. Also, the Post and Courier and Evening Post Industries of Charleston, whose employment opened me to the lowcountry and the regions proud history, as well as to very cool stories such as the Georgetown canal. To the people of Latta and Temperance Hill, who graciously heard out a stranger and then helped out. They did it on little more than the trust that, if he was good by Joe Williams, he was good by them.
I probably couldnt come up with a complete list of people who scratched up the little glints of light to keep me fumbling along after the historical records of Scipio Williams. One of the first walls I had to get past was the problem of finding some sort of verification independent of the familys memory that Scipio Williams lived the remarkable life they talk about. I wasnt sure anything like that existed. Early on in the effort, Harlan Greene, of the Avery Research Center in Charleston, gave me a huge boost of confidence and pointed me to the Marion County archives. When the archivist brought out the thick envelope full of Letters Testamentary, I looked at Joe and said, We just struck gold.
Im grateful for guidance of Eldred Prince, whose Long Green was invaluable to me, to Erik Calonius of the College of Charleston and Doug Pardue of The Post and Courier, who weighed on massaging the manuscript. I cant express my gratitude to Alex Moore, Linda Fogle, and the staff at the University of South Carolina Press. For the Lincoln history, each historian I contacted trying to ferret out snatches of obscure Lincoln history was generous and genuinely interested in Scipios story; they were all of no end of encouragement to me. I cant thank themor anyone else who helpedenough. Id be remiss not to give props to the historian and author Eric Foner. He had no particular reason to respond to a blind e-mail sent by a wannabe writer asking for one of the innumerable sources he had dug through for
