Rob Neufeld

Columnist

“Happytop” is what African-Americans called their newly settled community a mile outside of Andrews after they were forced to leave Forsyth County, Georgia.

“The North Carolina mountains seemed to have been a safer place for Blacks to live and work,” writes Ann Miller Woodford in “When All God’s Children Get Together: A Celebration of the Lives and Music of African American People in Far Western North Carolina,” her massive, story-filled history of her family and people. (Learn more about the book online at whenallgodschildrengettogether.blogspot.com.)

The watershed year was 1912. Robert Edwards had been accused of raping a white woman in Cumming, Georgia, and was lynched. A campaign to rid the town of its 1,900 black residents followed.

Woodford’s father, Purel Miller, recalled hearing from his father, Cleve Miller, “the horror stories that his family suffered during the racial cleansing of Forsyth County.”

For her knowledge of history, Woodford states, “I need to honor and thank my late father ... for his ability to remember people, places, and events, even in his 90s ... I have been able to document the lives of the people who have lived in Andrews and the near surrounding areas,” she says, because of his work, which included oral histories with elders.

For instance, there’s his step-uncle, George Bowens. After the lynching in 1912, he went into a store in Cummings to buy shotgun shells. The white storekeeper said he had none. George pointed to boxes on a shelf. “Them’s empty boxes, Son,” the merchant said.

It wasn’t just ammunition African-Americans were denied. No one would sell them food, oil or other necessities.

George left town and, on the road, was stopped by a mob of guys who grabbed his mules and said they were going to hang him. George took out his shotgun — was it loaded? — and scared them away.

New start, hot dog!

Cleve Miller built the first house in Happytop in 1914. His cousin, William Bowens, opened a suit-pressing business. One of his customers was Percy Ferebee, who later became a millionaire and the mayor of Andrews.

William believed he’d invented the term “hot dog,” after shouting the word when a frankfurter he was grilling at one of his parties fell on the ground and was grabbed by a dog. (The term had become popular in the 1880s at Yale University, where there’d been a food truck named The Kennel Club).

William's parties were legendary events, alive with music and storytelling, including stories that Cleve, who liked to call himself African rather than colored or Negro, passed along from his old country ancestors.

He also told a story about his slave ancestry. Cleve’s mother, Kate Bowens, had been a slave until Emancipation, when she was 9. She continued to work in her former master’s cotton fields. Then the master’s son impregnated her, with Cleve the result.

When Cleve was a boy, his white grandfather gave him a lamb to raise as a pet. One Thanksgiving, when Cleve was a teen, the “old man” told Cleve to slaughter and dress the lamb and bring it for dinner.

“We cried,” Woodford writes, “when Grandpa told us how the little lamb bowed down before him and how real tears came from its eyes while he stood there with the knife.” Rather than kill it, Cleve ran away to work in a mill.

Happytop power

In the first four decades of Happytop existence, the Andrews area offered jobs with the railroad, lumber companies, tanneries and New Deal agencies. The closing, in 1954, of the tannery started by F.P. Cover in 1898 dealt a big blow to the economy.

Segregation in social life and racial comradery in rough workplaces yielded variations in race relations.

In the 1950s, Purel fought fires with the U.S. Forest Service. When the “citified supervisor,” who’d been intimidated by tales of local murders, asked Purel if he’d gotten death threats, “one of the big tough-looking, bearded White men” said, “If anybody bothers Purel, he will have to answer to me.”

Purel was a strong hard worker, supported by a spiritual extended family. Not all black folks have had his advantages, which has inspired Woodford to start One Dozen Who Care, an organization led by African-American women dedicated to raising the self-esteem of and opportunities for young people by honoring elders and sharing cultural experiences, especially music.

Purel’s confidence and skill had earned him respect. One day, his wife, Margaret Ann Wykle Miller, went to a store in downtown Andrews to pick up an Easter dress that she had laid away and made payments on. The store owners told her they had sold it.

“It so happened that Daddy walked in at that moment,” Woodford relates. “Mama was crying and he wanted to know what had caused her tears. Without one misstep, he demanded that they present her dress ‘right now!’ They immediately brought the dress to Mama.”

Store owners had different attitudes toward the black community, with which they had beneficial and personal relationships.

When the Miller family shopped at Nichols Department Store, they were allowed to try on the clothes to make sure that they fit. “That was not the practice in many places in the United States,” Woodford states. But “Mr. Teddy Nichols and my grandfather, Cleve Miller, were friends.”

Nantahala Power & Light brought electricity to Andrews in the 1940s, but excluded Happytop. “Purel,” the story goes, “reminded Archer (John Archer, NP&L president) that he (Purel) was the young man who had taken care of his children when he was a young boy.” Happytop got power.

On the work crew for the Chatuge Dam in the early 1940s, Purel could not depend on friendship with the man in charge.

Purel’s older brother, T.D., a John Henry type, Woodford says, had been ordered to move a huge rock one frigid night, and kept breaking crowbars when he put pressure on them. “They would just pop in two and sound like a shotgun.” The boss mocked T.D., who threw the crowbar at the boss, and the boss ordered Purel to fire his brother. Purel would not, and suggested the boss let T.D. cool down.

Toward the end of the contract, the boss sent Purel to the 80-foot intake tower to climb down to the base and light a fire to keep the concrete from freezing. Purel remembers, “I decided I could die in there, so I didn’t build no fire.” When he got back to camp, he heard the boss tell another, “Wonder how ole 34 (Purel’s badge number) is doing down there?” The other man chuckled, “Guess he’s dead by now.”

Many things have changed since that time. Young black people moved away for jobs elsewhere. Schools were integrated and African-American children lost black teachers. Ann’s mom passed away in 1993; her dad told stories; and One Dozen Who Care was established in 1998.

Rob Neufeld writes the weekly “Visiting Our Past” column for the Citizen-Times. He is the author of books on history and literature and manages the WNC book and heritage website The Read on WNC. Follow him on Twitter @WNC_chronicler.

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