Both sides of the old road

 In the 1820s my ancestors, stricken with a case of “Alabama Fever,” migrated to the Black Belt of Alabama from the Carolinas. My ancestors owned slaves, picked and bailed cotton, fought in the Civil War and lived through the Great Depression. After the collapse of the economy and the devastation of the cotton crop by the boll weevil, the region experienced an irreversible decline. During the Great Depression, my grandfather was born in my great-great-grandparents’ house. He is the last of my ancestors to be born in the Black Belt. The land they laid claim to serves a reminder of the contentious humility of their lives. I am connected to the land of my ancestors and all of its inheritance, and this is my visual genealogy.

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