WHAT THE BLACK BELT MEANS TO ME

I’ve lived in the Black Belt all my life except for a brief foray into the city for a few years in Birmingham. The vibrations are different there. I realized it when I would go and come. I could feel my roots getting reconnected with the soil as soon as I hit Perry County on my way south. I noticed it, too, when I went through Dallas County to visit a friend in Sardis. Somehow, the Black Belt just feels different from the rest of Alabama. The difference is in a good way. The whole thing is a sense of place. It feels like I belong to the land and it belongs to me.
An extension of the feeling of belonging is connected to relationships. Before I went to Birmingham, I knew the people I could count on. The friendships were real and genuine. Once I got to Birmingham, I found a whole different group that would have run over their grandmother with a transfer truck to get ahead in whatever they were pursuing. Maybe cities are all pavements and striving, more cutthroat, faster paced. Maybe as a rural person, I value relationships and nature more than I do fame and fortune. Maybe I care more about sitting on the porch sharing stories with friends than I would about going to the charity balls and having my picture in the paper while wearing a fancy dress.
It’s not as though people in the Black Belt don’t know how to entertain. We’ll easily travel fifty miles to go to a good party anytime. It’s always been that way. One of my favorite stories that I share while sitting on the porch is one told me by Carl Morgan, a former mayor of Selma. He grew up in Uniontown in the 1920s. Carl Carmer says of Uniontown in his book “Stars Fell on Alabama”…”There are two places in the world where they know how to throw a good party – Paris, France , and Uniontown, Alabama.” A friend whose mother grew up in Uniontown recounted the quote to me while we were at a good party in Uniontown.
Carl Morgan’s story sums up a lot of things about entertaining in the Black Belt.
His father had a hunting camp where during hunting season, he would entertain out of town guests. The rest of the time, he and his local friends would go out there to get away from the women and drink whiskey. Nobody drank anything but bourbon whiskey and they drank a lot of it when they got together. Their wives didn’t particularly like it when they drank so much, so they headed for the woods and a hunting camp to hide out.
Mr. Morgan wanted to do something special for his friends at his entertainment. The month had an “R” in it, so he ordered a sack of oysters to be sent up from Mobile on the train. He went to the local railroad station and teletyped to Mobile to find out how long it would take to get the oysters from Mobile to Uniontown. He found out it would take 6 hours by train. The oysters would be sent in a forty pound sack in the shell and packed on ice, so they would be perfectly safe to eat upon arrival. Oysters would only be serve in a month with a “R” in it for two reasons: one was that it would be cooler weather with less likelihood of spoilage ,and the other was that in the months without an “R’, the oysters would be less flavorful because they would be spawning. Oysters have always been considered a winter delicacy in the Black Belt, and Mr. Morgan knew he would please his guests.
When the oysters arrived, Mr. Morgan took them and his cook Zeola out to the camp. He made the cocktail sauce ahead of time, so the flavors could blend. He instructed Zeola to shuck the oysters, and then serve cups of them to the men while they drank their whiskey before dinner.
The men began drinking and awaiting Mr. Morgan’s treat. He called out to the kitchen to Zeola to see if they oysters were ready. She assured him it wouldn’t be much longer. He had to call several more times before she finally arrived carrying one cup of oysters. When Mr. Morgan questioned Zeola on where the rest of the oysters were, she said “When I got through getting all the black stuff out, this is all that was left.” His friends didn’t get any oysters, but they got a great story to tell that lived on long after both Mr. Morgan and Zeola were gone. Getting one cup of oysters out of a 40 pound sack makes a great tale. The guests left knowing they had been well entertained. The meal would have lasted a few minutes, but they could dine out on the joke on Mr. Morgan for the rest of their lives, having a story good enough to be passed into generational lore. All the elements of the Black Belt are there: an appreciation for good food and entertaining, with an even greater appreciation for storytelling, socializing, and being in a natural setting. The people were real. They made mistakes in communication, but the mistakes were honest and without malice, just like the people. In the Black Belt, we treasure who we are: ancestors, warts and all.