Page 3 - Demo

“Don’t quit and say woe is me. Hang on and try,
and by and by things won’t be as bad
”
I’m not complaining. In fact, if I had to pick music to put behind “Lynchburg’s New Deal Tragedy: The Transient Bureau Fire of 1934” by Jeffrey S. Cole, a few ’Cile Turner numbers would do nicely. The same goes for the photo essay “Lewis Hine in Lynchburg” introduced by John d’Entremont on page 40. Listen. Take a look. And see if you don’t agree.
Part of the appeal of ’Cile Turner is the sheer fact of her existence. The French Renaissance writer Michel de Montaigne claimed that “each man bears the complete stamp of the human condition.” But, in her day, Turner truly tested the boundaries of this notion. What were the chances that a white woman, born in 1895, raised in the segregated South, a wife and mother, and active member of the Junior League, would manage to forge a high-profile, lifelong career championing the music of African Americans in a manner that would draw praise from both communities? It’s incredible.
Another rather unlikely candidate for success featured in this issue is Abram Frederick Biggers, the founder and first superintendent of the Lynchburg public school system. He was a frail man who died young. His successor, Dr. E. C. Glass, expressed amazement at Biggers’ accomplishments, saying: “Though Superintendent Biggers came into office almost devoid of experience as a teacher, and, certainly devoid of all experience in the administration of public schools, a large measure
of his success attended his services from the first, as if he had enjoyed all the advantages of a trained expert.”
A tribute to Biggers was written by Miss Mary L. Percy in 1934 in the form
of a long letter to the Lynchburg newspaper. Local history buff and Lynch’s Ferry contributor Gene Tomlin came across Miss Percy’s piece while researching a book on his elementary alma mater, the Biggers School, which was demolished in 1967. All that remains is a neighborhood park with a sign that, as Tomlin points out, does not bear Biggers’ full name or indicate who he was.
About two blocks east of Biggers Park, near the Texas Inn, the renowned historian and author Douglas Southhall Freeman (1886–1953) is faring better. He has been honored with an official historic highway marker. Writing about Freeman, retired history professor and Lynch’s Ferry board member James A. Huston begins his essay at the historic marker, then takes the reader on a troop train traveling across the U.S. in spring of 1943. On this train, in the middle of a second world war riddled with surprises and setbacks, Huston’s battalion commander hands him a copy of Freeman’s Lee’s Lieutenants. The introduction to the first volume, which Freeman had rushed into print, connects with the young soldier. Freeman wrote:
Something...may be gained by printing in the first year of the nation’s greatest war, the story of the difficulties that had to be overcome in an earlier struggle before the command of the army became measurably qualified for the task assigned it....The Lee and the “Stonewall” Jackson of this war will emerge.
’Cile Turner would have said the same thing another way. She would have sung “Don’t quit and say woe is me / Hang on and try, and by and by / things won’t be as bad as they seem.”*
as they seem.
from the editor
TThis issue of Lynch’s Ferry has a soundtrack.
At least it does for me. Thanks to the fine work of musicologist Bryan S. Wright, I now have wonderful snippets of ’Cile Turner tunes stuck in my head. (There is a name for this phenomenon. It’s called having an “earworm.”)
*From the song “Don’t Mess Around With The Blues” by Dick Flood
SPRING/SUMMER 2008 