AfricanAmericans at Mars Bluff, South Carolina

by Amelia Wallace Vernon

Although she has spent most of her adult life away from the South, Amelia Wallace Vernon was reared in a small farming community in South Carolina's pine belt known as Mars Bluff. On annual visits home, Vernon, knowing little about the subject, became increasingly interested in exploring and preserving the history of African Americans in that area. Over a period of years she taped interviews with several elderly African Americans in Mars Bluff, who talked about their lives and those of their ancestors. One such individual was Archie Waiters, a lifelong resident who had grown up in the home of his grandfather Alex Gregg, a former slave. Waiters and others provided Vernon with a trove of information about the history and culture of blacks in the area. From those interviews, which, transcribed, come to more than one thousand manuscript pages, Vernon has fashioned this fascinating volume . In a clear and engaging style, Vernon traces the history of African Americans at Mars Bluff from the