At Canaan's Edge
America in the King Years, 1965-68
Chapter One
Warning
February 28, 1965
Terror approached Lowndes County through the school system. J. T. Haynes,
a high school teacher of practical agriculture, spread word from his white
superiors that local Klansmen vowed to kill the traveling preacher if he
set foot again in his local church. This to Haynes was basic education in
a county of unspoiled beauty and feudal cruelty, where a nerve of violence
ran beneath tranquil scenes of egret flocks resting among pastured Angus
cattle. Across its vast seven hundred square miles, Lowndes County
retained a filmy past of lynchings nearly unmatched, and Haynes tried to
harmonize his scientific college methods with the survival lore of
students three or four generations removed from Africa - that hens would
not lay eggs properly if their feet were cold, that corn grew only in the
silence of night, when trained country ears could hear it crackling up
from the magic soil of Black Belt Alabama.
Lessons about the Klan arrived appropriately through t ... read full excerpt from At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 ebook
