On a hot August day in 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s thunderous voice spoke these words:
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood …”
At the time, Bobby Weems was a 29-year-old father living in Atlanta’s Little Five Points and focused on “making a living and paying for groceries and rent.” For Weems, King’s now-famous “I Have a Dream” speech and the civil rights movement were a “side dish.”
Gail Smith was 10 and living with her grandparents in Atlanta at the time. Neither ever had the occasion to meet the other. Weems is white. Smith is Black. Atlanta, like most other towns in the Deep South, was segregated.
But the two helped fulfill King’s dream on a recent hot August weekend. They, along with dozens of other Black and white Weemses, met for the first time at the Weems Plantation, the last standing plantation in Henry County, the county where King’s paternal grandmother was born.
Weems, now 77 and living in McDonough, is the great-nephew of Thomas Dixon Weems, a slave owner who built the plantation that once spanned 4,000 acres and encompassed parts of neighboring Butts County. Built in 1848, the large Greek Revival house sits on Hampton-Locust Grove Road in unincorporated Henry County. It was built largely by the labor of Smith’s ancestors, such as Sallie Weems, one of many slaves who took Weems’ last name. Some 50 of her descendents – including doctors, teachers and psychologists – came from as far as Chicago and Detroit for a reunion.
Bobby Weems acknowledged the Black Weemses’ contribution in his welcoming remarks to the group gathered in metro Atlanta for its bi-annual family reunion.” This house exists because of your ancestors,” he said. “Their labor built it.”
The home’s owner, Kris Cawley, a real estate agent who has restored it and lives in it with her family, told the group, “I’m just a steward. This home belongs to all of you.”
The group also visited a nearby cemetery where 184 slaves – many of them relatives of the visiting group – are buried. As they walked among the graves, violinist Slade Adams played the mournful tune “Ashoken Farewell,” made famous in Ken Burns’ epic “The Civil War.” The cemetery’s sole headstone, large and worn, marks the grave of Sallie Weems. The cemetery is believed to be the second-largest slave cemetery in Georgia and perhaps the Southeast.
Locust Grove Mayor Lorene Lindsey declared it “Weems Family Appreciation Day.” Family members from both sides exchanged pleasantries. Bobby Weems and Gail Smith exchanged phone numbers.
Bobby Weems promised to send Smith, now 58 and a police detective with the DeKalb County School system, a copy of his great-uncle’s will that lists slaves by name, a gesture considered a genealogical holy grail for African-Americans researching their families.
The event was the brainchild of Faith Weems Brown, an avid genealogist who has traced the family’s lineage to Cameroon in Africa. She said a multiracial effort involving Cawley, volunteers, the real estate community, chamber of commerce and county officials such as Sandra Vincent, mayor pro tem of McDonough, made the event possible. Tracing the family’s roots took her years, but bringing the families together took about a month, with lots of little surprises along the way.
Philadelphia Baptist Church near the Weems’ home welcomed the group with a luncheon. At one point, Brown and relatives visited the grave site before the family reunion to see what needed to be done to clean it up. To her surprise, trees and brush and bramble bushes had been cleared away and a path was cut leading to the graves, which now bore tiny red flags. Barbara Frazier, a volunteer from Stockbridge, oversaw the cleanup efforts.
“I was stunned. Just flabbergasted,” Brown said. “It was really nice.”
“It was a great day,” said Weems who learned of the meet-and-greet event a week earlier and eagerly wanted to participate. “I was glad to meet them and know the descendants had enough interest to come back. I felt no feeling of segregation or discrimination. It was just people meeting people.”
Ginger Weems Criswell welcomed the chance to participate in the activities.
“I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” said Criswell, a Lilburn resident and a great-great granddaughter of slave owner Thomas Weems. She remembers visiting the home as a child and seeing the remains of “slave houses all over.” As she spoke, her eyes filled with tears. “To me, there’s some kind of connection.”
Smith says she was a little apprehensive about the meeting at first, but she said, “It turned out marvelous. Everyone was so hospitable.”
“It really warms my heart. It makes me feel happy that we are coming together – Black and white – to break down the barriers,” Brown said. “If Dr. King had been there to see that, he would have just loved it.”
