SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE, PLACES, AND TIMES February 10, 2021 By REV. ED ANDERSON

 During the upcoming weekend, the Georgia Society of Sons of the American Revolution will sponsor the 242nd anniversary of the Battle of Kettle Creek-Revolutionary Days. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic most of the celebration will be virtual. With February also being Black History Month, Americans will celebrate the Patriot victory at Kettle Creek in all of its significance, especially with the knowledge that one of the heroes of Kettle Creek was a free black man by the name of Austin Dabney. Former Governor of Georgia George Gilmer would later write, “none was braver in battle than Dabney.”

Enslavement was the legal status of black people at the time of the Battle of Kettle Creek, yet many, like their white counterparts, courageously fought for freedom from British rule during the American Revolution. Since that time, black men and women have fought, bled, and died in every conflict and every war engaged in by the country, even while living under Jim Crow laws, segregation, second class citizenship, and marginalization.

Predominantly black, Cherry Grove Baptist Church would not be established until 1875. Its little schoolhouse which educated the children and grandchildren of formerly enslaved black people would not be established until around 1910. The one-room Cherry Grove Schoolhouse had only one underpaid teacher who also served as school principal while teaching grades primer through seven using hand-me-down books from the white schools. The schoolhouse had no electricity or running water. It required a wood-burning stove to heat the classroom. The church schoolhouse would be all the rural black farming community in the area had to educate their young from 1910 until the mid-1950s.

And yet, when one walks through the Cherry Grove Cemetery, or the cemetery of any rural black church in Wilkes or any other county, one sees the Veterans Administration headstones of many church members who raised their right hand and swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” These patriots fought for freedom and opportunity for others all over the world while being denied the same freedoms and opportunities at home.

The parents, or grandparents, or great-grandparents of all of these service members buried in Cherry Grove Cemetery actually attended Cherry Grove Schoolhouse. Many of the below-listed brave black unsung heroes in the cemetery are also known to be descendants of men who fought in the American Revolutionary War and in the Civil War. They fought valiantly in the following additional wars and more.

World War I (1914-1918)

Brittain, Oscar – PFC; Briton, Jessie – PVT; Starks, John; Winkfield, Henry – PFC, and Wingfield, Kim – PVT.

World War II (1939-1945)

(The Greatest Generation) Cohen, Frank – PFC; Powell, Albert – PFC; Turner, James – TEC5; Hayes, Albert; Willis, Davie – PVT, and Weaks, Tom – PFC.

Korean Conflict (1950-1953) Hayes, Albert Jr. – CPL; and Mc- Lendon, Fred – CPL.

Vietnam Conflict (1961-1975) Hurley, Arthur – SP4; Hurley, Willie Joe – SP4; Thomas, Lonnie – SP4, and Everhart, Lee Dennis Jr. – USAF.

Many Cherry Grove men and women who proudly served their county during times of war and peace are not buried in the Cherry Grove Cemetery because they and their families departed Wilkes County after they were honorably discharged from the military and moved north for factory jobs during the Great Migration and thereafter.

Cherry Grove, New Ford, Reeves Chapel, and all the black churches of Wilkes County will join the Georgia Society of Sons of the American Revolution in celebrating Revolutionary Days. They will also joyously celebrate Black History Month, especially the resilience of people of color in overcoming adversities down through the years by maximizing the opportunities to educate children, even in a separate and unequal rural schoolhouse built with their own hands and skills. Join Friends of Cherry Grove Schoolhouse, Inc. and Cherry Grove Baptist Church in efforts to rehabilitate the deteriorating, but still standing, Cherry Grove Schoolhouse.

Learn more about the efforts to save and rehabilitate the schoolhouse, and opportunities to contribute at www.cherrygroveschool.com.