T.C. "Lawyer" Walker's autobiography is indeed very interesting.  But Walker
does pull some of his punches.  In the 1950s he presents himself as a Booker
T. Washington self-uplift kind of leader, but he was an active Readjuster in
the 1880s, pushing for a black-white alliance with a distinct Republican
agenda.

Harold S. Forsythe
----- Original Message -----
From: "Barbara & Dick Farner" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 7:16 AM
Subject: Diaries


> The Gloucester County, Virginia, Museum of History recently published a
> family memoir that I edited. With the addition of minimal footnotes to
> clarify names, places, and happenings, I was able to leave the text
> unchanged. Fred Jones's "Sketches of Home Life in Virginia Before and
> After
> the Civil War" comes across as a statement of the time when it was
> written,1924, and provides valuable insights to this man and his
> community.
> While racist in parts, it does provoke the modern reader to see how people
> did respect each other. Jones's reactions to the Great War and the
> influenza
> pandemic add a different dimension to his story. Had some of the language
> been "cleaned up," how would we know what was standard behavior for a time
> long gone. Interestingly, a memoir written by a man born a slave into Fred
> Jones's mother's family was published in 1958 and contains many of the
> same
> stories and in some cases using the same language. There are, of course,
> also some different views of "how things were." You might want to read
> Thomas Calhoun Walker's "Under the Honey Pod Tree," also about Gloucester
> County.
>
> Don't change a word of a diary, make your transcription clear and true, it
> is a window to the past and there are few.
>
> Barbara Farner
>
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