Sustaining a Placeless Place: The Legacy of Oscarville, Georgia

• In Event: Georgia Places: Language, Race, and History in Place-Based Georgia Education

Abstract

Type Oscarville, Georgia into Google Maps and it will place a pin in the middle of Lake Sidney Lanier: a man-made lake bordered by five counties, multiple cities, and claimed by all communities that touch its over 700 miles of coastline. But ask any of these cities, local historical societies, or counties who claims the history of Oscarville, and suddenly the narrative becomes elusive: “that didn’t happen here”, “that’s far from here”, and “that’s not ours”. Oscarville was once the unceded land of the Muscogee people, then after its Appalachian foothills were found to be fertile for farming, a small community of predominantly middle-class Black citizens settled the area for farming during Reconstruction. These same families were targets of a 1912 racial cleansing. The twice stolen lands were then taken or sold below value from lower class sharecropping White families to create what is now Lake Sidney Lanier, named for the Confederate soldier and poet whose “Ode to the Chattahoochee” is taught in Georgia middle schools today.
As part of a participatory action research project with two teacher educators and two teacher candidates (Cammarota, 2009; Council et al., 2022; Tuhkala, 2021), we explored, “How can Oscarville’s legacy be understood through language, race, history, and place?” through place-based data collection which included historical archival research, interviews with descendants of Oscarville and local residents, and photographs and mapping of the region. Our objective within this symposium is to consider how to curricularize place-based research in Georgia when it is at times geographically placeless: the study of peoples who have been systematically and cyclically removed, their histories and stories erased from archival records and memories. Indeed, affirming that “the South is not geographical; it is epistemological, a metaphor of human suffering” (García, 2020, p. 13). The study of place, and the systematic place-lessness of marginalized groups, is an epistemological endeavor that requires creation of missing knowledge: creating a historical record about past histories through family stories where oral histories can no longer be gathered (Smith, 2021), taking photographs of modern day spaces where the past peoples in those spaces were never deemed important enough to record (Bui & Burke, 2020), and privileging the knowledge that emerges in the discourses, language practices, and meaning making during the data collection process (Haddix, 2020). Furthermore, to explore the participatory methods of place-based research when potential participants in the communities seek to shape historical narratives and curriculum through disproven narrative distortions and harm (Patel, 2015). Finally, to trouble the implications for action within education when curricularizing with teacher educators and teacher candidates whose power within educational spaces vary significantly (Chu Lau & Stille, 2014; Lillge, 2021).

Authors

• Leah Panther, Mercer University

• Kristie W. Smith, Kennesaw State University