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Good afternoon. Today's interview is being facilitated for the Durham Oral Histories Project on behalf of Durham County Government. The narrator for this discussion is Delphine Sellars, whose pronouns are she, her. She is the Executive Director of UCAN, the Urban Community Agronomics.

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My name is J. T. Tabron, and my pronouns are he, him, and I will be serving as the interviewer. This interview is being conducted at Catawba Trail Farm at 2080 Sawmill Creek Parkway in Durham on April 19th, 2025. Ms. Sellars, good afternoon. Good afternoon.

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So we are out here in nature, and there's a lot of history here. Yes. There's a lot of history. Some of this land was part of the first plantation in Orange County, the Snow Hill Plantation.

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I believe the oldest mark graven Durham County is here, belonging to one of those plantations, that plantation's owners, William Johnston. And now this land is owned and curated by a non-profit led by an African-American woman. Yes, it is. How about it?

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But with all that said, let's start with you. Okay. All right. So you and your sister, Lucille Godley Patterson, grew up in Washington, North Carolina.

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That's correct. Okay. Now with your mother, and that's where you learned how to plant crops and cultivate the land. Could you tell us a little bit about what that was like and what your relationship was with the land that you all farmed?

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Okay. Yeah, I am the seventh of 10 children, and I actually grew up with my mom, a single mom, and my grandfather. We lived on someone else's land. And as the thing back in those days, if you lived on someone else's land, that mean you had to work on the land in order to live in their house.

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We won't get into condition of it, but in order to live in their house. So we worked and lived on a vegetable farm. Back in the day, you call it a truck farm. Why?

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Because people would haul, load the vegetables on the back of their truck, and they would go through the neighborhoods and they would sell them. So you call it a truck farm. But we lived on a truck farm that did not belong to us, but we worked on it. And in hindsight, it was our saving grace, to be honest with you.

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Because on a truck farm, you work year round. Most people worked in tobacco. You made more money, but you did not survive. After September, when the harvest went in, between September and when the harvest came back in the spring, you suffered.

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And those of us who worked on this truck farm, we were an asset to the community. We were an asset to people. So that was my growing up. It was not our property, but we had access to all of the fruits and vegetables that grew on it.

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And therefore, my mom was known to help people in the community who did not have food, who did not have access. Because we had the access, she would go out, she would harvest for other people, give it to them because you could, because it helped them to survive. Now, not knowing your age at that point, could you or were you aware of the dynamics of working on somebody else's land as African Americans? It might have been a purely business, there might have been social elements involved.

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And I don't want to speculate, but could you tell us a little bit about what you may have recognized, even if you were a little bit of a younger individual at that time? You always recognize your place, if I might use that term. I used to dream, I wish we had running water. I wish we actually had hot water in our house.

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I wish we actually had a room where we didn't have, because it's four boys and six girls, where all the girls did not sleep in one room on separate beds. Or in the summer, you slept on the palace. So always like, or I honestly tell people, we could sit in my living room, or if you want to call it that at the time, sit in the main room, and you could actually look through the cracks and see outside. Why do we have to live like this?

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I didn't like it. I hated it. My dream was always to leave that area, to leave that farm, to leave that place. But the flip side of it, yeah, I noticed the differences, but I also noticed a strength that you didn't see in everybody.

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I noticed that even though we lived in somebody else's house, on somebody else's land, my mom was a strong individual. And most people say I take after her, and I love it. They don't know they're paying me a genuine compliment, but she would not tolerate others to speak to her children the way that they spoke to other people's children. She would not tolerate things of you, even though you could, I often said, did mom realize?

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One time I remember I got scared. Did mama realize that they could come back right now and say that we had to get out? Yes, she realized it, but she had, if I respect you, then you can respect me. And there's certain things that she would not tolerate.

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I don't know. It was just a, yeah, you knew your place, but I don't know if I was ever taught to know your place. I think I was taught to know who you are and know that you are a human being. And when you stand up for yourself, that at some point you may have to face the consequences, whatever they may be, but facing those consequences are better now than to lose who you are.

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So that's, that's, that was the unspoken lesson that I was taught. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

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So yeah, so those, those are foundational lessons that you learned from your mother and your family. Yeah. What did you learn? Not necessarily about the, the technical aspects of growing, but what, what did farming teach you about maybe yourself or about being a person or growing up?

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Hmm. What did it teach me? It taught me a lot. Let me think about that one.

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What did farming teach me? It taught me that I needed to nurture things. The things take longer than you think that in order to get the results that you want, you got to put in a lot of hard work. You hear me?

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It also taught me that as far as the work that we do it required you to get up and show up when you really didn't feel like getting up, not showing up because the farm and the vegetables and what you were doing was not going to wait on you. If you didn't get out there and do it, then that grass that needed to be chopped yesterday, it's going to be worse tomorrow. You know, if you did not take time to harvest, let's say those okra, like you're supposed to, when you go out there in two more days, you're going to wish you had because you're going to have okra that are too big, but you're going to have so many of them. So it's going to take you time.

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So it, it taught a lot about, um, we should live by the rhythms of nature, not nature live by our rhythms. If that makes sense. It does. It does.

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That's something that I learned from, from working. Yeah. Wow. You know, as somebody who did not grow up on a farmer in a farming community.

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And I think that a lot of people who live in either more urban or suburban areas, there's, there's a very large disconnect between understanding how people who grew up on farms live and what that life is like and the importance of it all. That's where a lot of food comes from. And I think that people can take that for granted. I try not to, but one of the questions that I've always been interested in asking people who grew up in that space or live in that space now is what does relaxation look like?

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How do you, how do you unwind? I mean, to your point is if this, if this animal doesn't get taken care of, then it's a problem. If this crop isn't managed, it's a problem. And this is a 24 hour a day, 365 day a year cycle.

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How do you, how would you all relax on, in a place like that? How do you relax? You know, you relax while you're working. Relaxing may be sitting together on the porch in the evening, shelling beans and everybody just sitting around with a bushel of beans and pans.

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You're sitting, you're resting, but you're working all at the same time. You know what I'm saying? So you have to, how do you relax? Relaxing comes on the weekends after, let's say maybe after two o'clock in the

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afternoon on a Saturday, because you might've worked Saturday morning, but relaxing came in the evening when you knew that you were going to light up the grill or you knew that family and friends were going to stop by and you could all pull up a chair and sit underneath the shade tree and people just sit and they just talked and they just, you know, they just enjoy the company of

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each other. You knew that because when you got up in the morning and literally walked almost two miles to church, cause we walked every Sunday. When you walked the church, you knew you were going someplace that people loved you and they were glad to see you coming. But also is where you got to see people that you didn't see all week and you got to see them in their relaxation state.

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So that's how, that's how you do it. You have to grab your moments. Vacations, what's that? You know, if you, if you got off work at six, you came home and eat, even during the weekday in the evening, you might have a fire outside to kill the mosquitoes.

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And I call it a fire, but it was a smoke. You know, back in the day, you put an old cloth that you dress or something you weren't going to wear anymore. You, you lit it up and you had a small smoke going to keep off the mosquitoes, but the kids would be playing in the yard and old folks or the grown folks would be sitting on the, on the porch talking or, you know, drinking Pepsi or maybe drinking something a little bit stronger, but it was a, it was a time of fun and relaxation and we, we loved each other. That to me was a true meaning of that.

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It takes a village. That was that village. And a lot of you, you know, a lot of people who live next to us, yeah, you were relatives, but a lot of just been living there for years cause you didn't move a whole lot. People didn't move a lot back in those days.

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So you, you, you had a community that was a community, a community that supported each other, that knew what was going on. Children stayed in their places, didn't know what was going on, but you know, the grown folks supported each other. And that's what I loved. And that's what I learned is you've got to support, you gotta, you gotta support each other.

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It's more than, than words, but it's deeds and actions. Sure. Sure. No, thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Now, during your time there on the, on the land, your family, more specifically, I suspect your mother obtained a deed, but at some point you realized the deed was a chattel deed. And that meant that you just owned the house, but not the land.

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Typically, when somebody obtains a deed, it's for the land and everything attached to it. Now, can you talk about what that discovery meant for your family and what impact, if any, it had on your beliefs about society, work, life, just wherever it is that you feel led to answer? Yeah. That was one of the most heartbreaking times of my life.

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It was at the time that mom had cancer. At the time I was married, I lived out in Washington State and I came back home to see my mom because I knew that, you know, she was, she was dying. And when she died and I, and it had a lot transpired during that very short period of time. I found out that we didn't have insurance on the house.

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So I said, oh no, we can't do this. We've got, I got insurance on the house, you know, selling all those things. It never occurred to me that we did not own this property. I found out when my mom died.

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And you know how I found out because my sibling and I decided that I had one sister who quit her job in order to care for my mom. So we decided is you quit your job to care for mom. So now it's time for us to care for you. So what we're going to do is we're going to give you this property.

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Okay. And the house that is on it, it needs some repairs. So we might just say, you know, let's just forget about the house and buy a double wide and put you on it. We went, we let them know the people who bought the house from, because they were on the same property.

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And that's when they told us, no, you can't. Why you can't because you don't own the land. Okay. So my question was, can I buy it?

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No, you won't sell us this land. No, we cleared it. We cleared it. We literally, so this, when I tell people that clearing this farm, this is not my first go around.

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I literally cleared, helped my mom. And at that time it was just two other, three other siblings at home. We, and my grandpa, we literally pulled up stumps, chopped down trees. We literally, you didn't bring in somebody to do it for you.

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We literally cleared this property that this house will put on and they would not sell it to us. I went to the court system. The court system said, I needed to have someone who would verify that when we signed the deed to this property, that it was under the understanding that it was ours. And that the landowner who had died, the Patriot had died, had indicated that this was your property.

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I couldn't find anybody to go to court with me, including my aunts. I couldn't find it. I can cry right now because that was a, that was a time that I realized, number one, how blessed I was to be born to the mother that I was born to. Number two, that I realized there's a difference in this world that regardless, that does not care about right or wrong.

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And I cannot dwell on the right or wrongness of stuff. And I need to move on. And number three, that I was blessed to have placed insurance on this property because the house burned. It was a shack.

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I mean, it wasn't, it was ours, but it might've not been the best house in the world. But the small amount of money that we got from the insurance policy that I had taken out, we were able to do what we wanted to do. And that is buy a little land, give it to my sister. I can't buy this, this double wide for you, but we can give you the down payment on it.

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We can have it moved. We can bring it in. This is our gift. This is your siblings gift to you for the sacrifice that you made to care for our mom.

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And I don't know, right today, people say, y'all are like, you talk about me and my siblings. Y'all are like, you love each other. Y'all just get along. Yes, we do.

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We don't always agree, but we know the foundation that planted and made us strong as a family, as a nucleus family. So, but yeah, I know I rambled, but that was one of the, like I said, that was an eye-opening period for me because I trusted people. I thought that they always had our, and I'm talking about the people who owned the land, who happened to be white people. But I still, I thought that there was a relationship there.

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I thought there was a mutual respect. I thought there was honor there. And do you know what they said? Oh no, you'll never put a double wide trailer on this land.

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Guess what they did? They put a double wide trailer on their land. They really did. I don't even go down that road anymore.

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I can't do it. I can't do it. I went once just to see. I can't do it because you, you did what you said you weren't going to do and you would not allow us to do it.

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And I'm going to pay you for it if I needed to, but you wouldn't sell it to us. Yeah. No, thank you for that answer. Thank you for that answer.

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Okay. So moving forward, you yourself have an extensive professional background, including work with county government. You're the director of cooperative extension. You've worked in social, you've done social work.

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You've worked in vocational training, adult non-violence education. Additionally, you've worked with groups, including children, seniors, refugees, socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals. What have you been able to pull from all of those workspaces, all those interactions and all of those engagements? Um, as far as a person that you've become now, now that's a big question, but you know, you've, you've worked in all these spaces and you've seen all of these people, um, who are experiencing all of these different parts of life.

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How, how do you think that, that those interactions have impacted you? It made me who I am, whether you like me or not. My life is, has been one of a life of service. I can't fight it.

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I never tried to fight it. That's just who I am. And I realized that, uh, my upbringing, uh, what I've encountered, what I've been blessed to see in this world, what I've been blessed to be able to help others to see in this world and the difference that I've been able to make who I'm destined to be that, you know, I'm satisfied with who I am. Uh, I really am.

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I like to be better, you know, cause we all for improvement. But I realized that what brings me joy is helping people to find joy. Does that make sense? It does make sense.

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And, and define joy might mean I got a meal tonight to find joy. It might mean I got clothes to put on my back to find joy. You might help me to find my way back home to find joy. Might mean that you will actually sit down and listen to me and hear about my trials and tribulations and my burdens and my challenges.

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And you're not sitting here to answer them or solve them, but you're actually listening to me and, and you allow me to exhale, exhale that, that, that to me is who I am. I'm that I once had a, um, I know this is off the topic, but I once had an old boyfriend when I decided that you just want the man for me. Uh, his comment to me, you always thought you was so good. That was crushing.

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It was like, Oh wow. No, I never thought I was always so good. I just thought I am who I am. Uh, this is who I am.

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So once I decided not to be who you want me to be, then you decided that, uh, you want to be cruel to me. Okay. Well, you know, this is something I needed to know. So this is where I go, but that's who I am.

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I, I, I am who I am and I cannot change. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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I will say quickly about that boyfriend. Sometimes people tell on themselves the way that they talk about you for somebody to tell you that you're too good. You know? Yeah.

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We'll, we'll, we'll leave that alone. I have conversation for another time. All right. Conversation for another time.

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Um, okay. Let's talk about your organization, urban community agronomics, or you can, can you first tell us what agronomics is and then tell us about a little bit about you can. Okay. Urban community agronomics.

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We live in an urban area. I love community. That's what it's all about to build community around in this urban area. Why don't we focus on agriculture?

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Okay. Which is food, but there is more to agriculture than healthy nutritious food. There's an economic side to agriculture as well. So you got the urban, you got the community, you got the agriculture, but you got the economic economics as well.

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That's you can this urban community agronomics. Okay. So that's, that's how I came up with the name is I wake at night. Sometimes I think, where did you come up with that from?

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And it's like, I don't know, but it sounds, it works. It works. And that's, that was what we, we have urban community agronomics. Uh, and the next part of your question was, I'm sorry.

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Oh, what exactly is agronomics? How'd you define it? And then just, you can just kind of just a little bit about what you all do. You touched on it a little bit, but, um, tell us a little bit more about that.

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Cause you all have lots of things that you do. So, um, you can answer it however it is that you feel. Well, let me just start by saying, you know, prior to retiring in 2016 is Durham County, uh, cooperative extension director, uh, at the age of 62, I started having problems with my eyesight and all of those things. And, and, you know, and I'm, I'm one of those persons, you know, I'm an, I'm an achiever, sometimes overachiever.

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So I might've take two, I might've taken a step forward. There was, I was not, uh, given direct permission to take that step forward far. And I would say, you know, you can take all the credit. I don't care.

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I'm just here to help people, but it didn't work out. So let me just go back and say, so in 2016, at the time I got ready to retire, it's like, you're too young to stay at home. So what you're going to do, you got to do something. And I reflected back on a lot of things that I saw in life.

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I saw, and even here in Durham, cause there's a community outreach coordinator. I went places people told me not to go. That's just who I am because I felt safe. Uh, and, uh, and I felt like my reputation kind of preceded me.

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So I saw people who were, I saw kids who were hungry. Okay. I saw kids who were failing in school. I saw parents and adults who were just not doing well.

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I saw poor housing. I saw a lot of things that I know that could be made better. Uh, and I saw, and part of that was, if you have access to food, access to open green spaces, a community that cares about you, regardless of who you are and where you come from, then you can aspire to be more. And that was what this is all about.

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So how do you do all those things with one thing? I think agriculture is a key because my personal motto is from the earth comes it all. From the earth comes it all. I can learn math.

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I can learn technology. I can learn how to deal with a community. If I can see beetles and bugs getting along, don't they send a message to me? You know, if I can see geckos and, and crows and, and all those animals having, having, uh, making space for each other, can't we do that as well?

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But the one turning thing to me that drove me to agriculture, uh, is that I did get back into it as a county extension director. I got back into agriculture, but I saw people and kids really being given food, but it was not given with love and with respect. It was not given as though you as a human being counted. And that broke my heart because there's nothing I can do about if you're giving somebody, I can't, I can't, you know, I can't other than my saying, wow, you know, you didn't have to say that, or you didn't have to do it that way.

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Or, you know, all those behind the doors conversations, when you, when you get back to the office and they talk about the people that, that they helped, that is sad too. And it's like, no people deserve better. So thus, when I retired, my goal was to find land. And I served on the board of Triangle Learned Conservancy.

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And they say, you have not because you asked not. And I asked them, do you have land that you can give me access to? I didn't say anything else now that you can give me access to where I can build a community garden. And they said, yes, we do.

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And they brought me here to this place. I had never been here before, never heard of it before. But if you ever been someplace, sincerely, someplace, when you walk on that land, or when you open that door, you go into that house, or you step on that, wherever, it's kind of like something, something, enter your spirit. And you say, wow, this is where I'm supposed to be.

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What's going on here? What's, what's up? What is this feeling? What is the feeling I have?

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But this is perfect. And I remember my sister looked at me and, you know, and I always say that she asked me how I bumped my head, because there were fallen trees, there were tall, you know, grass taller than I am, buildings, everything was just in disarray, had not been touched in over 70 years. But it was a place, and I did not know, I'll be honest with you, because I admit what I don't know. I did not at the time know that it was part of a former plantation.

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But I felt like, God, this is beautiful. This is perfect. Now we got to figure out what we're going to do and how we're going to do it, because I got $250 in this nonprofit bank account, and that's not going to get you very far. Not even in 2016, it's not going to get you very far.

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So, but yeah. Wow, perfect. Thank you so much for that answer. We're going to take a quick break.

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Okay. And then we'll come back and do some more. All right, look forward to it. Ready, young lady?

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Yes, sir. All right, welcome back. So in talking a little bit more about UCANN, you're the executive director, but you also work with a board. And the board is made up of a broad cross-section of the community, just different backgrounds, different ethnicities.

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What value, if any, does that diversity offer this organization and the people that you serve, that you all serve? I think it's absolutely necessary. You know, I often say to people, and I'm answering your question, but in a roundabout way. I often say to people, when you plant in a garden, do you plant all of the same thing?

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No. You plant a variety of vegetables or whatever it is you plant, you plant a variety. And some of them protect each other. Some help others to grow.

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Some actually give nutrients to the others. That's what diversity is to me. That's what a diverse board is. It needs to be of a community of people who may think different, but have hearts that are the same.

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They may travel a different road, but they're also looking to get to the same place in many ways. So that, to me, is why you have to have that mixture. You have to have a mixture of race. You have to have a mixture of sexual orientation.

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You actually have a mixture of age. You have a sexual... The more diverse it is, the better you are, I think, as an organization, because you have a variety of experiences that are coming. And that variety, it's kind of like making a soup.

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I'm getting metaphorical now, but making a soup. You want to put different ingredients in it, and all it does is make it better. There you go. No, that's perfect.

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That's perfect. As you think about UCAN's work as relates to food access, especially for people who live in more urban settings, what are your thoughts on the significance of both nature and agriculture in urban spaces? Now, we're out in nature, and before this interview, we were talking about how sometimes people, maybe in urban settings, can become disconnected, unintentionally, from nature. But can you talk about just any thoughts that you have on how nature and agriculture might fit into urban spaces, or how it could be folded into some of our cities to maybe create a space that's more beneficial for the people who live in urban settings?

00:28:56.880 - 00:29:37.770

Mm-hmm. I think, one, the first thing to realize is that, when I'm thinking about agriculture, and I'm thinking of our pollinators, our bees, and all of those, you don't have to have an acre of land to grow a lot of food. You don't have to have, you know, you don't have to have access to all the tools and equipments. People need to realize that I may not be able to grow, one of the programs, let me start, one of the programs we have here is what we call our green bucket gardening, right?

00:29:38.090 - 00:30:16.030

Okay. And that is where we actually take a five-gallon bucket, it just so happens it's green, we put holes in it, we fill it up with enriched soil, and we put plants in it. And we give them to young people, we give them to old people, and we say, you may not have any more than a stoop, or a porch, or a very small balcony, if you want to call it that, but you can nurture this plant, and you can grow so many tomatoes on this little bush that you'd be amazed, especially if you grow cherry tomatoes. So you can do a lot with it.

00:30:16.130 - 00:30:31.210

It may not be enough to fill your freezer, but it's enough to bring something to you, what? Healthy, nutritious food that you know how it was raised. It brings a sense of fulfillment to your spirit, to your soul. I did this.

00:30:31.450 - 00:30:37.450

You should see a child when they can say, I grew that. It's like, did you really? May I have one? Yeah.

00:30:37.590 - 00:30:51.630

Oh, they're so honored and proud for you to taste what they have. Or you may even just have a little flower area, plant in that flower area. Because I love flowers like everybody else. But you can put a tomato here, or you can put a pepper there, or you can do this.

00:30:52.050 - 00:31:04.810

And then at the end of the summer season, where everything grows, and everybody can do everything, we feel like, don't throw that green bucket away. Why? Because you can put in enough collard greens. Now, I'm from the South.

00:31:05.450 - 00:31:16.870

You can put in enough collard greens in that green bucket that you can have the collard greens that you want for your Thanksgiving dinner. So don't just, so that's how I look at it. And then it's like, so, but I live in a city. Yeah.

00:31:16.870 - 00:31:21.930

Bees are in the city. Okay. Stop killing them. Okay.

00:31:22.070 - 00:31:29.310

When that bee happened to buzz around you, there's something there. There's a fragrance. There's something in the area that distracted him. Don't fight them.

00:31:29.390 - 00:31:32.610

Don't kill them. Well, they'll bite you. They're mean. No, they're not.

00:31:32.870 - 00:31:39.130

When you swat at them, that's the defense mechanism. Leave them alone. I talked to them. Leave me alone.

00:31:39.290 - 00:31:42.590

Don't you see I'm busy? Go away. You think I don't? I do.

00:31:43.090 - 00:32:15.570

So we have to teach our urban inner city families, just like we do our rural families, that you play a role, a tremendous role, in the care of this one earth that we got to live on. And what you do, you might think it's minor, but what you do is great. And it's impactful. Because if I add your one to my one, to their one, to their one, we've done a lot.

00:32:15.930 - 00:32:25.650

And at the end of the day, I may sit back and say, well, I didn't do nothing. Not really. You did. You are part of a network of people who are doing it.

00:32:25.930 - 00:32:46.690

You're part of that network of people who say, you know what, instead of a crape myrtle bush on the corner, why don't we plant an apple tree and teach our kids how to prune trees, how to care for fruit trees. A skill set, a food set. You know, it just doesn't take rocket science from the way I look at things. I'm sorry.

00:32:47.750 - 00:32:53.150

But it takes a whole, it doesn't take a lot. So I don't know. Did I answer your question? You did.

00:32:53.290 - 00:33:06.930

No, that was perfect. That was perfect. I just think we all can do, we've been conditioned to think that we got to have a whole lot to do anything, but we don't have, because there's not a whole lot for everybody. Right.

00:33:07.070 - 00:33:14.890

And I don't, and we need to realize that we can make a big difference without having a whole lot. We can. Yeah, no, that's a wonderful answer. Thank you.

00:33:15.810 - 00:33:50.040

So you touched on UCAN's relationship with the Triangle Land Conservancy. And as of 2024, UCAN now sits on 176 acres of land. Now, I guess that's, they say the old Virginia Slims ad, you've come a long way, baby, from $250 in the bank. And can you tell us a little bit more about what the lot looked like when you all first acquired it and then the transition to now?

00:33:50.240 - 00:34:19.840

Now you probably can't remember all the things that you've done, but just, can you talk a little bit about that process and what it looked like? It was, it really hasn't been, excuse me, please, that long of a process. But first of all, when I asked them for the access to land, that was in 2016. It took us a year to work through what I call, what we call now a user license agreement, which was something new.

00:34:20.620 - 00:34:31.360

And that was TLC said to me, well, first, let me say what I said to TLC. I'm just asking you for access to land. I'm not asking you for money. I'm not asking you for labor.

00:34:31.500 - 00:34:46.820

I'm not asking you for tools. I'm not asking you for anything. If you give it to me, I'm gonna take it, but that's not a condition of my ass. And so what they did was brought us here and showed us this property, which had not been touched in over 70 years.

00:34:47.340 - 00:34:59.000

There were fallen trees. I mean, literally it had to be longer than 70. There were fallen trees, grasses, none of the buildings was habitable, none. Oh goodness.

00:34:59.140 - 00:35:12.960

It was just a mess. It really was. You walk in and you kind of look and say, where do I start? When I say fallen trees, I'm talking fallen trees, like the big oak trees that gets behind you at this point, that kind of thing is what I'm talking about.

00:35:14.000 - 00:35:36.140

So it took us absolutely 11 months, seemed like it was longer, to come together to create a user license agreement, which actually gave us access to use the land. That's what it was, access to use the land. The land did not belong to us. We had no rights to this land.

00:35:37.680 - 00:35:54.380

You know, I call it, and I'm not being, I'm trying not to be negative or anything like that, because I thought it was, it is a blessing that we got access. But we lived in a world of, meaning you can, we lived in a world of mother, may I. Mother, may I. Mother, may I have a well dug?

00:35:54.820 - 00:36:00.160

Yes, you may. Okay. Thank you, mom. I got the money to pay for it, so I'm going to do it.

00:36:00.520 - 00:36:14.640

Mother, may I. Mother, may I have this road regraveled? Yes, you may. So I lived in that kind of world, which is, I have to ask permission for everything that we literally did on this property.

00:36:15.420 - 00:36:41.580

And I remember when, right before we signed the user license agreement, I used a term that I did not, I did not realize was going to create a stimulus of a divide with us. I said something to the effect, and this is what I was always taught, is at some point in your life, you must prove yourself worthy. Now that was speaking to me. That was not speaking to TLC.

00:36:42.100 - 00:37:02.240

But I think at some point it was taken in a very offensive, why would you say that? I'm saying that is because I was taught that when God gives you little, in order to get a lot, you have to prove that you did what you could do with that little, which made you worthy for that lot. Does that make sense? It makes perfect sense.

00:37:02.240 - 00:37:09.680

Okay. So that was it. So that was all I was saying. But it was a learning lesson, let's just say on both sides of the aisle.

00:37:10.200 - 00:37:31.000

So we got access to the property. Then came what you're going to do with it. I had an individual, because we came out here on January, I know the date, January 13, 2018. Remember we got the organization existed as a non-profit, 2016.

00:37:31.740 - 00:37:52.800

I went to TLC. So it was November of 2017 is when we signed the Usual License Agreement. And January the 13th, 2018 is when we came out here, a group of us and said, we're going to clear this land. We're going to clean this land up.

00:37:52.860 - 00:38:01.000

We're going to do what we need to do. We couldn't do it. We came out here with our hatches, our saws, our little, we couldn't do it. So it's like, okay, we got to regroup.

00:38:01.160 - 00:38:26.540

What can we do? It just so happened that a person introduced me to Alfred Mays, who at the time worked for Burroughs Weckham, because she believed in us, named with Jennifer. I don't, you know, so I don't have permission, but Jennifer, Jennifer introduced me to Alfred Mays. We had an appointment with him.

00:38:26.540 - 00:38:57.600

So I presented, created a PowerPoint presentation to take to him to, to share who we are, what we wanted to do and all those kinds of things to see if I could not get some funding, some grant support. But Mr. Mays said to me, and I will share with you, here's a blackmail. He said to me, your organization is very young, in essence, your organization is very young. I do not have a grant for you that I can give to you, but I do have a pot of money that we call ad hoc money.

00:38:58.360 - 00:39:16.960

I'm going to give you $10,000. I need for you to make that $10,000 work for you. And I heard him and I did. And as they say in television, the rest of that is history, because that was the catalyst that got us going.

00:39:17.360 - 00:39:41.580

They got us to be able to clear this land, to hire somebody to help us clear it, to get started with a board that had at least some young people on it that knew how to create a website that knew how to do all those things. So we could get our message out there about what we're doing and why we want to do it. That allowed us to be able to engage with the community and the community heard us. They came in, they helped us, they helped us clear this land.

00:39:41.820 - 00:39:56.020

They helped us do a lot that we're doing to, to even today. So without community support, we could not, we could not be where we are. But yeah, that was the beginning of, of that. What can I say?

00:39:56.060 - 00:40:12.500

That was the beginning of, of who we are in the dream becoming true. But don't get me wrong. You want to, don't, don't you ever think that it was easy? Don't ever think that I did not spend some nights when I get up the next morning and I literally would say, Lord, I can't do this no more.

00:40:13.220 - 00:40:30.880

Because there were those days, there were those nights when I said, Lord, you know, do you, do I know what I'm doing? And I get up in the morning and, um, I walked this land. I remember one morning in particular, I walked this land and it, people think I'm, no, they don't think I'm crazy. They just listen to me.

00:40:31.100 - 00:40:40.240

But I literally had a voice that said to me, what took you so long? I said, what, what took you so long? That was my ancestors. What took you so long?

00:40:41.060 - 00:41:03.240

And, and at that point, it's like, okay, I'm not doing this by myself. I'm not doing it just for myself. I'm doing it for others because we've got to change the trajectory of history that, or at least that was being told to us and to, to, to children that look like us. We've got to create a sense of pride in the agriculture ancestry that was left to us.

00:41:03.620 - 00:41:14.880

It's up to us to do it. This is the way to do it. So what took you so long? I don't know, but I'm here now and I'm not going to leave until we do what we're supposed to be doing on this property.

00:41:15.440 - 00:41:27.820

I ramble, but I just, I just love the, there's a story here, but it was, it was, that's what we did. And that's how we started. Now that was fast forward. You know, we got a lot of help.

00:41:27.900 - 00:41:36.540

We got the garden going. We had the whales. You had to fight city. I mean, even some of the tales is when we came up here, all we wanted to do was build a garden.

00:41:36.580 - 00:41:53.480

Right now, let me tell you now, I think it still exists, even though I have people who deny it. But that, that path that you grow up on is actually part of the great Native American trading path. It is a part of North Carolina historic preservation. It is a, it's part of that.

00:41:53.840 - 00:42:06.540

But when you drive up the right side of this farm, it's zoned by the city. The left side is zoned by the County. Okay. So all I wanted was a garden.

00:42:06.980 - 00:42:28.640

That side was the, is the agricultural side. This side is zoned by the city where they had the fields. This side was the pasture side where they had the buildings and the cows and all that kind of stuff. At the time I was told that in order to do what I wanted to do on, on the city side of the property, nobody remembers it now, but that's okay, that I had to do a site plan.

00:42:29.400 - 00:42:44.360

Ask me how in the world you're going to do a site plan, which even at that time cost you $5,000 or upward when you got $250,000, $250,000 in the bank. And talk about being discouraged. I was discouraged. Well, what did I do?

00:42:44.600 - 00:43:03.860

I went to, um, I went to the city, uh, County and I asked Durham County, could you, um, share with me, could you, could you help me out? And they said, yes. And there, Durham County said to me, you're not building houses. All you're doing Delphine is building a garden.

00:43:03.980 - 00:43:22.780

Go ahead. So at a time it kind of, you know, how it makes you mad and because it takes you off your schedule and off your plans. But it really was a blessing in disguise because it forced us to come on this side of the property, look at these buildings and do what we could to save them. Otherwise the building would have continued to deteriorate.

00:43:23.320 - 00:43:35.140

But, uh, so it was a blessing in disguise. So that's, that's pretty much how we, how we got here. Um, we worked, we worked. I'm the grant writer.

00:43:35.720 - 00:43:42.240

I write a grant. Uh, did I get, do I get them all? No. The first one I wrote, I even wrote to the County.

00:43:42.380 - 00:43:46.880

Did I get it? No. Uh, but do you stop? No, I'm stubborn.

00:43:47.060 - 00:44:03.300

I'm a, I'm known as a stubborn person. I am stubborn. Uh, so I wrote more grants. We got whales dug because the first year and a half that we were here, my sister and I, and some volunteers before we got gardeners, we actually planted in all 47 of those raised garden beds.

00:44:04.220 - 00:44:26.100

Every other day we will load 21, five gallon buckets on the back of my truck. But on the back of my truck, we would, uh, fill them with water and we will water this garden by hand. That was every other day. That was every, have you ever carried a five gallon bucket of water?

00:44:27.080 - 00:44:33.400

That's a lot of water. Okay. That's a heavy bucket. I did it then, but here, six years later, I don't know if I could do it this time.

00:44:33.440 - 00:44:48.860

It really was. Uh, so, so that's what we did because in order to get people, uh, engaged in, in gardening, you got to show them what can be. To have them come out and see an empty bed with nothing but soil in it. That didn't get, what, what does that do?

00:44:49.120 - 00:45:05.160

Nothing. But to have them to come out and see a bed that's flourishing with, with peppers, with onions, with, with, uh, uh, tomatoes, all of those things that says to them, we planted them. You can do it too. Yeah.

00:45:05.280 - 00:45:39.740

So that, that's what did it. So we, we did all of that and, um, started rehabbing some of these buildings, trying to save some, couldn't. And then I, I might be fast forwarding too fast for you, but, um, in 2000, uh, 24, actually January 11th, 2024. Uh, and this took a while to, to work out, uh, about a year or so, uh, TLC signed the land, signed this thing, the deed over to us, to this property.

00:45:41.000 - 00:45:48.800

So we have a small minority nonprofit. That was not my, my goal. I'm serious. That was not what I came out here for.

00:45:49.280 - 00:46:14.080

Uh, it's wonderful. And yeah, I had dreams of owning a little 53 acres that we had kind of like access to, but the whole now, please. But to, to have this land means a lot because this land was a plantation. So you, I, I sometimes have to wake up at night and pinch myself and say, you know, God, isn't that something?

00:46:15.280 - 00:46:53.820

The descendants of the enslaved are now engaging in agricultural practices and teaching it to others, not just descendants of the enslaved, but teaching it to others, uh, because we recognize the legacy that was left to us. And we're doing it not because we have to, but because we want to, because we know the benefits that it has for all mankind. We know what it does to build resilience in everybody, to be able to do something for themselves and not be at the mercy of others. And to grow fresh fruits and vegetables is one of them.

00:46:54.200 - 00:47:20.700

You might not be able to grow enough to put in your freezer and put a can in and fill your cupboard, but you grow enough in order to keep you going and to keep you and your family encouraged and together and know that your life is not dependent on someone else's saying yes or no. It's dependent on you and what you are willing to do to make it better. That's just me. Wow.

00:47:21.240 - 00:48:05.920

Wow. So now, as I was thinking about our conversation, something that struck me was the contrast between on the one hand, the story around the deed situation, your mother and her house. And on the other hand, the story about how your organization has been deeded 176 acres of land. Have you ever given any thought to how these land situations have over your life taken you from one end of the spectrum to the other?

00:48:06.600 - 00:48:22.330

If that question makes sense. It makes sense. But I think one thing that we got to consider here is getting the deed to this property was also the will of the community. It was not just my will.

00:48:23.270 - 00:48:52.590

You know what I mean? And I don't know who's going to see this, but I want people to be offended by it. But sometimes I found as a black person in regards to something like ownership of this land and changing, you know, so that I'm not on a mother and me, I kind of a situation. I need for another white person to take the battle up for me.

00:48:53.050 - 00:49:03.710

And I had one. Okay. His name was Ron. And Ron pushed me before I wanted to be pushed to say, this is what I want.

00:49:04.270 - 00:49:20.790

But where I'm going with this is it became a battle that I decided I need to take. I need to step back from because it became a battle of the clashes of the two powers. You know what I mean? So let me let these two powers debate this.

00:49:21.070 - 00:49:34.510

And I'm being very nice. Let me let these two powers debate this. And then, then I step in and let you know what my desires are and what it is that we want. But it is, it is you're right.

00:49:34.590 - 00:49:57.210

And I know I kind of got off subject at that point, but it is almost a total contrast. And it's the difference between having support and people supporting you, which we did not with the chattel deed. We did not have anybody to support us, even, even family who were willing to go up and they were old school. So I, you know, I, I, I know people who are, they were not that far removed from, from slavery.

00:49:57.670 - 00:50:25.190

So I know the relationship at that point. So I don't hold it against them, but it's a difference between having support and not having support, you know, and, and we had support in this. And it's a difference also having someone else who has a little bit more authority, be it written or unwritten to push your mission, to push your, your, your goal and to push what is right. Gotcha.

00:50:25.690 - 00:50:29.630

No, perfect. Perfect. All right. We're going to take one more break and then we're going to finish up.

00:50:29.830 - 00:50:33.690

Oh, okay. All right. Thank you. Welcome back.

00:50:34.050 - 00:50:40.330

All right. All right. This is our last segment. We're going to let you get out of here because you all have had a long day on the farm already.

00:50:40.470 - 00:51:08.950

So we appreciate you having us out. Okay. Now we touched on the previous nature of this land and being a plantation and beginning about 245 years ago, this place was known as the Snow Hill Plantation. And from what I understand, it was owned by North Carolina's largest slave owning family at some point in its history, the Camerons.

00:51:09.810 - 00:51:42.370

And at one point they had almost 1000 enslaved people working here. Now, part of that past as a plantation means that enslaved people were buried here. Some of the work that you all do leads to you all locating and cultivating and taking care of these grave sites. What is it like when you all encounter these memorials and more broadly, what is it like to work on land where these artifacts are located?

00:51:48.740 - 00:51:59.650

For me, it gives more meaning and purpose to be in here. It gives absolutely more meaning and purpose to be in here. I'm sorry, there were two hummingbirds. Oh, no.

00:52:00.110 - 00:52:10.830

Yeah, no, no. I almost need to think about that. This land. First of all, let me just say this was the first plantation based on my knowledge.

00:52:10.890 - 00:52:31.290

It was called Snow Hill Plantation. It was owned by William Johnston, who subsequently died and on this property was buried. He, his wife and five of his children and he had one surviving child. Now, Mr. Johnston, there's a grave ledger on this property.

00:52:31.690 - 00:53:06.430

And what I wanted to know was, is there really anybody buried in a grave ledger? Is he really here on this property? So, in working with Duke University Environmental Education Department, working with Dr. Kofi Boone with NC, North Carolina State and working with Dr. Charles Johnson and others at NCCU, we looked at this property. We had a ground penetrating LIDAR doing on it.

00:53:06.790 - 00:53:24.570

And we found that, no, Mr. Johnston is not in that grave, neither is his family. They're probably buried in Hillsboro. Okay. However, what we did find was through the LIDAR, we found and located 40, at the time, 46 graves.

00:53:25.910 - 00:53:35.330

Now, the question became, are these graves of white people? Are they graves of black people? Are they graves of Native American? Whose graves are this?

00:53:35.790 - 00:53:54.670

Well, based on the depth and width of the graves and what they saw and could attain from the, from the scanning, these were graves of African Americans. Well, who else, but enslaved. Okay. So, they were graves of enslaved.

00:53:54.950 - 00:54:08.170

So, we actually marked, at that time, 46. Okay. Now, we know that there are no, in all probability, there are no Caucasians born, raised, buried on this property. Why?

00:54:08.310 - 00:54:28.670

Because it was, you know, we couldn't be, we couldn't live together, so we couldn't be buried together. Okay. So, we know that for a fact. Uh, so, at the end, uh, Mr. Johnson had one remaining child, uh, uh, and he also had a partner with the Bennehans.

00:54:28.910 - 00:54:44.010

So, that's how, so, you know, she married, uh, she sold the land to the partners and, you know, that's how you became with Stagville. So, I want you to know that Stagville is a, is a growth of Snow Hill. Yes. Okay.

00:54:44.230 - 00:55:07.630

So, at its, at its, um, uh, best, Snow Hill had approximately 70 enslaved. Okay. Now, at its, um, best, I can't even think of the word right now, highest point, uh, Stagville had approximately a thousand enslaved at the time. Now, I tell people, you know what, you got to realize something about those numbers.

00:55:09.310 - 00:55:18.890

A thousand enslaved, that population died out and regrow. Do you understand? Yeah. During the, during the, during the decades.

00:55:19.130 - 00:55:33.810

So, don't just think that, oh, there's a thousand slaves lived on it. There were hundreds of slaves when you think about it through the years, because they grew, they died, they had babies, they died, and they were buried, and they were buried for the most part on this property,

00:55:33.810 - 00:55:51.850

as well as some on Stagville, because we've done further work on this property, and we found that the thousand, that the one acre that Mr. Johnson had set aside for his descendants to be buried, since he had none anymore, uh, was turned into an enslaved grave site. And why?

00:55:51.970 - 00:56:30.750

Because all of them are with, uh, stones, and that's the way you marked your grave site back then, unless, you know, and, and doing this study that, uh, Duke did for us, we recognized that those stones that marked the foot in the head of the graves, and we're not going to dig them up. I, I call them stones because we're only seeing the surface of them at this point, but you can dig, which we're not going to do, because that, that, that desecrates. So, we're not going to do that, but those stones did not come from this property. The closest that we've been able to find is about two miles from here, so they had served an important part as well.

00:56:31.010 - 00:57:08.790

They were, the stones that were, they used for the, to identify that their, um, their family members that they buried was part, was, was honored with stones that not were found on this property, that, but they were, they were able to find someplace else. So, what does it mean to me? It means that a path was set for me somewhere along the line, and thank God I did the things and took the steps that I was supposed to do, and put supposed to stay, take, that has brought me to this day, because otherwise I could have derailed it. You know what I'm saying?

00:57:09.150 - 00:57:32.550

Yeah. It is an honor. Yeah. It is work, but it is an honor to, uh, be here, to be, to be on this land, and, and to be able to do this, and, and, and even a greater honor in terms of ownership of the property, because I never, I never forget when I had a couple kids coming from the inner city to the property, and one young man asked me, like a little boy, he asked me, he said, uh, whose property is this?

00:57:32.710 - 00:57:45.130

So, I had to go in and explain to him, well, it's not my property, uh, but they're allowing us to do this, this, and this. Oh, so, you're just a slave. It's like, no, I'm not a slave. I'm not, and well, it's not yours.

00:57:45.530 - 00:58:12.830

I said, I know it's not mine, but I'm doing some things that I can do with it, so that makes a difference to me, so I'm here, so, but it didn't impress him, you know what I'm saying, and not that I'm trying to impress. Yeah. That, that's not the point, but to be able to sit down with him, and at that point, I kind of, you know, I'm gonna mentor you, because I need to help you, and you, and you, and a couple more others, is, you know, there's a difference between being a slave and doing something when you want to, that you love to do. Yeah.

00:58:12.890 - 00:58:21.590

As a slave, I could not stop to drink, get a drink of water. If I got tired, I could not stop. If I wanted to sit down, I did not stop. If I wanted lunch, that was just too bad.

00:58:21.830 - 00:58:34.710

If I wanted breakfast, hey, who said you had to have breakfast in order to work? If it was eight o'clock at night, but the sun was still shining, you know what, I'm still working. That's what makes the difference, okay. If I'm growing tomatoes, and I want to pluck one off

00:58:34.710 - 00:58:59.590

the vine and eat it, I can do that now, but as a slave, I could not do that, but to have that young man come back here now, and he came back, and to be able to say to him, guess what, we now own the land, and what I'm saying to him, and without saying a lot, is there's a lot to do with perseverance, okay, that there's a, that has a lot to do with a belief that, that some things are meant to be,

00:58:59.710 - 00:59:10.150

if you stay true to who you say you are, and do what you say you were going to do, for the right reasons. Yeah. Okay, so, but you got to have that stick-to-it-ness.

00:59:10.490 - 00:59:29.270

Yeah. You know, we go back to say Rome wasn't built in a day, but neither was life change either, so you've got to do some things, and it lets them know that, you know, today may look dark, so there's a lot of lessons in everything I do. I realize that sometimes, there's a lesson that's unspoken. A day may seem dark, but tomorrow it is light.

00:59:29.730 - 01:00:17.710

I walked out here a minute, like I said before, many days when we're carrying those buckets of water, or I didn't get that funding, or it's kind of like, you know what, because up until 2021, I didn't take pay. I didn't take pay, but you got to understand, because that was, this is a mission, this is a drive with me, but then I realized that I need to be true to people, and that is that you cannot expect, you got to start paying yourself, and it's not at market value. I want people to know that. I mean, that's not it, but you cannot expect the average person to do what you do, and not receive monetary compensation, so my grant writing kind of changed a little bit.

01:00:17.790 - 01:00:31.110

Let me look for some unrestricted funds, because if I need a garden manager, I need a garden manager, you know, definitely you can, you can, you can live without pay. I can. I'm retired. I get that little check each month, social security, so you know, I'm good.

01:00:31.110 - 01:01:01.310

I know how to live, but I can't expect others to do what I do, and I think that it, it, it sets you up for failure, and I realized that at some point, it really set us up for failure for me to, to assume the position that I have, and do what I do without receiving a salary, and most of it, I'm serious, I give it back, but you got to receive it in order to give it, so that's the I don't know. I think I got off subject. No, no, that's fine. You were fine.

01:01:01.390 - 01:01:20.790

You were fine. You were fine. You were fine, and now going back to some of the discussion on the enslaved people's graves. Now, I had not heard this before, but before we started talking, you told me about a process or a concept called dowsing.

01:01:20.970 - 01:01:32.710

Yes. Can you tell me a little, can you share a little bit about just that in general for those who may not be familiar with it? All right. I want you to look it up.

01:01:32.810 - 01:01:55.090

Everybody, please look it up and read about it. Dowsing, d-o-w-s-e is douse, d-o-w-s-i-n-g is dowsing. Well, how do I explain it? I tend to equate it with, you remember how back in the old days, no, we're not that old, but yeah, it was, they used to look for water with the, with the rod and the two sticks and all that kind of stuff.

01:01:55.510 - 01:02:38.810

Well, dowsing is you actually have metal rods, and what you do is you realize, number one, that the human body, even in when it's deceased, decayed, whatever, it still sends up energy from the earth, okay? It sends up energy. So dowsing allows you to be able to walk this land and be able to locate the, the remains or the space that, that the deceased lived. It is an indigenous practice, and it is an enslaved practice, and what it does is it lets us, so we, we did this on, on this property, and we did it with Beverly Scarlet.

01:02:39.370 - 01:03:03.410

Now, y'all say, oh girl, what are you doing? Now, first of all, I respect Beverly Scarlet. Ms. Scarlet on land, she's an indigenous, black indigenous individual. She owned land in Hillsboro, traditional Native American land, but she was also a district court judge for Orange, not Orange, I think it was Orange and Chatham County, so I might be mistaken on those two counties.

01:03:03.730 - 01:03:40.730

So it's not a fly by night, you know, kind of thing, but what we were able to do was when she did it, she was able to let us know this one acre of land is full of engraved, it's, it's, it's, you have not even touched on it, Delphine. You have about 46 flags here. Every four steps I take is a grave, and the, the practice also allows you, it requires you to know some history, okay, because you're asking yourself when you go to, when you locate a grave site, and you ask, and you can literally ask out loud, don't answer your mind, how old are you? Are you eight?

01:03:41.590 - 01:03:53.890

And how would I know to ask eight, because first of all, I see two stones about this far apart, so in our probability, it's a child, okay. Are you, are you eight? Are you 18? Are you 10?

01:03:54.130 - 01:04:04.150

Oh, okay, you're eight years old. How did you die? Were you, were you beaten? Were you sick?

01:04:04.870 - 01:04:30.810

Were you, you were sick, okay, because they answer you back, you got to hear, you cannot have a lot of distractions, and it's real, I'm gonna be honest with you, it's real, and you know, and so anyway, it got to the point, and you got to ask some questions, so you, okay, you were sick, so what do you know about history back in that time? How did people die? Did you die of, here I'm just throwing out something, because I don't know all that you know, did you die of smallpox? Did you die of flu?

01:04:31.110 - 01:05:06.650

Did you die of flu? You died of flu, because your rod, once you get an answer, yes, it automatically turned, I do not turn it, I'm not lying to you, it automatically turned, okay, and it answered the question for me, yes, so her practice is to hit them on her legs, I said, why do you do that? Is that part of it? No, that's just her habit, you do what you want to do, okay, I like that, so I do that as well, so then, you know, so you answer the series of questions, she went to one grave that was marked, because this was one that was marked, and said, you know, how did you die?

01:05:07.230 - 01:05:29.810

And the person said that they were shot, okay, you were shot, were you shot with a a rifle? Were you shot with a pistol? And it turns, you were shot with a pistol, but that's unusual for you to be shot with a pistol, were you disobedient? Did you get shot in the field?

01:05:30.370 - 01:05:50.170

Were you trying to run away? Were you, you were trying to run away? So it kind of turned, you were trying to run away, it did not turn, so the series of questions that she asked, because you got to ask, you know, were you trying to protect someone? Yes, okay, were you trying to protect family?

01:05:50.370 - 01:06:14.190

Were you trying, so it asked that series of questions, and bore down that this man and his wife were both shot with a pistol, because they were hiding a runaway slave, and they were made an example of, when they went there to their house and found, so who else would, if I'm going to shoot you, and I'm going to make you an example of, and I'm going to shoot you with a

01:06:14.190 - 01:07:01.430

pistol, that means that I am so mad with you, and I got to make an example of you as a slave owner, what? I want to make sure nobody else think that they have the nerve to hide a runaway slave, and that's what they did, but that is called dowsing, and she walked that land, and she said, you know, I can keep walking all you want me to, but they're here, and it's one acre, she said, probably this whole acre is full of them, and it makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow, wow, and now with respect to indigenous people and Native Americans, you mentioned the trail, and then Miss Scarlett, and their connection with this land, and a lot of that history is forgotten or neglected as well.

01:07:02.410 - 01:07:15.250

Can you tell us about, you mentioned this to me, and these are things that I didn't know, but bent trees. Yeah, yeah, well let me, I think I'm gonna have to explain this to you. Let me start here, and I'm gonna make it fast. Okay, you're fine, you're fine.

01:07:15.810 - 01:07:42.270

People often ask, why do you call this property Catawba Trail Farm? Okay, because in this area, the Native American are the Ochinichi, the Chaponi, the Eno, all of those, the Catawba Native Americans are down south, like you're going South Carolina, Mecklenburg, up there. So I often tell people, the reason we name it Catawba Trail Farm is because, number one, that was the paperwork that I had at the time, but number two, all that is shared

01:07:42.270 - 01:08:02.190

with us was that the Catawba Native American were the first ones to become guides to the Europeans, and they traveled up the coast because they knew more of the dialect, excuse me, and were able to communicate with more of the Native tribes. So we named it after who we knew, and that was Catawba Native Americans.

01:08:03.370 - 01:08:22.310

But when we were dousing, when working with the property, Miss Scarlett asked us, oh, she said, I know I saw one, here's one. I said, one what? It's a bent tree. Literally, it is a tree that has an elbow at the bottom, or you know, elbow.

01:08:23.070 - 01:08:53.670

So what the Native Americans would do is that when someone died, there would be, they would put, they would bend a tree, a small tree. You would bend it over, and you would tie it so that it would stay bent, and as that tree grew, that bend stayed there, okay. Now that tree, and I tell, like I told you, now I see them when I see them, and I can't not not see them. When that tree grows, that bend stay there.

01:08:53.810 - 01:09:08.530

It serves two purposes. Number one, it normally points you in the direction of water, okay. Number two, it also is a site of where someone died. So you, and so we went, did the dousing, and went to one.

01:09:08.650 - 01:09:22.310

She saw the bent tree, and she asked, are you, are you a Native American or Indian? And he said, yes, just make sure. Okay, are you Ochinichi? Are you Cheponi?

01:09:22.890 - 01:09:28.610

Are you Eno? Nothing. Are you Catawba? It turned, okay.

01:09:29.070 - 01:10:14.410

So to me, that was because people questioned me on why we, why I named it this. It's like, that's my, that's, what's the found two, and both of them were, we did that with two, and both of them were members of the, of the Catawba trail, uh, Catawba Native American tribe. Both of them were. So that's how that, but there's so much, and when you walk along the river, when you know, when we walk to what, when you take the, this trail, the uh, great, um, the great Native American trading path, and walking to the river, you, if you go directly, you're overlooking the river.

01:10:14.590 - 01:10:35.910

I call this the lookout of the river, but there are also some paths that takes you to the, um, what I call the shore of the river, but as you leave the grave site, and you start walking to get to the shore of the river, you can look at the river, and you can see a number of those ancient bent trees. I'm serious. You can see them. Now my assumption is those are just showing you, you know, this is water.

01:10:36.430 - 01:10:49.130

Yeah. Uh, and then the, uh, others, uh, may, that we're finding that are actually in the woods, are more, more great sites of the indigenous people. Wow, wow, wow. Okay, so we're winding down.

01:10:49.170 - 01:11:15.530

Just a couple more, just a couple more. Now the history of Black farmers, Black landowners, Black individuals in agriculture, and environmentalism, um, in Durham County, and nationally, um, has been neglected. It's been overlooked. It has not been highlighted as much as other groups of people and their connection to the environment.

01:11:17.350 - 01:11:45.880

What can people do to change that, to help elevate or highlight the narrative, or make it more known that Black people do have, and Native Americans do have, this strong connection and bond historically with the land? You do such a thing as cut. Uh, so, um, I guess. I lost my concentration.

01:11:45.920 - 01:12:05.400

No, no, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine. No, no, you're fine, you're fine. Just when, when we think about the history of Black agriculture and African Americans' connection to the land, that story a lot of time isn't told. It's not shared.

01:12:05.520 - 01:12:45.060

People don't really know it. What are some things that you think could be done to help highlight those stories and make it more known that these relationships between this group of people and the land does exist, and there's a rich history? Let me just say, I think one of the things you can do is, um, and what we're doing here, and that is, let's look at some of the Native plants and trees that, that the, uh, Indigenous people and the enslaved people depended upon, uh, for health and wellness, okay? They did not have a doctor to go to.

01:12:45.800 - 01:13:12.480

Uh, they did not have anybody to care for their, their health and wounds, uh, beyond making sure that they were still able to work and to labor. But I think that they lived and they learned what was useful in the forest. They, they learned about what was useful that nature gave, gave to us, and, and they, it made them, um, it made them powerful. So we need to share those stories.

01:13:13.020 - 01:13:38.900

Uh, the other thing is, I think that we need to share what we know. It's, it's amazing to me that, um, when I think about conservation and I think about being good stewards of the land and I think about agriculture, who, who did it? It was Indigenous people and it wasn't Black people, uh, for the most part. They are the ones who, you know, I guess, and here I'm going to use as my past attendance, say I'm going to use my educated imagination.

01:13:39.660 - 01:14:16.380

They are the ones who said, let me find a better way to grow this, whatever this particular vegetable yields. If I find a better way to grow it, that means it's going to take less labor for me to grow it. It will be more productive and maybe, just maybe, my family can benefit from it in some way or another, just maybe, you know what I'm going to find a better way. And I think that what has happened in a lot of the techniques and that made it possible to grow better, to grow, become better stewards of this property, a lot of those techniques, those trades, all of that, they were taken over.

01:14:16.900 - 01:14:31.400

Uh, they were, they were assumed by others, even though they were created by the Indigenous people and enslaved people. So we need to tell our story. Yeah. We need to bring our families and kids to farms.

01:14:32.120 - 01:14:59.600

Uh, we need to, we need to realize that the myth that, that I grew up with or that I was made to believe that, you know, working in agriculture, uh, mean that you were, you, you were working in a slave trade. No, working in agriculture, you're working in a trade that allows you as well as others to live. Okay. That's one of the most important industries that you could possibly be involved in.

01:14:59.840 - 01:15:12.520

And that's the agriculture industry. So don't believe that the message that's been given to us all these years. Let's tell the truth. Let's, let's flash the light on it and let's help our children be proud of who we are.

01:15:12.740 - 01:15:25.860

Because I'll be honest with you. I was always taught once I got grown, that the shame is not in being enslaved. The shame is being the enslaver. And I think it, it, it leaves, it holds true even today.

01:15:26.220 - 01:15:29.800

Wow. Wow. Yeah. Last question went into this.

01:15:31.200 - 01:15:55.560

What is a message that you would like to leave with people who are watching this? Just, you know, briefly, um, whether it's about community, agriculture, strength, perseverance, what's, what's just the word to leave with the people who are watching this? The word that I would like to leave is you can. I mean, I'm serious.

01:15:56.100 - 01:15:59.800

You can. Yeah. Perfect. I don't mean you can do it in a day.

01:15:59.900 - 01:16:06.140

You can do it in a year. You can do it in a month, but you can. Perfect. And bring along some others to do it with you.

01:16:06.500 - 01:16:13.100

There you go. Miss Ellis, thank you so much for your time. This has been fantastic. We really, really appreciate it.

01:16:13.180 - 01:16:17.720

And I've enjoyed my time. All right. I've been honored. Thank you very much.