Tennessee Living

Tucked between timbered ridges along a remote country road, McDonald Craig’s Linden farm tells the story of his life.

His 110 acres have the timeless feel of an old family farm. A small mountain of stove wood, taken from the surrounding hills, keeps cold weather at bay. Discarded vehicles dot the barnyard. The modest farmhouse, under sheltering trees, beckons visitors to a generous front porch.

Wooded hills rise on both sides of the comfortable, cheerfully decorated house Craig shares with Rosetta, his wife of 46 years. To his call of “Hup! Hup! Come back now!” a herd of tiny goats materializes from the woods and races home. And inside the ramshackle barn, a 1954 school bus recalls a time in American history that was both painful and proud for McDonald Craig.

Now 73, Craig is a rarity among American farmers. His is a Century Farm, one that has been in his family for more than 100 years, farmed by four generations of Craigs. And what makes it even more unusual is that Craig and his family are African-Americans.

“My great-grandparents, Tapp and Amy Craig, purchased this place on Christmas Day in 1871,” Craig recalls with evident pride. “They were both slaves, and after the Civil War, they worked to save money to buy their own farm. He gave $400 for this place, put a yoke of oxen as a down payment and paid the rest off in less than two years. It was the first piece of property in Perry County bought outright by a black man.”

Most black-owned farms were lost during Reconstruction and the early years of the 20th century – and there were precious few to begin with. But the Craigs kept theirs in the family, growing row crops and livestock, harvesting and replanting timber, growing peanuts, and supplying bark to the local tannery. Craig acquired the farm himself from a granddaughter of Tapp and Amy’s in 1958, and, after much hard work, returned it to its former success.

Farming has not been his only occupation. At the age of 12, just finished with sixth grade, Craig went to work in a sawmill, making 20 cents an hour for 10 back-breaking hours a day.

“School? School was the sawmill,” he says. “This was back during World War II, and most men who could work were in the service. We needed the money.”

While there was little time for leisure, Craig’s love of music grew during those years. He had been exposed all his life to music, thanks to musical parents and a community of both black and white neighbors who gathered to sing and play. He first heard the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and the Delmore Brothers on the spring-driven Victrola owned by their closest neighbor.

At 20, Craig left Linden to serve in the Army, earning a Bronze Star for service in a gunnery unit in Korea. When he came home, he was to serve in a different way.

Until the 1960s, there was not a high school in Perry County that black students could attend, and they were forced to enroll at Montgomery High School in Henderson County, the next county over. Many students, faced with the lack of transportation, had to board away from home. But with the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, local officials were prompted to at least provide transportation, if not schools, for black students.

“I wanted to further my education because I didn’t have any. When they started talking about a bus, I told my mom and dad that I wanted that job,” Craig remembers. “The superintendent told me to go get a bus, so I went to the local Chevrolet dealer.

His people had owned my mother’s daddy and his parents, so it was a little like doing business with the family.”

Craig got his bus and $300 from the county each month to pay for and maintain the vehicle and drive students to school and back. For the first four years, he joined his passengers in the classroom, graduating in 1958 with Rosetta Smith, the high school beauty he had met there. For the next six years, he rose at 4 a.m., drove the bus route and worked in a sawmill during the school day, returning from his route in the evening. During his off-hours, he and Rosetta reclaimed the farmstead, building their home in 1959 and raising two sons.

He reflects with quiet pride on his role as a pioneer for civil rights in his community. Still, he is even prouder of the day in 1965 when local students began to attend school in Linden and bus service was no longer necessary.

Craig went on to a second career with the state highway department, while continuing to farm cattle, a few crops and timber. He also made his mark as a country musician, winning his first contest in 1978 at a Jimmie Rodgers Festival in Meridian, Miss., continuing to this day with local performances and appearances at folk-life festivals, state fairs and music festivals.

While he still enjoys playing his music for others, he’s happiest these days closer to home, where, he laughs, “I’m comfortable, and I won’t get run over unless it’s by the horse. At 73, you don’t sing as well as you did at 25.”

His life has been full of hard work, he muses, looking over the land his family has stewarded for all these years. But it has been worth it.

“I have been busy. I have,” he shakes his head. “But you know, I have really enjoyed it. I’m not bragging or anything, but I do have something to be thankful for here, let me put it that way.

“I’ve seen whales in the ocean, sails on the sea, and beautiful towns and cities, but no place I liked better than here.”

A Musician and a Farmer

Swaying back and forth, strumming his guitar in front of the living room fire, McDonald Craig yodels a sad melody made famous by his hero, Jimmie Rodgers – a way of expressing what mere words cannot, he says.

Close your eyes, as he sometimes does, and you might think you’re hearing Rodgers, so uncannily evocative is Craig’s soft nasal twang and soulful blues intonation. This is music that changed the way the world thought of rural musicians, and Craig sings it with the respect and passion it deserves.

Craig has recorded a CD of his music, McDonald Craig Sings Traditional Country Music, and a cassette, McDonald Craig Sings “My Home in Tennessee.”

Both are available through Craig. Write him at Route 2, Box 352, Linden, TN 37096.

All in the Family

The Tennessee Century Farms Program, established by the state agriculture department in 1975 to mark the nation’s bicentennial, recognizes farms owned by the same family for 100 years or more.

To date, 1,000 farms representing every Tennessee county have been registered.

The program is now run by the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University, which maintains a database for scholars and others.

Farmers may apply for the program, and most often hear of it through county agents, the program newsletter and its Web site (http://histpres.mtsu.edu).

Members receive the newsletter and a handsome yellow sign noting that “This is a Century Farm” to post on their property.

“There are still more Century Farms in almost every county than are certified,” says program director Caneta Hankins. Interested?

Contact Hankins at 615-898-2947.

A National Treasure

When McDonald Craig applied for Century Farm designation, staffers at the Center for Historic Preservation knew they had come across something special.

“Mr. and Mrs. Craig’s story is so unusual and special. It’s not only the story of a farmer and musician, but also in his own way a civil rights activist,” says Caneta Hankins, assistant director of the center.

“His is also a story of Tennessee agriculture and the contribution of African-Americans to the long history of Tennessee farm families.” The center has also nominated the Craigs’ farm for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. The lengthy state/federal decision-making process is 08winterly in progress, but Hankins is hopeful of its success.

“The Craigs’ story is significant not only to Tennessee, but nationally.”

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Magazine:
Tennessee Home & Farm, Fall 2010 Edition Edition

Headline:
On McDonald’s Farm

Summary:
Here a guitar, there a goat … and everywhere a memory on this historic Century Farm.

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