diverse conversations
Embracing Differences in Utopia Fairhope’s Diverse History and Hope for Change by Meredith Montgomery In 1894, a group of Iowa progressives arrived on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay to establish a utopian single tax colony. Believing that their plan had a “fair hope” of success, the Fairhope Single Tax Colony was founded, generating support from across the country and attracting an eclectic population of industrious, creative and free-thinking people. Meanwhile, the area (known as Tatumville) was already inhabited by a diverse population that arrived more than 30 years earlier, including many former slaves looking to enjoy their newfound freedom. THE HISTORY “It was a great area because there were no plantations, it was right on the bay with good fishing and there was good soil,” says Thelma Young Todd, co-producer of the documentary Celebrating the African-American Heritage of Fairhope, Alabama and retired research librarian. Her great-great grandparents moved to Fairhope in 1865 and along with their six children they cleared 15 acres, built buildings, planted gardens and orchards and raised livestock. According to historian Paul M. Gaston, when the single taxers arrived in 1894, they were trapped in a compromise of principle. Their hope was that by making land common property, they would eliminate poverty and foster cooperative individualism. They wanted equality for all in their “model community”, but feared that doing so “would likely mean destruction of the colony” and therefore determined that Fairhope Single Tax Colony property was for whites only. As a civil rights activist and the grandson of Fairhope’s founder, Gaston wrote, “The compromise was perhaps made easier by the belief that, at bottom, racial prejudice was a function of economic injustice and that, insofar as the Fairhope demonstration might help to point the way to a better economic order, it was hastening the day when racism might disappear.” Gaston wrote extensively about Todd’s widowed great-great grandmother, Nancy Lewis, who was asked to move from her 40-acre homestead (where Coastal Community College is now located) because of her race. She had been paying taxes on the property but did not have a deed and in 1895, Fairhope Single Tax Colony paid her for the improvements she made to the land.
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Gulf Coast Alabama/Mississippi Edition
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