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    A Place to Worship: African American Camp Meetings in the Carolinas
    A Place to Worship: African American Camp Meetings in the Carolinas
    A Place to Worship: African American Camp Meetings in the Carolinas
    Ebook128 pages59 minutes

    A Place to Worship: African American Camp Meetings in the Carolinas

    By Minuette Floyd, Terry K. Hunter and Tom Stanley

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    About this ebook

    A chronicle of the historically rich spiritual gatherings so vital to rural African American life

    Camp meetings—also called revivals—originated with circuit-riding Methodist preachers who gathered congregations in open fields and town squares. However, the sermons had messages that were not always welcomed by mainstream Protestant churches in the colonial and antebellum South. With the help of white itinerant preachers, enslaved African Americans organized their own camp meetings in conjunction with the white revivals. These celebratory events were predominantly spiritual, with preaching, worship, and communion, but also offered a chance for family reunions. After the Civil War, independent African American congregations built on this antebellum heritage by establishing permanent camps that continue to welcome meetings today.

    In A Place to Worship, Minuette Floyd shares an intimate portrait of the culture, traditions, and long history of the camp meeting as one of the most vital institutions in the lives of rural African Americans in North and South Carolina. As a child Floyd attended camp meetings each year in North Carolina, and she renewed her interest in them as an adult. For the past eighteen years Floyd has travelled to campgrounds throughout the Carolinas, documenting the annual tradition through photographs and interviews. Floyd has sought to record not only a visual record of the places and practices of each, but also the rich and inspiring stories of the people who make them thrive.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of South Carolina Press
    Release dateAug 15, 2018
    ISBN9781611178890
    A Place to Worship: African American Camp Meetings in the Carolinas
    Author

    Minuette Floyd

    Minuette Floyd is a professor of art education and director of the Young Artist’s Workshop at the University of South Carolina School of Visual Art and Design.

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      Book preview

      A Place to Worship - Minuette Floyd

      A Place to Worship

      A Place to Worship

      AFRICAN AMERICAN CAMP MEETINGS IN THE CAROLINAS

      Minuette Floyd

      THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS

      © 2018 University of South Carolina

      Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208

      www.sc.edu/uscpress

      27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/

      ISBN 978-1-61117-887-6 (cloth)

      ISBN 978-1-61117-888-3 (paperback)

      ISBN 978-1-61117-889-0 (ebook)

      Front cover photograph: Prayer service led by Reverend Otis Scott, Shady Grove, 2012

      FRONTISPIECE: Alin Rigby, Shady Grove Camp ground, 2014

      Put off thy shoes from off thy feet: for the place where thou standest is holy ground.

      Exodus 3:5

      CONTENTS

      Foreword

      Acknowledgments

      Introduction

      1  My Story

      2  Back Then

      3  Camp Life

      4  Under the Arbor

      5  The Next Generation

      Conclusion

      Appendix A

      Appendix B

      Appendix C

      Notes

      Bibliography

      FOREWORD

      A picture is worth a thousand words. So goes a popular adage. If this axiom is true, it begs the question: what happens if a picture is accompanied by a thousand words? One obvious answer may be that the idea under consideration suffers overkill. Another possibility would be that the additional information embellishes the work more. This latter scenario is precisely what occurs in this collection of photographs, titled A Place to Worship: African American Camp Meetings in the Carolinas. In her treatment of the camp-meeting phenomenon, Dr. Minuette Floyd provides a provocative portfolio of photographs and establishes a context for this subject matter. She further frames the camp-meeting dynamic with delightfully written passages. These passages provide personal and historical perspectives and offer a captivating literary and visual experience. In the narrative readers are extended a familiarity and kinship that places them in the midst of the experiences of the participants, Dr. Floyd included.

      That Minuette Floyd is a photographer of some skill was evident in her works exhibited in previous venues, and her skills are manifest in this volume. While each of the photographs collected here speak with the power of a thousand words, the addition of the narrative imposes clarity on the camp-meeting experience that may otherwise be lost. Dr. Floyd achieves this by weaving her personal and familial experiences with historical annotations and first-hand anecdotal accounts from camp-meeting participants. By doing so, the author paints a sensitive portrait that strikes a delicate balance between the art of photographic documentation and the sensitivity of grassroots storytelling. She carries readers with her on a voyage that not only introduces the world of the camp meeting but also provides a vantage point that makes her fellow journeyers feel like both observer and participant. Some attempts to do this fall short of this mark because of a tendency to be trite and clichéd given the nature of the subject matter. Dr. Floyd avoids this trap by establishing a framework that is subtle in its combination of intent, content, and context. These variables serve as mitigating factors, which allow readers to embrace the notion of the camp-meeting dynamic with the simultaneous infusion of their own experiences.

      An achievement of this magnitude is a noteworthy accomplishment, because the experience becomes more than slices of moments in the mind of one person. It rises to a level of cultural and humanistic significance and places us more in touch with one another through shared values. This spiritual connection is at the core of what one aspires to when seeking a sense of belonging. Whether that feeling comes via a single photograph, the proverbial thousand words, or a combination of both, in this instance Minuette Floyd delivers.

      TERRY K. HUNTER

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      My journey to document the African American camp-meeting experience has been a phenomenal time of reminiscing and learning. I have met so many wonderful friends along the way. Thanks to my parents, Aline and Raeford Byers, who introduced me to camp meeting at a young age. Although you have moved on, I will forever remember the important life lessons that you instilled in me. To my brother, Allen, and sister-in-law, Debra, thank you for inviting me back to camp meeting; who could have known the impact that my return would have on my life, and now, fifteen years later, I am still uncovering its rich history and sacred stories. Thanks to my wonderful nieces and nephews—Asya, Ariel, Tia, Allen, and Tony—and to the other young campers who participated in my disposable camera project so that I could see camp meeting through their lens. Thanks to my sister, Rae, and brother-in-law, Audwin Helton, owners of Spatial Data Integrations, Inc., for their assistance in designing the camp-meeting map.

      Thank you to my mother-in-law, Alice Carter, for your support and confidence in me. I am immensely grateful for the support of my husband, Reggie, and for his patience and encouragement. Thanks for overlooking the pile of books and papers that accumulated on tables and floors while I worked on this project. And thank you to Dr. Cynthia Colbert, Nina DeCordova, and Deloris Pringle, who encouraged me and provided editorial support when I needed it most.

      Thanks to the University of South Carolina and former dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Mary Anne Fitzpatrick who provided grant opportunities for which I was able to

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