Perhaps in the 1940s, Black residents gather at H.H. Park’s Grocery on the corner of South Jefferson and Marion Street in Eatonton, current site of the Maggie Lane womenswear shop. This may have been on a weekend when local people traditionally dressed up for a trip into town. CONTRIBUTED
Eatonton native Mary Alice Farley Horne, now in her 80s, married and raised her family here, working 12-hour days as a maid for white families while her children were tended to by her extended family. IAN TOCHER/Staff
Butler-Baker alumna Georgia Benjamin-Smith of the Uncle Remus Museum and a staunch promoter of Eatonton and Putnam County, shared some of her childhood recollections with the GWM audience. IAN TOCHER/Staff
Melton Smith, 71, was in the Putnam County High School Class of 1971, the first class following federally mandated integration. Now the Butler-Baker Alumni Project, Inc. president, Smith attended an HBCU in Atlanta, where he married, raised a family, and continues to live in Decatur. IAN TOCHER/Staff
Mary Alice Smith graduated from West Georgia College but returned to serve as director of the first county daycare center at what is now The Plaza Arts Center in Eatonton. She also worked for voting rights alongside the late Councilman Ulysses Rice. IAN TOCHER/Staff
Now in her 80s, Rev. Harriet Thompkins Camp returned to Eatonton and is now a pastor at First Community Church in Eatonton after previously living in New Jersey and working as a cosmetologist. IAN TOCHER/Staff
Martha Thompkins Parham, now in her mid 80s, is a married mother of six who remained all her life in Eatonton, where she worked at both Putnam General Hospital and for the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department. IAN TOCHER/Staff
Marrie Belle Farley, 92, married and moved to Buffalo, where she lived more than 40 years before returning to Putnam County. IAN TOCHER/Staff
Richard Garrett made a slide-show presentation on Black history in Putnam County at each event before turning the floor over to residents with first-hand memories. IAN TOCHER/Staff
Shady Dale native Lavoniah Sanders married and moved to Eatonton, where he worked as a licensed electrician before retiring from Georgia Power. IAN TOCHER/Staff
Two meetings were held in Eatonton last week, the first on Monday at the downtown Georgia Writers Museum and then on Saturday at historic Butler-Baker School on Alice Walker Drive, to remember and discuss Black life in Eatonton and Putnam County by those who lived it, primarily through the 1950s to 1970s.
The project stemmed from the origination of a Putnam County NAACP chapter that also organized …
