Black Belt News

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Madison Spirit

During research of the old family cemeteries on Redstone Arsenal, I often encountered records of a Rodah Horton as one of the pioneer landowners. Rodah appeared in many historical records of this county, and he owned a significant amount of what became the southern part of the arsenal. However, he lived in the Meridianville area, where he owned more land.

According to the more than 30-year probate of his estate, he owned two houses and more than two lots in Huntsville, with one lot adjoining the old bank in town. His holdings included a plantation of 1,360 acres in Marengo County south of Demopolis. The nine folders of probate records for Rodah’s estate here show he owned about 130 slaves and properties called the Mountain Tract, the Cane Break Plantation, the Watt Place, a “place north of the Watt Place,” the Cavet Place, the Meridianville Quarter, the Thomas Place, the Campground Tract, the Glasscock Tract, and the Home Place, where his widow lived. The entire estate’s real property was about 5,000 acres.

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Posted by Joseph D. Bryant May 13, 2008 12:00 PM

Two groups that had worked separately to establish a Negro Leagues museum in Birmingham agreed today to work together on the project.

Birmingham City Councilman William Bell brought together representatives of the American Negro League and the Alabama Negro League during a meeting of the Birmingham City Council. The groups now say they want the museum established at Fair Park, Rickwood Field or the A.G. Gaston Building on Third Avenue North.

“We need a site that has a natural flow of traffic,” said State Rep. Mary Moore, D-Birmingham, who is assisting with the project

Source: The Birmingham News 

By Coy O’Neal
Sunday March 23, 2008

Rosa Mae Gibbs Whitt, a former Selma Times-Journal contributor and columnist, died March 15, 2008 at the age of 91 at Ingalls Hospital in Harvey, Ill.

Known as “Miss Beloit” affectionately by some in the Dallas County area, Whitt was very active in her community and spearheaded a number of projects.

“She was involved with a little bit of everything,” Chuck Chandler, who worked with Whitt during the 1990s, said. “She always worked to get support for events that were going on in her community.”

Whitt was involved heavily in quilting, and would come to quilt at the Old Depot Museum, according to Jean Martin, who currently works at the museum. Some of her quilts remain on display.

“She was the warmest, most wonderful person you’d ever meet,” Martin said.

Ethel Roper, a lifetime friend of Whitt’s, became her Sunday School teacher after Whitt had taught her for years.

“She was a very beautiful person, willing to help everybody,” Roper said.

According to Roper, Whitt’s gardening skills were top notch. ” She had the most beautiful garden in Beloit,” Roper said. “When everyone else’s gardens were brown, hers were green and just thriving.”

Whitt was born in 1917 in Cecil, Ala., the second child of 10. She attended Alabama State College, now known as Alabama State University,and later became a teacher.

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Selma native was Akron, Ohio’s first Black judge

By Connie Bloom
Beacon Journal staff writer

Published on Thursday, Mar 06, 2008

Long before he became the city’s first black judge in 1967, Akron resident Joseph D. Roulhac could see the heavy hand of life’s inequities.

He did what he could to balance them out.

Sometimes that meant the discreet gift of a few dollars or the use of his car for a day, said his daughter Delores Roulhac-Nance, of Chandler, Ariz.

As years went on, his dedication to his fellows became more apparent.

Judge Roulhac was surrounded by his family when he died in hospice care in Akron on Wednesday morning. He was 92.

”I . . . feel that becoming a good judge is a process rather than an event and a continuing process at that,” he told the Beacon Journal in 1977, when he was running for re-election to Akron’s Municipal Court after 10 years on the bench. ”I expect to be a better judge next year than I am this
year.”

He remained on the bench another decade, retiring in 1987.

Judge Roulhac brought humor and humanity to the system, said his friend, Judge Carla Moore of the 9th District Court of Appeals. No matter how much trouble a person was in, he could connect.

”Many times people would be so nervous . . . and he always had a kind word for them. He found a way to, say, uplift a person with his faith. . . . He provided an example for me. He was quite a role model.”

Retired Akron Deputy Mayor Dorothy Jackson, a longtime family friend, consulted with the judge after she got a speeding ticket in Cuyahoga Falls.

”I was so scared,” she said. ”He called the judge over there and said my sister’s over here and she’s just as guilty as she can be. Now what does she owe? So I had to pay it,” she laughed.

”He just had so much wisdom. When I became deputy mayor, he became my bridge builder. I just love him dearly.”

Judge Roulhac was born in Selma, Ala., on Aug. 16, 1916, son of the late Rev. Robert and Minerva Roulhac. He and his wife of 65 years, the former Frances P. Phoenix, moved to Akron in 1948 — just two years after his four-year stint in the Army.

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High-tech analysis detects white ancestry

Saturday, February 16, 2008
THOMAS SPENCER
News staff writer

SELMA - As B.J. Smothers was putting together her talk for Friday’s Black Belt African American Genealogical and Historical Conference, she got the magic e-mail: news of an exact Y-DNA match for her grandfather, who was born a slave in Wilcox County in 1861.

It’s the clue she’s been awaiting for years, one that could identify his father, her great-grandfather.

Her long-lost cousin - who shares her father’s family name, Norris - also sent his own picture. “He’s a white guy who lives in Washington state,” Smothers said. “I’m looking at a cousin of mine.”

Smothers, who is light-skinned, knew her grandfather was mixed-race. She’d suspected that his father was one of four Norris brothers, sons of a plantation overseer. Still, looking over the family tree her cousin sent her, a family tree that goes back to an ancestor in Scotland, she was overwhelmed.

“I still don’t know how to process it,” she said.

With the growing availability of archival materials on the Internet, the greater communication made possible by e-mail and the availability of affordable genetic testing, many blacks are finding it possible to patch together family histories that had been torn apart by slavery and the upheavals that followed.

Smothers was one of the organizers of the genealogical conference held this weekend in Selma, which featured a keynote address Friday night by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, the host of the PBS special “African American Lives 2,” which will be rebroadcast Sunday at 4 p.m.

“These discoveries about our ancestors are fascinating stories that everyone, regardless of race, can identify with and draw inspiration from,” Gates said in a release. “They’re stories that together offer a new understanding of not only the African-American experience, but also of race in America.”

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