This is where I was born, grew up, went to school and escaped from as soon as I could. The sign hung over Lee Street downtown for years until the NAACP made the city take it down. "The Blackest Land" refers to northeast Texas, known as the Blackland Prairie. The soil is jet black because of the mineral content. "The Whitest People"....well, you can draw your own conclusions. My mother worked for the City of Greenville, running the print shop, and after that sign was taken down, it was stored, in pieces, in her office. I use to see it when I went to work with her in the summers. I asked my mom once what made us whiter than other white people, but all she would tell me was "that's not what that means".
Greenville is also the place where Lenelle Geter, a black aerospace engineer at E-Systems, was imprisoned for years for a robbery of a KFC store in Balch Springs (almost an hour away) which he did not do. Apparently, the Greenville Police thought he could drive all the way to Balch Springs, rob and shoot up a KFC restaurant, then drive back and go back to work, all on his lunch hour. He eventually got out and sued the city and won.....
Greenville is also the place where a young black boy was drowned in 3 feet of water at a city pool while surrounded by older white boys and it was deemed "accidental".
My family has been in Greenville or Hunt County since the late 1800s. I don't even like going back to visit my family in that place........
3 comments:
Phillip's grandmother had the blackest land/whitest people thing printed on her checks. We have one of them.. it also has a Jamaican bread recipe written across the back. Glad you posted the picture because nobody ever believes me when I tell them about the sign.
That is hilarious.....irony at its best.
I attended college at Texas A&M Commerce (formerly East Texas State University) in the 1990’s which was 15 miles from Greenville.
3 friends and I would regularly drive to Greenville to eat at Ryan’s Steakhouse (all you can eat) and one Friday night the KKK was protesting in a vacant lot across the street.
I got into a screaming match with some jackasses from the KKK (the jackass and I were nose to nose screaming at each other) because he was calling my friend Kelvin a ni55er and it pissed me off.
Those of us who actually know can attest to the fact that the BLACKEST LAND is a description of the Black soil in that region of Texas. You never want your vehicle to get stuck in the black soil, it’s a nightmare.
The WHITEST PEOPLE well, not cool!
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