Chapter 1:
(1910–1920)

In 1909, the National Nut Grower’s Association held its eighth annual convention in Albany, Georgia. The closest town to Monticello, Florida, was across the state line in Thomasville, Georgia—approximately 50 miles from Albany, Georgia. The following year, 1910, the annual convention was held in Monticello, Florida. Although a small town, Monticello was well respected by the neighboring towns; in 1875, the A.M.E. Church had its Annual State of Florida Conference in Monticello.

Small farms were still suffering from the economic effects of the Civil War. There was a notable switch from farming traditional crops, such as corn, tobacco, cotton, and so on, to horticulture and nuts. Pecans and watermelons became two major exports for Monticello. The winters were harsh, and the coldest temperature ever recorded in Monticello was ten degrees below zero in February 1893.

Two years later, in 1895, approximately 250 miles to the north, perhaps the greatest gathering of African-American minds in modern history convened in Atlanta, Georgia at the famous Cotton States Convention. Unfortunately, the most significant accomplishments of the planning for a desirable future of inclusion of African Americans in a “post-slavery” economy had no immediate impact on what was happening in rural north Florida in 1910.

Even more harsh than the cold winters was the progressively increasing “chill” of the repressive nature of the socioeconomic conditions and continued dehumanization and immoral treatment that the first-generation descendants of recently freed slaves had to encounter in Monticello. This treatment was mirrored throughout the deconstructed post-slavery of the New Confederacy.

It was the same year when Rosa Lee Abigail Brown was born as the second child to Cornelius Brown, Sr. and Sylvia Siplin-Brown. The Browns were an extremely large family. The community that Rosa grew up in was called the “Brown Community,” and one of the A.M.E. Churches is called “Brown Philadelphia A.M.E. Church” even to this day.

According to oral history, some Browns were part of the Marcus Garvey movement to repatriate to Africa, and traveled to the Ivory Coast. However, Rosa’s dad never owned any significant property recorded to our knowledge. The Siplin family, as were many families, was a mixed family of African, European, and Native American heritage. Therefore, many to almost all of them were mulatto. The “Creek” and “Seminole” intermarried with former slaves.

According to U.S. Census data, in 1910, approximately 60% of Jefferson County, Florida residents were of African descent and former slaves. According to the 1860 U.S. Census, 75% of the adjacent Leon County comprised slaves with approximately 1,500 “free Africans.”3

The total of 17,000 residents in 1910 was the largest number of people in Jefferson County ever recorded since the U.S. Census started in 1830. Only a few of those families would benefit from Reconstruction and amass large tracts of land—up to several hundreds of acres per family.

Following racial violence, segregation, and limited opportunities, the Great Migration of African Americans from the Deep South to the Northeast, Midwest, West, and other points away from the slave plantations resulted in a significantly reduced African-American population in the South.

However, unlike other counties in Florida, a staggering 60% of the population in Jefferson County and over 80% of Gadsden County—thirty miles to the west—remained of African descent.

Many African Americans also went deeper into central and southern Florida and to the Caribbean islands to escape slavery and the ravages of Reconstruction and the Jim Crow South. Cuba, which had recently acquired the status of an independent republic state following the end of the Spanish-American War in 1902, also served as a destination for many.

According to Dr. Larry Rivers’4Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation (2000), nearly 95% of the plantations were concentrated in approximately seven counties in the “Big Bend” of Florida’s Panhandle. Monticello is situated almost exactly in the middle of the “Big Bend.”

Among the many plantations on the No