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The Pettway plantation house, 1937.
Photo by Arthur Rothstein.Woman on Gee’s Bend plantation, 1937.
Photo by Arthur Rothstein.

Gee’s Bend is a small rural community nestled in a curve in the Alabama River, southwest of Selma, Alabama. Founded in antebellum times, it was the site of cotton plantations, primarily those of Joseph Gee, who arrived from North Carolina in 1816. Upon his death in 1824, Gee left 47 black slaves. In 1845 the two Gee brothers who had inherited his estate owed $29,000 to another relative, Mark H. Pettway. They gave him the Gee’s Bend plantation as payment. A year later, Pettway and his family moved there in a caravan with a hundred or more slaves. Except for the cook, the slaves literally walked over 700 miles from North Carolina to Gee’s Bend.

The 10,000 acre plantation retained “Gee” for its name, but the name of each of the slaves became “Pettway,” a name that has prevailed in Wilcox County to the present day. After emancipation the black Pettways remained on the land as sharecroppers, working and living under virtually the same conditions as the original slave population.

In 1900, Adrian Vande Graaff of Tuscaloosa acquired the land and added another 3000 acres. The Vande Graaffs held the land as absentee landlords until 1937. When the Depression hit, the price of cotton fell dramatically. Gee’s Bend sharecroppers took their produce to Camden in an attempt to cover their merchant debts. The creditor there continued to advance credit for the next three years and stored the cotton hoping for future higher prices. To secure the debts, he obtained liens on the possessions of 60 families.

In the summer of 1932, the merchant in Camden died. That autumn, his widow foreclosed on the sharecroppers of Gee’s Bend. Collection agents arrived on horseback and fully armed, took everything, including all food supplies. Wagon loads of liquidated goods from 68 households and more than 300 people were removed. Had it not been for the Red Cross which provided flour, meat and meal during the winter of 1932-33, the people of Gee’s Bend would have starved. W.J. Jones of Oak Hill, Red Cross campaign manager at the time, said, “You can’t imagine the horror of it. Starvation was terrific.” In 1937, the Vande Graaff family sold all the land to the United States government which in turn sold the land to the residents of Gee’s Bend at no interest loans.

Surrounded on three sides by the bridgeless Alabama River, Gee’s Bend has always been geographically isolated. It was only 7 miles from the county seat of Camden but the transportation across the river was an unreliable ferry that operated when weather conditions permitted. The road to Camden was more than 40 miles one way. During the voting rights activism of the 1960’s, ferry service was terminated by the county government, ensuring another half century of isolation.