Image of Fletcher Henderson Sr., courtesy of the Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, RAN 67.

Fletcher Henderson, Sr., was born into slavery in Newberry, South Carolina, in 1857. In the years following Emancipation, Henderson’s mother encouraged his love of learning and by the time he was thirteen, she sent him to live with his father to ensure his future schooling. Henderson graduated from Atlanta University in 1879 and taught for a year in Pike County before he accepted the position of headmaster at the Howard Normal School in Cuthbert, Georgia, one of the earliest schools founded by the American Missionary Association for African American students.

Within his first ten years as headmaster, Henderson nearly doubled the school’s enrollment, and often hosted popular school concerts in the community as fundraisers to cover tuition and school expenses. Henderson served as the school’s headmaster for more than sixty years, and gained national acclaim for his dedicated role in the education of African American students amid the turmoil of the Jim Crow era in Cuthbert.

Henderson Sr.’s son—the performer, arranger, and bandleader Fletcher Henderson—received his education at Howard Normal School, and eventually became one of Cuthbert’s most famous citizens. His band, Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra, served as the principal model for big band style. The Fletcher Henderson Jazz Festival, held each spring in Cuthbert, celebrates his legacy.

Image of The Last Indian Troubles in Randolph County (1936) painted by artist Carlo Ciampaglia, courtesy of Andrew College.

Post offices have connected small towns and their residents to the rest of the world long before phones and the Internet. During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration or WPA formed as part of the New Deal to help job-seekers by providing employment through public-works projects. Most post office artwork was commissioned through a separate program funded through the Department of the Treasury, known as the Section of Painting and Sculpture, and later called the Section of Fine Arts.

The Section, often confused with the WPA Federal Art Project, was not created to provide economic relief, but to instead create public art to help boost morale in areas hit hard by the Great Depression. It obtained paintings and sculptures through competitions to decorate new federal buildings, primarily post offices and courthouses. The program began in 1934 and operated until 1943, awarding approximately 1,400 contracts for art in federal buildings.

One such contract was awarded to the post office in Cuthbert. Italian-born artist Carlo Ciampaglia, a renowned muralist, painted Last Indian Troubles in Randolph County—1836, which references the final clashes between the U.S. Army and the Muscogee before the Muscogee’s final removal to Oklahoma. The mural in the Cuthbert post office remains today.

White Oak Pastures, located in Bluffton, is a family farm founded in 1866 and currently owned and operated by Will Harris III. In 1997, Harris III decided to make a change to the farm’s industrialized farming methods. Today, White Oak Pastures is a zero-waste operation and employs more than 120 mostly local staff.

Image of the White Oak Pastures staff eating “family style” at the farm’s restaurant, courtesy of White Oak Pastures.

The farm adopted the Serengeti Rotational Model of grazing, expanding from just cattle to include sheep, goats, and poultry. The farm grows a range of vegetables, produces honey on site, and has employed a chemist to examine the possibility of using the animal fat from their own abbatoir for biodiesel as a potential alternative fuel option to power farm operations.

White Oak Pastures opened a restaurant to feed its employees, which is now also open to the public, and visitors are able to tour the entire property, stay on site at the lodge, or attend workshops on various topics that range from canning vegetables to leather shoemaking.

Image of Andrew College in Cuthbert, courtesy of the Randolph County Chamber of Commerce.

Founded on a stagecoach line in the 1830s, Cuthbert was a hub for transportation, but little growth in other areas meant that the local economy was not diversified enough to withstand the movement of transportation routes outside of the community. As often happens with smaller, rural communities, bypasses around the town meant the slow decline of the “town square,” which soon became home to dwindling local businesses and vacant storefronts instead of its previous role as a lively thoroughfare.

Andrew College, established in 1854, sits in the center of Cuthbert, and the college has worked to act as a force for positive change in the hopes of revitalizing the community and breathing new life into its downtown area. The college is leading the way in downtown development by acquiring and restoring six buildings in the center of downtown. Two of these newly renovated buildings house a ceramics studio and the college theatre prop-shop. Cuthbert’s Crossroads exhibit is on display in one of these newly renovated buildings.

In addition to downtown renovations, Andrew College also intends to provide opportunities for local students by expanding their offering of academic programs, such as introducing an online agribusiness program, expanding its nursing program, and developing partnerships to allow the college to offer four-year degrees. Through continued efforts, Andrew College hopes to reestablish Cuthbert as a community full of opportunity for younger generations by providing spaces that sustain the community as a whole.