{"id":22458,"date":"2012-04-14T02:36:14","date_gmt":"2012-04-14T02:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=22458"},"modified":"2012-04-14T02:42:29","modified_gmt":"2012-04-14T02:42:29","slug":"city%e2%80%99s-black-founding-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=22458","title":{"rendered":"City\u2019s black founding father"},"content":{"rendered":"

City\u2019s black founding father<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Decator Daily<\/a>
\nDecatur, Alabama
\n2010-04-19<\/p>\n

Deangelo McDaniel<\/strong>, Staff Writer<\/p>\n

Minister, historian reconstructing life of ex-slave who became successful farmer<\/em><\/p>\n

First in a two-part series<\/em><\/p>\n

The Rev. Wylheme Ragland would like to spend one day with Robert Murphy.<\/p>\n

So would local historian Peggy Allen Towns<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust one day,\u201d Ragland said emphatically. \u201cJust one day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murphy, who died June 8, 1918, is one of Decatur\u2019s<\/a> black founding fathers, Towns and Ragland proclaim.<\/p>\n

The former slave is buried in the Cowan section of Decatur City Cemetery and so are many of the secrets that would reveal the River City\u2019s pre-Civil War<\/a> and Reconstruction<\/a> history.<\/p>\n

Ragland, a United Methodist pastor at the church where Murphy was a trustee, and Towns are determined to reconstruct his life.<\/p>\n

Doing so, they say, would fill significant gaps in Decatur\u2019s history and dispel myths about the role of blacks and what happened here in 1864…<\/p>\n

…But to understand and appreciate Murphy\u2019s journey you have to go back to Virginia<\/a> in 1795 when Mary, a slave, was born to the Kimble family.<\/p>\n

Mary was his mother.<\/p>\n

Traveling from Virginia through North Carolina<\/a>, she arrived in the Tennessee Valley<\/a> with the Kimble clan before 1820.<\/p>\n

The slave-owning family purchased land in Trinity<\/a> that extended to the Tennessee River<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1831, Murphy was born to Mary and his mother\u2019s owner.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Kimble family intermarried with the Murphys, who also owned a plantation on the Tennessee River. At some point before the Civil War, Mary and her son became the property of James Murphy<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere was your home before and during the Civil War?\u201d a government lawyer asked Murphy in 1906.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout six miles from Decatur,\u201d Murphy answered. \u201cI belonged to James Murphy.\u201d<\/p>\n

As was the case for some mulatto<\/a> (mixed-race) slaves, Murphy had extraordinary privileges for a slave, especially in 1864 when the Union Army fortified Decatur. He told the government he was able to travel between Decatur and Athens<\/a> where his wife, Harriett, lived.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy master did not care where I went so long as I did not go to be a soldier,\u201d Murphy said in 1906…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City\u2019s black founding father Decator Daily Decatur, Alabama 2010-04-19 Deangelo McDaniel, Staff Writer Minister, historian reconstructing life of ex-slave who became successful farmer First in a two-part series The Rev. Wylheme Ragland would like to spend one day with Robert Murphy. So would local historian Peggy Allen Towns. \u201cJust one day,\u201d Ragland said emphatically. \u201cJust […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,6940,20,693],"tags":[1199,10413,10414,10410,10409,10412,10411],"class_list":["post-22458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","category-virginia","tag-alabama","tag-deangelo-mcdaniel","tag-decator","tag-decator-daily","tag-peggy-allen-towns","tag-robert-murphy","tag-wylheme-ragland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}