In Clay County, Tennessee, the small town of Free Hill, sometimes called Free Hills, celebrated its 200th anniversary this year. The celebration is an annual ritual that happens during the second weekend of July.
Free Hill only has about 70 residents now, but had about 400 between 1920 and 1950. That number began to dwindle drastically with the end of segregation, because Free Hill was a black community founded by freed slaves before the Civil War.
The story goes that the town was founded after a slave owner named Virginia Mills bought 2,000 acres, freed her slaves, and handed the land over to them. This is supposed to have happened sometime before 1840, which makes the 200th anniversary somewhat odd. However, that anniversary is associated with the old Free Hill Church of Christ, which was built in 1816. The church building itself no longer exists, but the church community lives on in a 1920s-era school building used as a community center today.
There isn’t much going on there these days, but the town used to be jumping. One resident, Dave Garrett, now 77, remembers bussing 40 miles to go to school in Cookeville during segregation. Free Hill was also occasionally the target of the Ku Klux Klan. But the town also hosted a number of juke joints and blues clubs, which drew visitors from other black communities in nearby parts of Tennessee and Kentucky.
Although life was rough back then, Garrett looks back fondly. He says people came from miles away to kick up their heels. “We’d party from Friday night until Monday,” Garrett says. “That’s how great it was. They’d play them blues—belly-rubbing music.”
The town was always poor, which is true for all of Clay County regardless of race. These days, residents of Free Hill head to nearby Celina for most of their needs, since even the last restaurant in the town closed back in the 1990s. It’s unlikely that many people who have left in recent decades will be coming back, as there isn’t much there for them besides history.
Regardless, the people of Free Hill remember where they’re from, and the annual anniversary celebration brings people back each year.