WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK (6/19-6/24) — We have obviously tapped into a need that people have to talk, to learn and to share information. I thank everyone who has joined the conversation this first week. Make that conversations, plural. Nearly 300 people have visited this very interactive site at least once. Some of you have become regular contributors, digging around in your memories and in your attics, basements, scrapbooks and photo albums. I have learned quite a lot and have been left with lots of questions. I will highlight a few things.

Let’s see. A gospel group called The Five Saints may have made a record back in the day — the 1950s? A photo of the group posted by Aldren Sadler Sr shows Warren Usher, Robert Williams Jr., Harold Manning, Ozzie Hamm and Arthur Usher. The membership of the group changed over time. Does anyone have any other information? Or any information about other singing groups? On another topic, the story of the original Bryant Street School is fascinating and will be explored more. Some people are learning of its existence for the first time; others are learning of how some courageous black men deliberately torched the old school in 1950.

From Raymond Carr Jr., we learned about the fascinating Carr lineage going back to plantation days. From Howard McCollum Jr., father of Katrina McCollum Young and Neodesha McCollum Hendley, we learned that even before the schools were desegregated, he and other black men were playing on integrated softball games. He played for a team called White Lightning and Chocolate Thunder in the early 1960s. We learned that White’s Chapel was Colored Methodist Episcopal before it became United Methodist.

We are beginning to learn the contours, composition and customs of some of our distinct black communities, including The Flat, The Hill, North Main Street, the Griggs Street projects and Milstead. In Milstead, for example, girls learned how to “walk around the line” — i.e., to hang out with each other outside while not leaving the safe confines of the oval-shaped neighborhood set up for the workers employed at the Calloway cotton mill. The Cut, a community around McCollum Road, was known as a gathering place for baseball games. But that tradition came to an abrupt end after a shooting incident one Sunday. Anthony Stroud has offered insight into what happened to bring that tradition to an end. We still haven’t heard anything about communities like Crawfordville or Tom Parker’s Tin Can Alley or Needmore or Shady Grove or Rena Court. Hint. Hint.

Some posts that drew wide-ranging comments and took lots of twists and turns were the one on distinct neighborhoods that I started, Aldren Sadler Sr.’s post on the gospel group, Paulette Hill's piece on Milstead, and Cynthia Easley's video of Deacon Robert Rome singing at Bald Rock, the oldest black church in Rockdale. News that Mrs. Azalee Green will turn 89 in August has a bunch of us getting-oldsters reminiscing about being in second grade. Mrs. Green taught hundreds of youngsters at J. P. Carr and later at J. H. House.

We have so much material coming in that you might want to begin at the bottom of the page some days and work your way up — just to be sure you’re not missing anything. By the way, to find something on a particular topic, you may use the search bar and type in key words or the name of a person you think or know posted something. Look for the magnifying glass icon. (If you missed the Welcome! greeting, use the search tool to find it.) I can hardly wait to see what enlightening goodies come our way over the next week!

E. R. Shipp post on The Black Heritage of Rockdale Facebook page.