A long time ago, or so it seems, I went to County Line for the first time and met the Upshaw family. County Line, also known as the Upshaw Community, is in northwest Nacogdoches County in Deep East Texas. That was 1988. I was looking for a photo project to do in East Texas while visiting my parents in Nacogdoches. A family friend told me about African American land-owner communities dating from the Emancipation, places established by emancipated African Americans on land they owned.
My curiosity took me to County Line, the day after Thanksgiving in 1988. There I met Edward Monel and Leota Ruelene Freeman Upshaw, otherwise known as “Butch” and “Oti,” and they agreed to let me to come to their home. Beatrice Upshaw is the twelfth of the thirteen children raised by Monel and Leota. In the early ’90s she gave me a manuscript of her personal memoir about growing up in County Line that she called A Biscuit for Your Shoe.
By recounting numerous experiences growing up in County Line as a child, Beatrice Upshaw not only conveys a strong sense of place, but tells us a lot about her community as intimately connected families growing out of unique origins.
