Photo of The Month – May 2007

Proud Man

Contributor: Judson O. Crow, Sr.

The man, in overalls and short-sleeved shirt, stands smiling at the camera, near a spindly tree on an unpaved, dirt Cliffside street. All along the street we can see patches of tasseled corn growing in yards. — Proud Man

He was proud to have a job, a roof over his head, and, like some of his neighbors along Academy Street, proud of the patch of corn he had planted in his front yard. The street had been “worked” not too long ago with one of the Company’s mule-drawn scrapers. In the distance two little boys are playing in the dirt. A few steps beyond the boys, to their left, is East Fifth Avenue, or “Mud Cut.” And further beyond, where the street ends, is Cliffside Cemetery.

The man is Thomas Jackson Price. He and his wife Pearl, sister of Carves Hamrick, occupied house #7, behind the tree. Tom, a weaver in the mill, was the son of James Holloway and Nancy Tesaneer Price. The photo was likely made in the late 1910s, for by 1920, according to the census, Tom and his family had moved to Gaffney Road.

Next door to the Price’s, at the corner of Academy and Mud Cut, lived Joe and Hattie Yarbrough McKinney, whose children included Paul, Clarence, Glenn, Carl and Ethel.