The Past as Prologue: The Amazing History and Hopeful Future of Camp Hill, Alabama
In Camp Hill Alabama there is a little-known history that drives the work of the people to this day
“You can call on the Tallapoosa Outlaws
Burnt their necks stooped to the Black Belt soil
Raised hammer and hoe to the landlords
Hollerin', "God's people shall eat of our own fields!"
Shall eat of our own fields!”
- Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires
Sankofa is an African word from the Akan people in Ghana. The literal translation of the word and the symbol is “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.” The Akan believe that a strong future is dependent on the past to inform the work. This is an ideal that has spread throughout their country and all around the world. We must not lose the wisdom gained by the experience of our ancestors. We must tell these stories and ensure the knowledge gained by those who came before influences our own existence.
Today in East Alabama you won’t find many people who are aware of the dynamic history of Camp Hill. It is a history where sharecroppers organized in secret to get the payments they were due. It is a story where people suffered the harshest of consequences. It is also a story of perseverance where the oppressed won the rights they sought from their oppressors.
And it is a history that was intentionally buried by the people in power then and now.
Sharecropping was a brutal system that oftentimes served as a substitute for slavery in the days of Jim Crow. It also held down poor whites in an effort to elevate the wealthiest of their race. It created an environment where the big mules, the richest individuals in Alabama who owned the land, piled up wealth on the backs and from the sweat of people who worked the fields simply to keep their families from starvation.
Even today in Camp Hill there are few who know the details of the 1930s sharecropper organizing. Like most African American history that is lost to the past this was by design. This is the story of our history here in Camp Hill and how we are using it to inspire a new generation of organizing for our people.
From Hammer and Hoe, a book on the history of sharecroppers organizing in Alabama written by Robin D.G. Kelley:
On July 15, 1931, around eighty men and women packed into a vacant house in Camp Hill, Alabama. The Croppers’ and Farm Workers’ Union (CFWU), an organization led largely by Black communist sharecroppers, held the meeting. Two of the organizers were the brothers Ralph and Tommy Gray. These two brothers came from a proud, militant family. Their grandfather had been a state legislator during Reconstruction, and Ralph Gray, following in his grandfather’s footsteps, quickly became a local leader of the CFWU. After defending himself against a physical assault by his white landlord, Ralph became an avid reader of the Communist Party’s Daily Worker and began his work with the union.
The July 15th meeting had been called so that sharecroppers in the area could coalesce around a set of demands. These demands included the right of sharecroppers to market their own crops (and avoid the low rates paid by landlords), a minimum wage of one dollar cash per day, and a three-hour midday rest for all laborers. Also important were social demands, such as a nine-month school year for black children and free transportation to the schools. Notably, in a spirit of solidarity, the participants at the meeting discussed the ongoing Scottsboro case.
Despite such noble goals, not every individual was loyal to the CFWU. An informant had slipped into the meeting and relayed the event to the Tallapoosa County sheriff, Kyle Young. Young and a group of deputized vigilantes stormed the house, brutally beating men and women alike. When the CFWU organizers regrouped at Tommy Gray’s home, the thugs under Young’s control raided his house and violently attacked not only Tommy Gray but also his wife. Ralph Gray, in an act of valiant resistance and loyalty to his family, rushed into the house armed and saved his brother’s family from the possibly lethal aggressors.
Not to be deterred, an even larger group of 150 sharecroppers met the following night to protest the repression. Ralph Gray acted as one of the sentries and was posted outside the meeting to protect it from another round of vigilante violence. Young, like the evening before, showed up with his cronies. After a heated argument, Young and Gray engaged in a gun battle that sent Young to the hospital and Gray on the side of the rode, his leg riddled with bullets. Some of his fellow CFWU organizers carried Ralph back to his home. Before the night was through, however, Young’s thugs surrounded Ralph Gray’s home. Upon entering they executed Ralph and burned his home to the ground. His corpse was strewn across the steps of the Dadeville courthouse. Over the next few days alone a few dozen black sharecroppers were arrested around Camp Hill. White vigilantes injured and killed dozens of black sharecroppers in the weeks after Gray’s death in an effort to terrorize the community and dissuade them from organizing.
Despite such harsh repression, the 1930s was one of the most militant times for black sharecroppers in Alabama. Within months the CFWU reconstituted itself as the Sharecroppers’ Union and won many battles for economic justice in Tallapoosa County. Such victories were only possible due to the bravery of martyrs like Ralph Gray.
Modern day Camp Hill is not unlike many southern rural towns that are majority minority population now. After integration of schools, white flight— white people moving away from an area with a growing minority population— meant a lot of the industry and local businesses either closed or slowly died off over the following decades. Highway 280 was moved away from town when it was widened in 2001 hastening the decline.
Camp Hill has often been described as a slow-moving disaster as there has been little to no investment in the town and, as a result, the infrastructure has slowly degraded. The downtown area looks more like a scene from The Walking Dead Season Four. Half of the town lives below the poverty line and there isn’t a grocery store, pharmacy, or laundromat. The Bank of Camp Hill has been closed for years.
But that is only a small part of our story in Camp Hill.
Those buildings downtown have had dedicated owners—most being local— rebuilding the interiors and preparing for a future where they will be needed again. Contrary to popular belief in the area, that day is coming sooner than later. Camp Hill is ideally located in an area near Lake Martin to the west and the Auburn-Opelika metro area to the southeast. The developers building Auburn to the sky and multimillion dollar lake homes know this. With home prices exploding in the Auburn area, locals are looking to relocate to a place with more affordable housing. Auburn’s growth means the time is here for a suburb that provides a more affordable lifestyle for workers and students in the city. There is no other small town near Auburn that provides the potential of Camp Hill.
Because of all of this, the locals of Camp Hill, Alabama will be facing gentrification in the coming years rapidly on a level rarely seen in a small rural town. A quick google search defines gentrification as “the process whereby the character of a poor area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process.” It is nothing new in places where developers can build and profit. More often than not it involves forcing poor people out of an impoverished area where they may have lived for generations. It is only a matter of time before people start moving to the town and the profiteers of the developer class arrive.
Camp Hill won’t be easily changed, however. Even with the poverty rate, 85 percent of locals own their homes and 75 percent of those are paid off. While people long for development in the town it won’t be done without the influence of those residents who have been in Camp Hill for generations.
The work of organizing the people and building a plan to protect long term residents while ensuring locals are leading the way has already started. For those of us who know the history of the town we realize we walk on hallowed ground. It is a place where sharecroppers in the 1930s came together and gave their all, many their own lives, to make sure their fellow working-class people weren’t run over by the powerful. We want Camp Hill to come back but not to the benefit of the planter class types who seek to profit off of places like our little town.
The spirit of those courageous organizers from the 1930s remains, even if it isn’t immediately apparent. I saw much of it myself over the past year in a time where we faced a double disaster in a matter of weeks.
In March of 2023 a horrific hailstorm hit the town, destroying dozens of roofs and hundreds of automobiles. It is estimated that as many as 80-90 percent of the vehicles in Camp Hill were totaled. Hundreds of roofs sustained damaged. In a wealthy town the recovery would likely have gone by without much fanfare. In Camp Hill, however, a great deal of the older homes are nearly impossible to insure. Without HVAC service, or with a historic home needing many repairs to bring it up to standards, a number of residents could not secure home insurance. Others were underinsured or received low ball offers from their insurance companies, many who claimed the roofs were already in such poor shape the hailstorm couldn’t be blamed for all of the damage.
Tragically, just two weeks after this hailstorm local residents were affected by a mass shooting at a Sweet 16 birthday party. Many affected by the storm had loved ones killed and injured the story detailed here in this article by Lee Hedgepeth.
To add insult to repeated injury, even with all the damage Tallapoosa County was not given a disaster declaration.
This left locals with no choice but to attempt to take the recovery on themselves. It was no easy task and remains no easy task over a year later.
We founded the nonprofit The Alabama Center for Rural Organizing and Systemic Solutions (ACROSS) with local volunteers in order to take on the many issues facing the town, and to build a team to take on the long-term recovery. It brought together the best and brightest people I know as resources to help guide the recovery, and a team of locals who see their work as a moral imperative, a labor of love really, dedicated to taking care of the most vulnerable in the little town.
Within the recovery a plan was made to take on the multi-faceted work required. Volunteers with ACROSS connected with Auburn University and helped line up a community planning project to build a community resilience master plan for the town.
Outside of that, the storm recovery work went on with damaged roofs, walls, and decks being repaired. Relationships were built and are now set in concrete solidarity in the way that only responding a disaster can bring about. When we realized many people didn’t have a clear title to their land and were unable to go after USDA funds, we started an heir property project to help locals with that issue in order to protect their ownership of their family land.
The people started coming together in 2023. It was in the unimaginable aftermath of a two headed disaster, but sometimes that is what it takes to build energy to really change things.
In 2024 a grant was secured by ACROSS to purchase land in the town to build a multi-purpose facility to house a workforce development center, organizer training center, and other projects like senior services and family resources.
In the months since the storm, we have built groups and alliances to build the town everyone wants to see. It is a community resilience project we call Camp Hill Rising. Most of the work has nothing to do with storm recovery, though. It is getting at the root of the issues we face, from poverty to housing energy burdens and everything else in between. No one wants to talk to you about climate issues or movement politics when their homes are damaged, or they especially if they are hungry. We are breaking down communications issues by building a local radio station for our people who don’t have internet and we are also providing updates though mass texts.
Storms often break down communities for a time. The people always come together, and, quite often, come back together even better than ever before. I am often asked about Camp Hill, what it is that I see in it, and why I believe in it. The first answer I always give is the people. Now Camp Hill isn’t perfect, and the factions and historical divides within some of the community remain. The local leaders I encounter from the general public, however, are some of the best I have come to know. Now many of them wouldn’t consider themselves leaders, but they all have incredible vision for what the town can be. The problem is the lack of resources to bring that vision to reality. We are working to secure those resources these leaders need.
For the first time in a long time working-class folks are coming together in Camp Hill to make the vision a reality. There is one thing I have always been certain of- When you bring folks together with a common goal, and the people work hard towards the shared goal, special things are possible.
I am also confident these stories will be brought into the modern consciousness soon thanks to the hard work of the people with the Auburn University history department and the filmmakers I have encountered, along with others who have a great interest in telling our story. I am hopeful their projects are announced soon and look forward to sharing them.
As we work in Camp Hill, we continue to educate ourselves and each other on the history of the people of the town and the land where we work. We inspire others to educate themselves who come to work with us, and we honor the people who came before us by focusing on the same working-class solidarity they showed when they stood up against the powerful of their time.
We remain inspired by our incredible organizing past, and we are working through a challenging present towards what I firmly believe is a bright future.
That future is in the hands of the longtime residents of Camp Hill. I truly believe that. With a dynamic history and so much potential now, I am confident the stories we will read in the coming years about the town will be ones that are hopeful and inspiring.
Throughout 2024 we have expanded our work into other small towns where I have worked in the past. I’m especially excited to see the work rooted in Camp Hill help our efforts in communities throughout Alabama. The ripple effects of organizing efforts a century ago continue to fan out from our HQ in Camp Hill. It shows the staying power of working-class solidarity. While it may fade for a time in some corners it always returns in the times when it is needed.
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For any organizations interested in working with us please reach out to me at warren@acrossalabama.org or come by our base of operations, the Oak Street Community Center, at 14 Oak Street in Camp Hill from 10am-4pm Monday through Friday. To receive text updates, download the Infinidrum text app and use the code 36850 to receive Camp Hill updates. It is free and requires no personal information.
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I grew up in Camp Hill and have watched the steady decline of my hometown. The decline has been a result of economics and a long history of poor leadership. In the 1960’s and 1970’s there were still a number of businesses on main street but most of these businesses were owned and operated by older people. As these people died off so did their businesses. The lack of employment opportunities due to the shutting down of several businesses associated with the textile industry and the only school often being rated as the lowest performing school in the state contributed to more people leaving the town. The lack of tax revenue makes it difficult to maintain the infrastructure of a small town, but Camp Hill’s leadership has squandered grant funds intended to improve its infrastructure over a span of more than forty years.
I would love to see my hometown return to the small town of my youth. The condition of the streets and the city’s water and sewage systems and the lack of maintenance of the public areas and buildings makes the town unattractive to outsiders. The inexpensive cost of land and a few houses over the past few years has attracted a few new people to town but will they stay? Grant money seems to be the best source of money to repair the infrastructure, but the work must actually be done. The people of Camp Hill do not have the money to invest in the town’s rebuilding. Your labeling of outside investors as “planter class types” has negative tone against anyone wanting to invest in the town.
The rise of the communist party in America during the Great Depression relied on the party making promises to impoverished people that could not be kept. The promise that everyone would be treated equally and provided for has never been fulfilled by any communist country. The appeal to sharecroppers in the south and poor factory workers in the north make sense but never brought about the changes promised. The recent attention on the story of Ralph Gray as told by his brother in “Hammer and Hoe” and in communist publications leave many questions unanswered about these events (see Hammer and Hoe by Robin D. G. Kelley, Notes pp. 248-249). Ralph Gray was undoubtedly killed, and his body was dumped on the steps of the Dadeville courthouse. This act cannot be condoned in any way. The undisputed fact that preceded this tragedy is that Ralph Gray shot the Tallapoosa County Sheriff and a deputy. Communist publications were written as propaganda to promote their agenda and all sources in “Hammer and Hoe” can be traced back to communist publications. I have read articles from the New York Times and other newspapers published during the time of these events that are laced with Ku Klux Klan talking points which bring into question their account of the events as well. I suspect the reality of what happened lies somewhere between the two stories.
In my opinion, the Tallapoosa County sheriff and deputies beating people during the first meeting does not justify Ralph Gray shooting the sheriff and deputy, and Ralph’s murder is not justified by him shooting the sheriff and deputy. It is possible that everyone involved was wrong. Regardless, I do not believe that Ralph Gray should be honored as a hero any more than the people responsible for his murder.
Clay Moore