The Legacy of Celia Adams

About the Book

The preservation of history and slavery in the United States has its legacy connected to the Civil War and the 13th Amendment. This is the same legacy that created great American Literature and gave rise to Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) as an acclaimed writer of Huckleberry Finn and his main characters, Tom Sawyer and companion, Jim. The Legacy of Celia Adams continues to reveal this deeply preserved and long tradition of contemporary discussions. The book reveals the conditions in which Celia Adams, a remarkable Freedom Dweller of her era, endured. It identifies relatives from her lineage and shares stories as told to them from the voice of Celia Adams. Celia Adams was born before the Civil War, March 12, 1856 until her death on March 21, 1943, during World War II. She had the vantage of living forty-four years in the 1800s and another forty-three years in the 1900s. The Legacy of Celia Adams provides the verisimilitude to assess the conditions of her life under the institution of slavery, the lynching of her husband, and through slavery’s generational impact on her off-springs. The majority of the eleven children of Celia Adams lived through the 1960s with the last child living in the 1980s. This book shares many of these rich stories of her legacy as told by her children and grandchildren. The author’s grandfather was one of her eleven children. The writer interviewed many of these relatives. In addition, he heard numerous porch stories from his grandfather who moved from Gough, Georgia to Fort Lauderdale, Florida to escape the unyielding conditions and the lingering effects of slavery. This book allows the audience to read and glean many of the family secrets and preserved stories from slavery to freedom. This book is historic because it reveals the generations and names of the off-springs of Celia Adams, and the story of an almost forgotten legacy of one of this nation’s freedom fighters of the 1800s. It is timely because it allows the public an opportunity to reflect on the conditions that gave rise to the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The 13th Amendment provides the nation with cause to reflect on the 150 year jubilee. The abolition of slavery from 1865–2015 is the Sesquicentennial of the 13th Amendment Jubilee. As Celia Adams said to her children, “It was some Jubilee!”

About the Author

Dr. Jesse J. Hargrove is a noted author, neologist, linguist, and distinguished educator, poet, photographer, futurist, and scholar whose groundbreaking book titled Closing the Achievement Gap in America: A National Imperative for a Super Man, a Super Woman, and a Superintendent (2011) changed the way educators think about public education. He says that public education has not kept pace with the new shifts in societal changes, which have been prompted by national and global events. He encourages parents to play their role in educating children about the importance of going to school and getting a good education. His research focuses on a new generation of learners in America, whom he refers to as the Deuce Millennium Generation.

His book, The Legacy of Celia Adams, uses ethnography as a research medium to capture a snapshot picture of the culture under study. He was born in rural Gough, Georgia where his great grandmother Celia Adams was an ex-slave and a mid-wife who lived from March 12, 1856 to March 21, 1943. He was born 100 years after the birth of his great grandfather who was born on February 22, 1853. His great grandfather, Solomon Hargrove, was an educator who taught children to read and write, but was tragically lynched in 1893 for organizing his free school at Eden Baptist Church, which his wife, Celia, helped to found in Louisville, Georgia, in 1885.

His mother instilled within him a love for education. He developed a love for reading in fourth grade and graduated with honors and was ranked 9th in his Class of 1971 from Dillard High School. Hargrove graduated Magna Cum Laude from Dillard University in New Orleans in 1975 and majored in Spanish Education after earning scholarships to study at two schools in Guadalajara, Mexico, during the summer and a junior year exchange program at the University of California at Berkeley. Arthur Jensen and William Shockley studied him and his peers from Historically Black Colleges and Universities on the IQ genetic inferiority issue of the era. He studied six languages at Cal Berkeley. In 1977, Hargrove was awarded the M.A. degree in Spanish and Spanish American Literature and received the PhD degree in 1983 from the College of Education in Bilingual/Multicultural Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Hargrove has taught Spanish in public schools and higher education. He has worked at two colleges in the University of Wisconsin system, the University of Arizona in Tucson, Broward County Public Schools and Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. He’s been Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs, Chair of the Division of Education and has served in administration as Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, Associate Dean of Instruction, and Assistant Dean of Instruction at Philander Smith College where he has been employed for the past 15 years. He is civic-minded and from 2004-2009, he served as Chair of the Arkansas Commission on Closing the Achievement Gap. He can be reached at jesse.hargrove@sbcglobal.net.