The story of two Richland College professors and their students uncovering a lost Lake Highlands neighborhood known as Little Egypt, where black families lived sans running water, sewage systems or paved roads even as contemporary middle-class subdivisions sprouted around them, ran in the Advocate’s print magazine several months ago.
Now a new crop of Richland students are expanding on last semester’s accumulated knowledge, says anthropology professor Tim Sullivan, who’s working alongside colleague Clive Siegle, a history professor. (The project is a collaboration between Richland’s History 1302 and Anthropology 2346.)
“We have now carried out three sets of interviews with folks who lived in, or in the immediate vicinity of [Little Egypt],” Sullivan tells us.
And they have expanded studies to include McCree Cemetery, wherein lies the remains of some Little Egypt residents past.
“This semester, as part of the Anthropology class, we are carrying out some genealogical research and including archaeology as part of our work as we investigate McCree Cemetery. While the cemetery is not located within the Little Egypt community, there were some direct links. For instance we know the original founder, ‘Father’ Jeff Hill and one of his sons, another Jeff Hill, a veteran of WWI, are both buried in the African American section of the cemetery.”
Their primary focus for now is rediscovering remains of a church that was located next to McCree Cemetery.
“When the congregation moved away, the church was vandalized and burned down around 1945,” the professor explains. “We are currently surface collecting, but we might end up doing small scale excavations later on.”
The professors promise to keep us apprised of finds and developments.