The Upshaws of County Line : an American family

Author / Creator

Orton, Richard S., 1946- photographer, author

Available as

Online

Summary

Guss, Felix, and Jim Upshaw founded the community of County Line in the 1870s in northwest Nacogdoches County, in deep East Texas. As with hundreds of other relatively autonomous black communities ...

Guss, Felix, and Jim Upshaw founded the community of County Line in the 1870s in northwest Nacogdoches County, in deep East Texas. As with hundreds of other relatively autonomous black communities created at that time, the Upshaws sought a safe place to raise their children and create a livelihood during Reconstruction and Jim Crow Texas. In the late 1980s photographer Richard Orton visited County Line for the first time and became aware of a world he did not know existed as a white man. He went down the rabbit hole, so to speak, and met some remarkable people there who changed his life. T.

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