To come: Episode 2, Father Figures

Who was Ely Green’s father... and why didn’t his white family claim him? Writer: Sam Worley

To answer those questions, we step back and track the history of Sewanee, a town and University founded by former Confederates, most of whom owned enslaved people. We follow the story of a founding family, and learn their role in the nation’s history as advocates of slave-holding. We learn about families involved with Sewanee who were not only slave-holders, but owners of the largest slave-trading firm in the US. We talk to Sewanee’s Roberson Project and to other historians to gain insight into the sexual license assumed and exercised among many slave-holders, and how the “Lost Cause” found a home in Sewanee. 

The audience learns the real name of Green’s white family, and hears from his autobiography about his heartbreaking encounters with them. After his mother’s death, and after learning he cannot attend the white school he has always admired, Green eventually turns to his Black grandfather to become a mountain man and work independently off the land, trapping for furs and gathering herbs to sell, going everywhere with his loyal dogs. He runs up against the whites who live outside the little township of Sewanee, as others in his family have as well, and he must flee the home he’s made. Weighing into his decision is news that a girlfriend in another state is expecting his child. In an epic scene straight from a Hollywood film, he flings a suitcase onto a railway cart, and flies down the mountain to escape by train. 

Having narrowly escaped, we have to ask: Is he truly safe, and where will he go?