Finding a Lost Paradise
By: Lamont Neal
An excerpt from the memoir, A Tree in a Storm (unpublished)
Paradise Found
Gallia County kept surfacing in my ancestry research, over and over. I had never heard of Gallia County before. I assumed it must be near Logan, Ohio, where my mother’s side of the family had roots. When I finally took the time to dig deeper, I was surprised to learn that Gallia County had once been home to a significant early African American community. That was something I had never heard growing up.
Later, I realized Gallia County was actually a good distance from Hocking County, where Logan is located. Still, something about that early community in rural Ohio kept tugging at me. It felt like a name that refused to be forgotten, like a whisper from the past urging me to look closer, not just at the place, but at the people who once called it home.
As I pieced together fragments from scattered sources, a pattern began to emerge: Gallia was a place of early promise, followed by a quiet and rapid decline.
Early Settlement and Growth
The history of Black life in Gallia County stretches back to the early 19th century, when Ohio became a free state. Its location along the Ohio River made it a beacon for free Black people and fugitive slaves escaping the South. Despite the oppressive “Black Laws” that restricted their rights and the constant threat of slave catchers, a resilient community began to take root.
Gallia became a notable stop on the Underground Railroad and hosted several self-sufficient Black settlements. This was a town literally built on a pathway to freedom. These communities built their own churches, schools, and social networks, spaces of survival, resistance, and belonging. When you talk about the spirit of American self-sufficiency, here it was.
Decline and Displacement
By the late 19th and into the 20th century, the Black population in Gallia County began to decline. Much of this was tied to the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans left rural areas in search of better opportunities in northern and western cities.
Gallia County is technically in the North, but this discovery was an eye-opener. I’d always framed the Great Migration as a journey away from the South, away from discrimination and toward economic hope. I hadn’t accounted for the fact that many places north of the Mason-Dixon line carried southern mentalities and practices, even far from southern geography. “North” was as much a state of mind as a geographical location, and minds change, sometimes in an instant, often without warning.
During the Red Summer of 1919, white mobs attacked Black communities across the country. Around the same time, the Ku Klux Klan, which was reestablished in 1915, began to surge in both power and influence. By 1920 it was in full stride. Ohio, in particular, had some of the highest Klan membership numbers in the nation.
Many of my ancestors, and countless other African Americans, found themselves back in the middle of a world they thought their families had escaped. Gallia, once a kind of oasis, became dangerous and hostile. This island of safety, security, promise, and hope was sinking into the ocean, taking any and all who stayed under with it. It was somewhere during this period that Evans on my mom’s side of the family moved further north and slightly westward, part of this larger movement. Hocking County and Logan, Ohio eventually became the new heart of our family story.
Movement is one clue that often hides in plain sight. Families don’t pack up and leave on a whim. They are driven by reasons, good ones, often desperate ones. Here we have Ohio, a free state. Regardless, it was after the Civil War. But here we also are in Gallia County, Ohio, once home to a fairly thriving Black community. One thing was demonstrated over and over again across the country in 1919. During the Red Summer, thriving while Black was a dangerous proposition.
Many Black families who believed they were at least somewhat safe outside of Dixie soon realized that Dixie could come to you. Maybe my great-grandfather moved for better economic opportunities. But given the climate, Ohio’s reputation as a Klan stronghold during that era, it’s no surprise that ten years later, he was living somewhere entirely new. I can study the historical context, but I can only imagine the conditions, or the final straw, that led my great-grandfather to leave the place he’d always known. While many African Americans moved to big cities, he left one rural location for another: Logan, Ohio in Hocking County.
Gallia County and Hocking County are separated by roughly 60 miles. A drive between them takes about an hour on modern highways. But in the 1920s, with limited transportation and vastly different infrastructure, that journey would’ve been far more arduous. Still, it’s the trip my great-grandfather George made with his family. The trip was clearly worth the effort.
The distance may not sound daunting, but the contrast between the counties was striking. Not quite night and day, twilight and night might be a better comparison. Gallia County had a long-established African American presence. It was home to the Lambert Lands, a Black settlement dating back to the 1800s, and the Lincoln Colored School, which educated Black children. Segregation was still very real, but there was visibility. A community. A footprint.
Logan wasn’t exactly a haven of racial harmony. But the racial tensions were less overt, largely because the Black population was so small. Invisibility, in some twisted way, offered a kind of protection.
You’re not targeted, but you’re not seen either. You don’t exist until some happens to directly cross paths with you. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, survival means becoming a ghost in your own hometown.
My memories of Logan as a child are vivid. And for those who know me today, it might come as a surprise: I was very much a country boy at heart. I loved running barefoot, leaping over creeks, picking up stones and twigs, searching for turtles and frogs. Mud, dirt, and all their glory. Climbing trees. Fishing. Before I put away childish things, Logan felt like a visit to hang with Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Hannibal, Missouri, Mark Twain’s hometown, is less than two hours from where I lived. Logan was over seven. Yet somehow, Logan always feels closer to the Mark Twain inspired spirit.
When we drove into the part of town where my grandparents lived, it was dirt roads carved into hills. Modest country houses surrounded by wide fields, where families supplemented their food supply through farming and casual hunting. Indoor plumbing was rare, and I learned the pits and perils of using an outhouse, including the ever-present fear of falling in. The distance between homes made interaction a conscious choice. As a child, it was a magical experience. One I’m sad so many will never know.
Still, while Logan didn’t carry the constant threat of violence that loomed over Gallia, racism was present, subtle, but systematic. Even now, I can hear it in my mother’s stories. The way teachers and principals made sure Black children knew their place. One principal was known to yell racial slurs from his car window at the same families whose children would be under his care come Monday morning.
And yet, my mother’s side of the family made a life there. In Logan and the surrounding towns. The fact that they managed to make it feel like home makes me wonder again what horrors they must’ve witnessed to leave their previous one behind.
Years later, while attending a celebration for my grandmother’s 100th birthday in Logan, I sat in the car outside the nursing home where she now lived. Two white kids walked by, rapping a contemporary hip-hop song at the top of their lungs. I had to smile.
That moment felt like a remix of history. The music of a once unwanted community now shouted in the streets by kids who probably didn’t know the soil they stood on once carried so much weight.
Lamont Neal is a reflective memoirist and philosophical storyteller dedicated to exploring transformation through emotionally honest, metaphor-rich narratives. His published work, including For Chloe and A Thinner Life, packages critical life lessons on legacy and self-reclamation.
As an African-American father, a former closet writer and a devoted fan of comics, history, and sci-fi, Lamont uses the principles of discipline learned as a gym rat and martial arts enthusiast to craft stories that explore the resilience required to redefine oneself after a major life shift.
Well written and engaging.