After several hours at the motel reviewing the layout for the North Carolina pages of my book, Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field, I drive to Wheelers Church in Gordonton to see where the sun will be in the sky after tomorrow’s church service. Facing the entrance to the church at 12:38, the sun shines directly into the camera unless I move to the left instead of photographing the entrance head on.

Down the road from Wheelers is the Union Grove Baptist Church, which has a Black congregation. This is a big operation. Lots of cars in the parking lot. A large church with many rooms besides the chapel itself. A portico with doors into the church from the side for those who need to be dropped off. The parking lot leads into the back door. Like every home here, the front door is rarely if ever used. People use the side door under the portico or the back door from the parking lot. The original church and school, still standing, was built in 1888.

Four middle-aged men are standing around talking in the parking lot. I walk up to them and tell them why I am here, looking for families in the photos. Would they like to see? Yes. So I hand around the notebooks of large photos and the one of all Lange’s smaller photos. They don’t recognize anyone. It’s more difficult to trace the Black folks than the White folks, I say, since most were sharecroppers and tenant farmers and therefore did not stay on the same farm. Did many people move outside the region, to the north, for example? “They would still keep their family roots here. Everyone keeps their family roots here in North Carolina. They come back.” Should I contact churches? Yes, that would be a good idea. “There are a lot of older folks who might remember or recognize the people.” “Too bad the pastor just left, he would be interested.” I’m going to Wheelers Church tomorrow, otherwise I would come here. There’s a Black Primitive Baptist Church, very old, the counterpart to Wheelers, one man tells me; his father was its pastor, but there are very few members today.

Charlie Monk Road. This Primitive Baptist Church looks much like the Lange’s photographs of the original Wheelers Church: a white frame structure with two doors (one now with a ramp, the other with steps). A sign out front: “Pine Hill Primitive Baptist Church Since 1889, Elder J.L. Wilson.”

Dorothea Lange. “Refer to General Caption No. 24. Church services are just over, shows the first ones to come out.”

To the Harvest Festival at Salem Grove Methodist Church, which is not at the church itself, but at the Community Center at Bushy Fork Park. The building was once the cafeteria of the school that Donald Hester and Bess Whitt attended; the rest of the school was torn down. Out back are baseball fields and a big metal shed.

The auction has already begun when I arrive at about 1:45. I take a seat next to a large older woman. She is curious to know who I am, but satisfied to hear that Nate Hester and Bess Whitt suggested that I come. “Open your pocketbook,” she says. Everyone has a card with a number on it; bids are recorded by number. The auctioneer is in full song at the front of the room. The long table at the front is piled with hand-made pillows, towels, doll houses, doll quilts, painted washboards, canned pickles, strawberry jam, and home-made candy and baked goods (cakes, pies, cookies).

The auctioneer has the cadence of a tobacco auctioneer, so I am told. The crafts are selling for way below the cost of materials and the effort entailed in making them. The baked goods, on the other hand, particularly the cakes, fetch high prices. A pound cake baked by “Cleo” sold for $300! Another cake, a chocolate icebox cake, for $170.

The auction will go to 5PM, followed by the barbecue, but I am restless by 3:00. The weather is beautiful, and light outside is great, and I can’t bear the prospect of another two hours indoors.

To Bethel Hill in search of the hillside farm of Dorothea Lange’s general caption 19 from 1939, where she visited with a black sharecropper couple who told her that they had just moved there that year and that “they treat us better here than where we did live.” “No privy in sight, had to get water from ‘the spring’ so far away that the man was gone about 20 minutes to get a bucket of water.”

Dorothea Lange. “Refer to General Caption No. 19. Negro sharecropper’s house.”

Their cabin was over the hill behind the owner’s house, which was across from Tuck’s Service Station on Route 501. But the road has been realigned, and there is no sign of an old service station. I turn off onto “Old Route 501″ and stop to ask directions of a man, woman, and child who are planting chrysanthemums in front of a Baptist church. Do they know where Tuck’s Service Station was? No. But Mary Jacobs would. Go ask her. She lives in the brick house at the corner. She knows everyone. If anyone would know, Mary would. And she did.

I approach her house. Back door, side door, or front door? There’s no doorbell on back or side, so I go to the front. Not a good choice. The paint around the door is peeling, the door looks unused. The backdoor is off an attractive deck which appears to be well used. Back door it is. A young man with military bearing and crew cut spots me through the kitchen window and comes to the back door. I ask for Mary Jacobs and explain myself, offering the photograph of the owner’s house on Route 501.

Dorothea Lange. “Refer to General Caption No. 19. Route 501 opposite Tuck’s Filling Station. General view of a hillside farm which faces the road, showing owner’s house, out-buildings, and tobacco field. The fields show erosion. The Negro sharecropper’s farm is on the other side of this same hill.”

Mary knows exactly where the photograph of the owner’s house was taken. She lived across the road from the house as a girl (12 years old in 1939). I’ll show you, she says, and takes the lead in her car. A. P. Tucks Service Station is not “opposite” the farm Lange photographed, but adjacent. The garage was moved back from the road to make way for an auction barn, also of metal (Tucks is covered in metal sheeting).

The owner’ house is unmistakable when compared with Lange’s photograph. I follow Mary’s car through a sharp turn into the driveway, a narrow passage between two shrubs. We drive up to the house and park beside various trucks, step out, wooing the dog, a setter of mixed breed. To the back door, of course. Knock.

After long minutes, a man comes to the door. Tall, in a blue T-shirt, very hospitable, his name Greg. I show him the photo of the house. “We have that photo on our refrigerator,” he says. “My wife found it on the Internet.” May we walk around? “Of course.” The tobacco barn is well preserved. Mary walks with me up the hill to the barn, and Greg comes after, opens it up so we can see the tier poles and tobacco-string poles. As for the sharecropper’s cabin, Greg thinks it was torn down.

Dorothea Lange. “See General Caption No. 19. Negro sharecropper’s farm seen from the road, on other side of hill from owner’s farm (19995C). Two tobacco barns on crest of the hill; one a new log barn not yet chinked. Sharecropper is seen chopping in sweet potato patch.”

On the photographs:

The black and white photographs were taken by Dorothea Lange in July 1939, the color by Anne Whiston Spirn in 2007. Read the stories behind these photographs in Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field.

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