ALABAMA (May 31, 2022)—It must have been about 1964 – four or five years before brother Russell Moore went off to Vietnam for his first combat – when twins Marolyn and Carolyn sat on a hill beneath an ancient pecan tree and wove tall grass into dolls’ hair, with bows and ribbons and memories they would carry a lifetime.
Marolyn Moore Grant and Carolyn Moore Fuqua believe that tree stood on the Marengo County homestead more than 100 years ago when their ancestors, former slaves and Native Americans and an Irishman, bought the land and farmed it and began to build homes that would come to give shelter and sustenance to seven generations.
That old tree has seen a lot.
It saw lives and deaths, prosperity and pain and more sets of twins than you can imagine. It saw children like Russell and brother Nathan Moore grow up and head into war. It saw brother Joseph tend his fields and stock freezers with bream from the lake, venison from the woods, bacon he cured and vegetables he shared with kin.
Carolyn Moore Fuqua, her son Andre Fuqua, Marolyn Moore Grant and her granddaughter Katherine Moore.
And this month it saw Carolyn – a tough, self-sufficient, proud woman – cry as she stood in its shade.
Because this family, brothers and sisters and children and cousins and grandchildren who have called this place home, who have used the land’s bounty to feed themselves and their neighbors and their souls, have been told they will soon lose a critical part of it. Four of the houses – home to 11 family members – are to be taken by eminent domain as the state widens U.S. 43 to reduce travel time between Mobile and Tuscaloosa.
“It’s like death to the life we have had for 100 years,” Carolyn said. “This is everything to us because no one can ever replace what we have here. It is our way of life.”
It isn’t the first time the government has come for the family’s land. André Fuqua, a doctoral student at the University of Texas and Carolyn’s son, said Alabama used eminent domain in 1923 to seize Moore land to build the original highway, though the family never got a dime for it.
The family, descendants of Moores and Graysons who settled the land, have launched a campaign – “Seize No Moore Homes” – to implore Gov. Kay Ivey and the Alabama Department of Transportation, which administers the undertaking, to consider changes.
The family is clear that it does not oppose the project itself. Members understand transportation is an important issue in the economically depressed Black Belt. They simply believe that slight adjustments could save homes, and families.
Staff Sgt. Russell Moore, retired, served in Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm. Under the current plan he will lose his house. His mooring.
“It’s a life sentence for us,” he said. “This has been a home for a hundred years or longer. We don’t have any place to go.”
Nathan Moore is another veteran. There are dozens of them from tiny Dixons Mills, between Thomasville and Linden. You can sit on Nathan’s tidy porch and count the cars on U.S. 43 – fewer than two a minute pass in each direction most days, by ALDOT’s counts. Nathan will lose that house under the current plan, which would take 190-225 feet from the east side of the existing highway, which already divided family land.
Family members believe it could be done with far less. Or that it could be rerouted to uninhabited land. But the state has not agreed.
Ivey’s office asked ALDOT to respond to questions about “this tough situation.” ALDOT spokesman Tony Harris said the route requires a relatively straight path without too many slopes, and a consistent median width throughout.
“We certainly understand the family’s concerns about some of their homes being impacted, and we have sincerely worked to limit the amount of property needed for the roadway,” he said in a statement (see full statement below). “We have put extensive planning into this project and have specially trained individuals that have determined the amount of land needed. Our goal is to cause the least impact possible in every way.”
Marolyn, who also would lose her home, has grown sick with worry.
“It is killing my spirit,” she said, standing beneath ripening red plums. “Sometimes I can’t even eat with the thought of them destroying what I have. Every year, my grandchildren and I make preserves off of these trees. We eat them and it’s home. When my grandkids come they know they’re at home. They know they’re in Alabama.”
Family members talk of the wetlands, and the spot below Nathan’s home where, according to stories passed across generations, Native American burials made sacred sites. They brag of the sweetness of brother Joseph’s watermelons, and the sugar cane patch that has grown for as long as anyone can remember. They swear on the culinary superiority of his deer sausage, and of collards and sweet potatoes that taste of Alabama itself.
The homestead is more than a Garden of Eden for the family. It is a bounty that helps feed a community.
Veterans Russell Moore and Nathan Moore fear they will become homeless if the state takes their homes on Marengo County land where their family has lived for generations.
But this land is so much more than dirt. It’s a place that keeps a family connected, they say, that allows children to understand their roots, and the importance of hard work, and family, and nature, and kindness, and service to their country and to their community. And to each other.
“It instills perseverance,” Marolyn said. “It instills determination … It teaches our children to love.”
But what this land means to this family goes beyond emotional attachment, she said.
“It’s a survival attachment.”
The road, estimated to cost $760 million and funded by state money through the Rebuild Alabama Act, has long been talked about as a way to spur economic development in the Black Belt, said Harris at ALDOT. It would add lanes from Thomasville to Moundville, completing a four-lane stretch between Mobile and Tuscaloosa.
“We believe this is the most realistic and fiscally responsible plan ever offered for this corridor,” he said.
Harris said the draft plan was presented to the public in December meetings.
“As a result of input from the Moore family during our public involvement meeting and a follow-up meeting, we looked at various suggestions to shift our alignment near their properties along U.S. 43,” he said. “Based on the family’s input, we considered a change suggested by them but discovered it would not work because of the extent of environmental impacts it would cause.”
The family, though, continues to feel misled, and does not understand why the state needs 100 more feet along the roadway.
“We were not told that there would be a median, just that the lanes would be widened,” Andre Moore said in a statement from the family. “The chief engineer of the project told us that the change we suggested was not considered solely because it would be too expensive for the state’s pockets, not because of environmental impacts. Nothing in their response explains why they aren’t willing to make that compromise.”
Ancestors of the Moores, Graysons and Galloways, who acquired their land more than 100 years ago.
Harris said the path would be difficult to change, but acknowledged it was not set in stone. He said ALDOT altered the plan to reduce the number of homes affected.
“The input we receive from families like the Moores quite often results in changes to our plans, and this is an important part of our public input process and it’s something we take very seriously,” he said.
Yet the Moores are left to wonder why their land is so much easier to take than nearby timberland owned by out-of-state companies, why their homes – again – are the easiest targets.
In the meantime the family’s questions and letters and phone calls go unanswered, they say, except for state workers who show up on their property to measure and poke and prod.
“They are trying to intimidate us,” Marolyn said, standing in the shadow of that ancient pecan tree that gave generations of Thanksgiving pies and generations of memories.
“They’re trying to bully us. But we’re gonna stand tall. We’re gonna do exactly what our ancestors taught us to do, which is to fight to the end. Nobody can replace this. Nothing, and no amount of money can replace what we have here.”
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Source: John Archibald is a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for AL.com.