As a Black

History Month feature, the Holly Grove A.M.E. Church welcomed Janice White

Sikes, the senior librarian at the Auburn Avenue Research Library. She

is its expert on African-American culture and history.

Speaking on

the reconstruction era as regards African-Americans, she defined it as

a "sense of what you can do."

The abolitionist

movement began in the 1840s and continued until the late 1860s. The African

Methodist Episcopal church began in 1858 when a free-born black man, Bishop

Henry McNeill Turner started the church. He served as the first chaplain

for the Union colored troops.

In 1861, at

the start of the War Between The States, whites fled the plantations on

Sea Island, among other places, and they were then run by the blacks working

the property anyway.

The Emancipation

Proclamation was announced on Jan. 1, 1863 and is now known as "Jubilee

Day." During this period of time, Savannah, Macon, and Augusta had

more free blacks than any other Georgia city.

Six black colleges

were begun in Georgia by 1881 and although two of them have merged, they

are still a viable place of education.

"The Civil

War issues," Sikes said, "were always about land and labor.

There's not another way to put it."