Stars.
Lines.
Circles.
The Colemans had three interlocking circles.
Network families.
As Maya traced the Coleman name through Natchez property records, the truth sharpened.
Isaac Coleman had owned forty acres.
Land.
Independence.
In August of nineteen hundred, the region buckled under a surge of mob intimidation—families threatened, homes targeted, churches damaged, land taken through “tax” traps that weren’t really about taxes.
The photograph was taken at the height of that pressure.
By October, the Coleman property was auctioned.
By then, the family was gone.
Tracking them north took weeks.
Census records blurred into one another.
The name Coleman appeared endlessly.
Until Detroit, nineteen ten. Continue reading…
