The Hollywood / Valley Plantation Project is a multidisciplinary effort conducted by the Arkansas Archeological Survey using the methods of archeology, cultural anthropology, and history to document the history and living culture of the African Americans who lived and labored on the Plantation for over a century. These interviews were collected as part of this effort.
The Valley Plantation was a historic farm operation that once spanned 12,000 acres of land where Desha, Drew, and Lincoln Counties meet in the delta lands of southeast Arkansas. Owned first in the 1820s by a slave trader named Peter Rives, it was sold in 1844 to his nephew and son-in-law John M. Taylor, who enslaved over a hundred people of color near Bayou Bartholomew in the two decades before Emancipation. Beginning in the 1870s, Taylor’s sons expanded the original tracts and converted the plantation into a sharecropping operation known as Hollywood. They successfully recruited entire communities of Black tenants from faraway states like Alabama and South Carolina to work the fields that had been abandoned by the enslaved during the war. In the twentieth century, the grandchildren of John M. Taylor split the plantation into smaller parts and used the Valley Planting Company to employ tenants to work the remaining lands they held in Drew County.
In 1918 croppers Robert Hill, Louis Lagrone, and Knox DeGraffenreed, who worked for the Valley Planting Company, and a Black physician named Dr. Virgil Powell formed the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA), the primary target of the Elaine Massacre of 1919. From the Valley these men recruited and helped Black croppers at plantations all over the Arkansas Delta to form chapters of the PFHUA in 1918 and 1919. Their purpose was to improve their living conditions and acquire the legal means to challenge their employers in court and receive their fair share of the crops that were being hidden and effectively stolen. The ensuing massacre in Elaine and the legal battle waged against its victims over the following years effectively smashed the organizing effort and allowed white landowners throughout the region to continue their exploitation of Black families for decades.
The Hollywood / Valley Plantation Project was funded in part by the Real Estate Transfer Tax. Matthew Rooney, Research Station Archeologist for the Arkansas Archeological Survey, University of Arkansas System was the Project's lead. The Arkansas Archeological Survey partnered with the Pryor Center to record the Project’s oral histories.
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#1: The last standing tenant house on the Hollywood / Valley Plantation; courtesy of Matthew Rooney
© Arkansas Archeological Survey, University of Arkansas System
#2: Location of three of the sharecropper churches in relation to the Taylor House and Winchester; courtesy of Matthew Rooney
© Arkansas Archeological Survey, University of Arkansas System
#3: Locations marked on a 1939 USDA aerial photograph: (a) Taylor House; (b) Valley Store; (c) Hollywood Grove site (former slave quarters); (d) Cypress Grove MB Church; courtesy of Matthew Rooney
© Arkansas Archeological Survey, University of Arkansas System
#4: Locations marked on a 1939 USDA aerial photograph: (a) Mount Pisgah MB Church; (b) Valley Tenant House site; courtesy of Matthew Rooney
© Arkansas Archeological Survey, University of Arkansas System
#5: Ceramic artifacts recovered from the Hollywood Grove site: (a) unscalloped, impressed blue edge whiteware rims; (b) unscalloped, unimpressed blue edge whiteware rim; (c) cut sponge whiteware rim and body sherds; (d) cool polychrome whiteware; (e) sprig painted whiteware rim and body sherds; (f) UID polychrome whiteware rim; (g) cut sponge whiteware; (h) molded floral ironstone; (i) machine-banded whiteware rim; (j) cranberry transfer print whiteware rim; (k) dipped stoneware; courtesy of Rachel Tebbetts
© Arkansas Archeological Survey, University of Arkansas System
#6: Artifacts recovered from the Hollywood Grove site: (a) earthenware pipe stem fragment; (b) face of an American infantry officer coat button; (c) white porcelain clothing button with calico transfer print; (d) dark brown porcelain clothing button; (e) white porcelain clothing button; (f) fragment of molded milk glass clothing button; (g) three fragments of a Bakelite coat button; (h) fragments of writing slate; courtesy of Rachel Tebbetts
© Arkansas Archeological Survey, University of Arkansas System
#7: Earliest map showing the plantation in 1841, under the ownership of Peter Rives
© U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management
#8: Volunteers Kenneth Bragg, Tommy Gray, and Don Bragg screening for artifacts at the Valley Tenant House site in 2022; courtesy of Rachel Tebbetts
© Arkansas Archeological Survey, University of Arkansas System
