God’s Fields

Landscape, Religion and Race in Moravian Wachovia

God’s Fields is a study of African-American history and of the evolution of systemic racism in a Southern town, written by a native. The author, Leland Ferguson, grew up amidst the systemic racism of 1950s Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His book is an archaeological and historical exploration of slavery, segregation, and systemic racism in the old religious town of Salem and of the people who suffered and resisted that oppression.

University Press of Florida, 2011.

God’s Fields is available from the publisher at University Press of Florida (God’s Fields) , or through new and used book sales sites on the internet.

OVERVIEW 

The Moravian community of Salem, North Carolina, was founded in 1766, and the town–the hub of nearly 100,000 piedmont acres purchased thirteen years before and named “Wachovia”–quickly became the focal point for the church’s colonial presence in the South 

While the brethren preached the unity of all humans under God, a careful analysis of the birth and growth of their Salem settlement reveals that the group gradually embraced the institutions of slavery and racial segregation in opposition to their religious beliefs. Although Salem’s still-active community includes one of the oldest African American congregations in the nation, the evidence contained in God’s Fields reveals that during much of the twentieth century the church’s segregationist past was intentionally concealed. 

Leland Ferguson has spent more than thirty years conducting archaeological research on African American history and race relations, two-thirds of that focused on Salem and Wachovia His work illustrates the cumulative effects of compromising choices regarding Christian fellowship, slavery, and racial segregation. His effort to reconstruct this ‘secret history” was part of a historical preservation program that helped convince the Moravian Church in North America to formally apologize in 2006 for its participation in slavery and clear a way for racial reconciliation.