Photography Exhibition: The Upshaws of County Line, an exhibit by Richard Orton

Zion Hill Baptist Church Historic Site is proud to present The Upshaws of County Line: An American Family, a powerful photographic exhibit documenting the history and legacy of a Deep East Texas freedom colony. Beginning February 11, the exhibit will be available to view during regular business hours: Wednesday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and the first two Saturdays of each month from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. In 1988, photographer Richard Orton began what became a twenty-five-year project documenting life in the African American community of County Line, founded in the 1870s by the newly emancipated Upshaw brothers, Guss, Felix, and Jim, and their families. County Line represents a lesser-known post-Emancipation story of formerly enslaved individuals who established independent, land-owning communities known as freedom colonies, largely beyond the reach of the dominant white culture of the Jim Crow era. Rather than becoming sharecroppers or settling in towns where they worked for white landowners, residents of County Line created a self-sustaining refuge rooted in family, land ownership, and community. This exhibit offers an essential perspective on African American resilience, self-determination, and community building in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Based on Orton’s award-winning book of the same name, the exhibit was created by the School of Art at Stephen F. Austin State University, toured for three years, and later gifted to the City of Nacogdoches. It is now part of the permanent collection at Zion Hill Baptist Church Historic Site. For more information, please email historicsites@nactx.us or call 936-560-4441.