Tamara Lanier grew up hearing about her great-great-grandfather,
Renty Taylor, an African-born man from the Congo enslaved on a South
Carolina plantation before the Civil War.
"He was a larger-than-life character that everyone loved and respected," said Lanier, 51, of Norwich. "He was someone who learned to read and then taught others to read using a book [they] called the blue back Webster."
Lanier said that even as her beloved mother, Mattye Thompson-Lanier,
lay dying in January 2010, she still recounted the story of Papa Renty
and urged her daughter to write it down.
Comments