The heart of Cairo’s commercial historic district is situated along South Broad Street and is largely intact.
The plaza parks make it a very pedestrian friendly area. A nice variety of commercial styles from the late-19th and early- to mid-20th century are present.
Most of these historic storefronts are still in use, and while few serve their original purposes, they continue to be the center of the community.
Cairo Commercial Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
The Sanitary Barber Shop was established by Ben Lundy in the Cairoga Club Building in 1921. At some point, it became The Graco Barber Shop, which took its name from Grady County. It may be the finest surviving example of an historic barber shop in Georgia; it’s certainly the nicest one I’ve ever seen.
According to the Grady County History Museum: In 1936 the barber shop was purchased by Frank Massey and maintained by him until his death in 1965. One of his barbers, Winfred Robinson, bought the business and ran it until his retirement in 2010.
Long a popular Saturday stop for generations of Grady Countians it became much more than a just a place to get a haircut or a shave. Much like Floyd’s barber shop in Mayberry, it became the local information hub where people could catch up on the latest news and gossip. While they waited, pairs of combatants would play checkers while a group of kibitzers would gather around them and tell them what they were doing wrong.
Cairo Commercial Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
The old Atlantic Coast Line depot in the middle of downtown Cairo was a busy location in its early years, carrying produce, and the syrup that made the town famous, to buyers all over the country. As dependence on depots waned, the venerable building was repurposed in the 1970s as the Cairo Police Department. Recently, a demolition of the non-historic interior was completed and a master plan to restore it to its original condition was initiated by Lew Oliver, Inc., a renowned architectural firm responsible for numerous successful projects throughout the region. I’m a big fan of Mr. Oliver’s work and know that Cairo will be pleased with what he will do with this depot.
Cairo Commercial Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
A sign on this church dates the congregation to 1878, but further research suggests that it was established in the 1860s, likely during the Civil War. In its listing for the National Register of Historic Places, Brother George Donald said that Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church was “founded by African Americans who would slip off into the woods to pray in secret” and that the church began as “brush arbor” at Piney Grove, located southwest of Whigham. The 1878 date is likely when the congregation adopted the tenets of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
This lot was purchased from J. T. Harrell for $20 in 1878 and the first trustees were Brothers Thomas Young, Georgie Donald, Fortune Liphnidge, George Shackleford, and Even Swicord. They built a log church here, which served until it burned in 1920. The present church dates to that time. It served the congregation until the 1980s, when deterioration and dwindling membership saw worship move into the schoolhouse. Presently, the structure is stable but in serious need of further renovation.
Not unlike other Black congregations of the era, Ebenezer saw the importance of education and built this one-room schoolhouse to serve their community circa 1930.
A subscriber to Vanishing Georgia writes: Whigham had a Black school built in the 1950s. It was/is located only a couple of blocks from Whigham High School. It’s on Google Street View, but I don’t know if it’s still standing. Based on state statistics and what I’ve gleaned from Cairo Messenger archives, I’d put Ebenezer’s closure around 1950. One of my projects has been recovering names of Black schools before the earliest cumulative list of 1957.
I think I have all of Grady County’s segregated schools from the 1951-52 school year, when it reported to the state it had 12 Black schools. In 1950, however, Grady reported 21 schools, 13 of them one-teacher. Ebenezer would have been too nice to close before then, especially since it had an actual building that wasn’t the chapel itself. The Black Whigham school opened in 1956. Total integration was completed in 1970 and it doesn’t look like it was used after that, based on educational directories.
Ebenezer was nice in comparison to many of the other county schools for Black children and is an amazing survivor.
National Register of Historic Places
The eldest McCord quickly settled in and looked for a site to build a church. He found a good spring on J. T. Drew’s property about two miles east of the McCord’s home and the Drews deeded four acres to the church. Sometime later, the church built a parsonage on fifty acres deeded by Mr. McCord to the church and the first minister, Rev. P. C. Harris, moved in.
In the 1930s, Miss Bessie Miller urged the church to build a community house. The Woman’s Society of Christian Service raised the money to complete the building and porches.
Once boasting as many as 400 members, the congregation is considerably smaller today, but remains active.
I photographed this house in 2008. It remains but its appearance has been seriously modified. It was long owned by Cecil & Virginia Gibbs, by way of Mrs. Gibbs’s family, the Harrisons. Thanks to Randy Hortman and Nancy Ridley for confirming the identification.
Clay Dykes writes that he thinks this was originally the home of his great-grandfather, Dr. M. W. Dykes, M.D., who died in 1966 leaving 9 children.
Wolf Creek Trout Lily Preserve is one of the true natural wonders of South Georgia (all of Georgia, really). And about ten years ago, it was almost turned into a real estate development. It’s located just off US Highway 84 near Whigham and there’s no admission charge, though donations are accepted. A new sign at the entrance indicates the bloom time as being between late January and early March, though the lilies seem to almost always bloom in the middle of February. It’s essential to follow the Preserve’s Facebook page to get updates on the bloom time, as they can be quirky and sometimes bloom en masse and at other times be quite sporadic.
Trout Lilies (Erythronium americanum) are primarily an Appalachian species, favoring filtered sunlight on mountain slopes. So how did they end up here? Though there are a few anomalous populations in Southwest Georgia and North Florida, the Wolf Creek population is the largest in the world and thought to have appeared sometime during the last Ice Age.
If you came here and the Trout Lilies weren’t blooming, you’d still love this place. The gentle slope of the riparian forest makes for a good walk. I came this year about a week after the mass bloom and there were still quite a few scattered around the site.
Add to that the beautiful Spotted Trillium (Trillium maculatum) interspersed throughout and you basically have a mountain walk in deepest South Georgia.
The volunteer who greeted us at the entrance was so delightful and informative and we enjoyed talking with her. Grady County should be applauded for recognizing the importance of this resource and sharing it with the public. Instead of waiting for the state to recognize it and all the time that would take, Grady County took it upon themselves to promote and protect it. Highlighting important local resources like this isn’t just a win for the environment but a win for the local economy. We had lunch at a restaurant in Cairo, so yes, there is an economic impact, however small it may be.
If you’re from Georgia, you probably don’t associate these images with tobacco barns but these aren’t just any tobacco barns. They’re among the last remnants of a highly specialized segment of the tobacco industry. Shade tobacco.
Shade tobacco was grown for cigar wrappers in southwest Georgia, northwest Florida, and the Connecticut River Valley of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Wood-framed arbors and later, cheese cloth tents, filtered sun and kept insects away to achieve the higher grade of tobacco required for cigars.
Shade tobacco was grown in the United States from the 1840s until 1975. Most production in Grady County was finished by 1965, though, as Imperial Tobacco (previously American Sumatra) ceased operations.
Few shade tobacco barns survive in Georgia in any condition and well-preserved examples are rare. Thanks to Gaile Eubanks for help with the location.
This historic congregation was established on 28 August 1828.
