The Kingdom of the Happy Land

I think it’s important, even now, to look at the ways African-American people tried to carve out a place for themselves in the Reconstruction period. It took an enormous amount of imagination and courage to do that, and it’s something people need to know and understand. The Kingdom of the Happy Land was a community founded by freed slaves in the western Carolinas mountains at the end of the Civil War. What remains is a small pile of stones, the remnants of a chimney.