How Growing Up In Rural Georgia Taught Me The Power Of Community

Louise Trice grew up in Blakely, Georgia, where family, faith and community shaped her understanding of respect, generosity and responsibility. Raised on her family’s land in a close-knit Black community, she learned early the importance of treating others with dignity, even while witnessing the everyday indignities of segregation. In this reflection, Trice shares how those childhood lessons continue to guide her life and why she believes future generations must carry the fight for freedom forward.

I grew up in Blakely, Georgia, about 200 miles southwest of Atlanta.

I was raised in a community where everyone looked after one another. If you were doing something you weren’t supposed to do, any adult could correct you. The only thing you hoped was that they didn’t tell your parents before you got home.

We shared everything.

My father owned 50 acres of land. It wasn’t a lot, but it was ours. Because we owned our land, we didn’t have to sharecrop. We worked for our own family, and that meant we didn’t have to miss school the way many Black children did when they were working someone else’s land.

My parents made sure all of us went to college.

One of my earliest memories is going to the store with my mother. I was so little my head barely reached the counter, but I noticed the white storekeepers never called her by her name. Her name was Alberta, but they called her “Auntie.”

Even as a child, I knew that wasn’t respect.

That’s why I still tell children today to call people by their names. Your parents gave you your name, and it matters. Growing up, people often refused to call Black people by their names because it denied us dignity.

I’m proud of the way I was raised. My parents taught us to honor other people because when you respect others, you respect yourself. That showed in how you carried yourself, how you dressed and how you treated people.

Those lessons never leave you.

Giving never leaves you, either. When my father butchered a hog, we’d wrap the meat in white paper and share it with neighbors. People came to our garden and picked whatever they needed, and we could do the same at theirs.

That’s what community meant.

Today, I still love to give. My children tell me I’ll give away anything, but that’s how I was raised. Scripture teaches that when you give, you receive blessings in return, and I’ve found that to be true.

After my husband died of a heart attack at 47, I raised our two sons on my own. Today they both own businesses of their own, and I know the values they learned growing up stayed with them.

That’s why I’m here celebrating Juneteenth.

We’re freer than we once were, but we’re not fully free. We still face barriers to jobs, opportunity and equal treatment. That’s why we have to keep celebrating Juneteenth, keep telling our stories and keep encouraging the next generation to continue the work.

I’ll be 79 on my next birthday. I’ve had two hip replacements, two knee replacements and a shoulder that’s bone on bone. My time to do this work isn’t what it once was.

Now it’s up to our children to carry it forward.