We enjoyed driving less traveled roads through Georgia today. We stopped for gas in Cuthbert, Georgia (population 3,143), on the Jefferson Davis Highway. It is 100 miles from the gulf coast, 100 miles from the closest city (Montgomery, Al) and not near, it seems, anything at all. The City of Cuthbert, incorporated in 1831, is the county seat of Randolph County, which has a total population of 6,287 people. Most of the buildings, built on Cuthbert town square around 1890, are still there. One surprising thing about Cuthbert is that there are no obvious chain restaurants or motels, except for the ever present Dollar General. Is there a rural town in America that does not have a Dollar General?
According to Wikipedia, the county was developed for cotton plantations, the major commodity crop, and the rural area had a high proportion of enslaved Black workers. Today the Cuthbert population is still 80% Black. The main occupation now is food production as there is a large chicken processing plant owned by Tyson in Cuthbert. Poultry is now the largest sector of Georgia’s agricultural production since the Georgia cotton industry was decimated by the Boll Weevil. The insect first swept into GA in 1915 in dust clouds from the west. By the early 1920s, it had destroyed over 60 % of Georgia’s cotton crops.(New Georgia Encyclopedia)
The Cuthbert Water Tower, erected in 1895, has the distinction of being the only water tower in the middle of a federal highway. It is located in the middle of US Highway 82 (Jefferson Davis Highway) and defines the skyline of Cuthbert. For many years, people believed those who drank water from the tower would either stay or return to Cuthbert.
Cuthbert is the birthplace of boxer Larry Holmes, NFL player Rosey Grier and jazz and swing musician Fletcher Henderson Jr. (1897-1952). Another famous person who grew up in Cuthbert heard of is Winfred Rembert, a Black artist who used hand-tools and shoe dye on leather canvases. During a civil rights march in the 1960s, Rembert was arrested without being charged. He spent seven years on a chain gang and survived a lynching.You can watch a short documentary film about Rembert called All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert. His memoir, Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South, was published posthumously in September 2021 and won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
Perspectives on the Road 
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