Benson and Kowaliga, under Lake Martin
Cleared from July 1923; the dam closed in 1926Benson (Kowaliga), now under Lake Martin, Elmore County, AL
A Black-owned town on Kowaliga Creek - 9,000 acres, a sawmill, a turpentine still, a school of its own - was razed and flooded when Alabama Power closed the gates of Martin Dam. Twelve cemeteries were dug up and moved, 923 graves among them.
The Kowaliga School was organised in 1896 and incorporated in 1899, in a Black farming community on Kowaliga Creek in what is now Elmore County. Its own annual report, digitised by the Library of Congress, describes twelve trained teachers, an eight-month term and instruction in farming, trades and domestic work - the only school of its kind within forty miles. The settlement around it took the name Benson, which was also its post office.
Its founder, William E. Benson, incorporated the Dixie Industrial Company under Alabama law in 1900 with $10,000 of capital, raised partly from his father and partly from backers in New York, and bought a first tract of 5,000 acres carrying a few dilapidated cabins. W. E. B. Du Bois's 1907 Atlanta University study of Black economic co-operation recorded what it had become: nearly 9,000 acres of farm and timber land, a sawmill, a shingle mill, a turpentine still and a plantation store, eighteen cottages built and forty farms leased, employing close to 300 Black people, on a paid-up capital of $53,000. It was one of the largest Black-owned industrial enterprises in the South.
Alabama Power began buying options on land to be flooded as early as 1916. Clearing began in July 1923; the gates of the Martin Dam on the Tallapoosa closed in 1926, and the reservoir filled after heavy rain in April 1928, making what was then the largest man-made body of water in the world. The communities of Susanna and Benson, with their houses and churches, were razed before the water came, and the company relocated twelve cemeteries containing 923 graves.
What stands there now is Lake Martin, Alabama's third-largest lake, ringed with holiday houses and marinas. The name survives on Kowaliga Bay and in a Hank Williams song; the town does not. The published record is clear about the acreage cleared, the churches pulled down and the graves moved, and silent on the thing a reader most wants to know - how many families were living in Benson in 1923, what Alabama Power paid them, and where they went.
Benson and Susanna were razed and twelve cemeteries holding 923 graves were relocated. No count of the people moved, and no record of what they were paid, appears in the published sources.
Sources
- Lake Martin and Thomas Wesley Martin DamEncyclopedia of Alabama, Alabama Humanities Alliance and Auburn Universityencyclopediaofalabama.orgLand buying from 1916, clearing from July 1923, the gates closed in 1926, the razing of Susanna and Benson and the relocation of twelve cemeteries and 923 graves.
- Economic Co-operation among Negro AmericansAtlanta University Publications, in Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1907)docsouth.unc.eduDu Bois's study records the Dixie Industrial Company at Kowaliga: its incorporation, its 9,000 acres, its mills and store, and the nearly 300 Black people it employed.
- Kowaliga School: annual reportKowaliga Academic and Industrial Institute, digitised by the Library of Congresstile.loc.govThe school's own report: organised 1896, incorporated 1899, twelve teachers, an eight-month term, and the community it served. A primary document produced to raise money, so it describes the place as its founders wished it seen.