A Society of Bees

About the Book

My purpose is to tell why many Southerners reflected an air of hopelessness and feudal service after the Civil War.  When one suffers profound and prolonged abuse without recourse, it engenders these unhappy consequences.  This was the way it was.

Some non-Southerners have branded our condition then as incompetence and ignorance.  We agree that those tow qualities were surely present, but for WHOM?  We ask?  My purpose is to show how the South was knocked to its knees and then used that position very effectively to become the Bible Belt.

I also wanted to show our enduring sense of humor.  We are truly religious, but that doesn’t keep us from laughing at the many antics of humankind.  We include many examples.  Some of them are shameful but we seize the moment and laugh until we cry...and cry...

Enjoy.    I have.

About the Author

On August 6, 1915, I was born in the red clay hills of Eatonton, Georgia and named for my Methodist-Minister Grandfather, Olive Harmon Newton. And he wasn’t a minister for nothing. His influence led me to see the hand prints of God everywhere, tying all of my life events together. And it certainly doesn’t look like they were put together by a committee! When I was four, we moved to Milledgeville, a college town where I received my degree from Georgia State College for Women. Journalism was my chief interest and it was taught in the English Department. It was where emphasis was put. We published a great weekly newspaper and a quarterly magazine and I learned my way. I can boast that I am related to Thomas Jefferson and Robert Fulton, but I am more proud of the fact that I am my parent’s daughter. Both of these two were the oldest of their numerous siblings, becoming a sort of third parent to the rest. It was part of the times... Their lives were a testimony to the durability of the human psyche. They might have resorted to flights of fancy in their minds, but it allowed them to withstand the constant battering of circumstance. I call them heroes, and I understand. I’ve been there too...many times... Olive Jordan Thigpen