Last updated: December 11, 2024
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Spade and Fork Garden Club
A Legacy of African American Residential Gardening
In 1956, the same year that Medgar and Myrlie Evers purchased a home in the middle-class African American subdivision of Elraine in Jackson, Mississippi, a group of neighborhood women formed the Spade and Fork Garden Club. Established only a year after Elraine’s development began in 1955, the group quickly became an integral part of the subdivision’s social fabric.Although the Spade and Fork Garden Club was unique to Elraine, the group’s work connects to larger stories of African American residential gardening and women’s garden clubs in the South. In Jackson’s growing middle-class African American population, garden clubs helped community members strengthen social connections, transfer practical knowledge, and beautify their living spaces.
Margaret Walker Center. Used with permission in NPS Cultural Landscape Report.
Garden clubs like the Spade and Fork emerged in the late 1800s as community organizations that supported women’s civic engagement and horticultural knowledge. As Americans increasingly moved to suburbs in the mid-1900s, the popularity of garden clubs boomed. Like most community organizations at the time, clubs were largely segregated by race.
African American garden clubs also played an important role for a demographic who historically moved from rural to urban and suburban spaces. These clubs encouraged connections to nature, beautified neighborhoods, and provided space for mutual aid and social support, while also championing social causes including voting rights and food justice.
African American garden clubs also played an important role for a demographic who historically moved from rural to urban and suburban spaces. These clubs encouraged connections to nature, beautified neighborhoods, and provided space for mutual aid and social support, while also championing social causes including voting rights and food justice.
The Spade and Fork Garden Club fit squarely into this tradition. The group’s members were dedicated to promoting food gardening, yard maintenance, camaraderie, and mutual aid in Elraine. The Spade and Fork Garden Club’s social responsibilities included charity and community organizing work such as decorating the neighborhood for holidays, hosting parties, and organizing gifts for new babies. Club members were invested in charitable work and partnered with other organizations to create Thanksgiving and Christmas food baskets and provide flowers to hospitalized veterans.
_Jackson Advocate_. (Jackson, Miss.), 10 Aug. 1957. at Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. Image provided by Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
As part of the city-wide Jackson Garden Club Council, the Spade and Fork was connected to other local African American garden clubs and participated in the Council’s annual Christmas decorating contest. Members of the Spade and Fork were often recognized in the Jackson Garden Club Council annual Christmas decorating contest, with the Evers family receiving an award for their lawn decorations in 1956. In later years, some of the Everses’ neighbors also received awards.
Myrlie Evers served as the treasurer of the Spade and Fork Club in 1957, alongside renowned poet and author Dr. Margaret Walker Alexander serving as club president. In a 2023 interview, Myrlie Evers-Williams reflected on the Spade and Fork Garden Club’s work, stating that the group hoped to “provide the best living conditions we could for our families,”[1] building pride in Elraine’s neighborhood and community. In a profoundly unequal society, horticulture was one way for African American women to control their environments, convey their investment in their homes, and find refuge from oppression. Well-cultivated gardens and manicured lawns also served as a visible expression of African American aspirations to the middle class and equal citizenship.
In the Spade and Fork Garden Club, Elraine’s women found a forum for experimenting, learning, and sharing ideas about horticulture. Members created a library of books about gardening and flower arranging, produced a handbook on gardening, and invited guest speakers to meetings. While women held the leadership positions in the organization, men were also involved and participated in much of the planting and landscaping work. In addition to helping to beautify homes and communicate status through well-maintained yards and gardens, the club nurtured community and social responsibility.
Guynes street at Christmas time attracted city-wide attention and many out-of-town visitors. The Garden Council presented a coveted prize to Mr. and Mrs. Medgar Evers for their lawn display.
Image credit: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress
Evers Family Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Used with permission in NPS Cultural Landscape Report.
Residential gardens like those found in Elraine balanced these notions of middle-class status and domesticity with community and individual empowerment. Typical African American home gardens would include plants for display and for the kitchen. In Elraine, including Medgar and Myrlie Evers’ home on Guynes Street (now Margaret Walker Alexander Drive), ornamental gardens were often located in the front and side yards, while food gardens and fruit trees were planted in the back yard. As was true for garden clubs nation-wide, the home-grown produce Spade and Fork members cultivated embodied the American value of self-sufficiency while helping families guard against the economic and food insecurity that accompanied the often-precarious nature of African American class status.
While the club provided a support system to its members, the Spade and Fork’s attention to lawn and garden care was also competitive. Club members ran competitions to see who had the most well-starched shirts, the most perfectly manicured roses, the best deviled eggs, and the shiniest waxed floors. In 2023, Myrlie Evers-Williams described her family’s garden and lawn as a “showpiece” meant to communicate prosperity and respectability.
Gardening was a way for the women of Guynes Street to express creativity and appreciate beauty, despite the violence of white supremacy and segregation.