Griot: The Evolution of Edgecombe is the true story that chronicles the journey of three African captives from their homelands of Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Angola into the hands of European slave traders. From there, they were eventually sold to shipping agents that delivered them across the Atlantic Ocean, where they were first sold to sugarcane plantations on the island of Jamaica and finally at a dockside auction near Norfolk, Virginia, in the early 1800s. The purchaser of their existence, Jessie W. Batts, carried them in chains back to his farm at Topsail Township, North Carolina, where they and their children lived the remainder of their lives as his chattel slaves, his private property.
At the nearby Sidbury farm near Topsail Island, a house slave by the name of Sangho Shook became impregnated by her owner after being repeatedly raped in the cookhouse. She gave birth to his daughter who was given the name of Harriette. When Harriette came of age around 1888, she married a grandson of Janey and Tuney by the name of Henry Clay and thus continued the evolution of Edgecombe, now into the thirteenth generation of descendants of three African captives.
After the end of the civil war, the newly freed ex-slaves from two farms, along with their families and relatives, began constructing homes, clearing fields, farming, and raising livestock as they began rebuilding their lives in the backwoods. This narrative chronicles their lives and the lives of many of their descendants as the place in the backwoods of coastal North Carolina gradually evolved into the independent thriving farming community of Edgecombe.