Black Oak, Arkansas |

Mabel Moore and I in front of the shuttered Black Oak Grocery

This photograph which I used Photoshop to convert to a color sketch depicts one of the most special places on earth for me. The tiny town of Black Oak, Arkansas right off Highway 18 in Craighead County (northeast Arkansas) was the birthplace of my father, Charles Edward Shoults. My father died when I was sixteen, so I never really got to know him. He never spoke about his childhood home and we never visited. I was not aware until I began my search for may family roots about ten years ago, that my paternal grandmother, Maggie Shoults Fletcher was one of eleven children and I have a miread of second and third cousins in Arkansas. My search for my family roots took me from Black Oak, Arkansas, to Cornith, Mississippi and Haywood County, North Carolina. This photograph was taken the second time I went to Black Oak with my dad’s sister, Mabel Moore and my mother’s sister, Lucile Meyer. This is my aunt Mabel and me.