A STORY OF REDEMPTION
Big Mama's house
I bought the home of Eunice Alma Harris Malone, my paternal great grandmother, in Hyde Park, North Memphis, Tennessee. My great grandmother moved from Utica, Mississippi with her parents and siblings and rooted themselves in the historic Hyde Park and Douglass communities.
Big Mama, whom I so affectionately called her, was well loved and revered in Hyde Park. She was the community’s kindergarten teacher and an herbalist. She lived a long and well life well into her 90s. My grandfather sold her home in 1988 after her passing.
For some reason, I always thought about this home and kept reliving particular moments and things about the house. The house on Davis Street holds so many memories of the past and promises of the future. It is special!!
After years of abandonment and blight, I bought it and have taken it into my heart to work this labor of love to restore all of the heart and soul my Big Mama put it into this home. I have vowed to carry own her legacy and create a legacy of my own through the foundation of this home.
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Big Mama's Home is being restored as the home of an ancestral garden and archival repository, In Search of Our Garden in her honor. But it is more than that. It is the retelling and rewriting of a story of an ancestral garden and an archival repository that will create legacies for other lifetimes. It is a philosophy that will uphold generational wealth, champion for memory work, and ancient practices. It is a call for defining growth, legacy, and holistic living.
The Story
MAY 2020
purchased big mama's house
Inspired by a dream, I was led to purchase my great grandmother’s home. Eunice Alma Harris Malone, affectionately called Big Mama by family, was a pillar in the community as the neighborhood school teacher during segregation but she also owned several properties during the Jim Crow South era.
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Big Mama's home was purchased back from the Shelby County Land Bank after being vacant for over 10 years. The deed had only been transferred once by my grandfather to the Cox family of Hyde Park.
SEPTEMBER 2020
demolition of big mama's house
Excitedly ready to move forward with the rebuilding process, the beginning of the renovation process took a turn. Along with high hopes and dreams of restoring Big Mama's, disappointment awaited. The home built in the early 1900s had infrastructure and construction features that would not pass the current code.
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Emotions were high, but I knew the house had to be demolished in order to make room for a better home. Behind the layers of old rotted wood lied delicate wallpaper and family treasures, I can hold on to forever.
APRIL 2023
The legacy garden
Proudly holding seeds and deeds in my hand, I decided to plant a legacy garden to honor the ways of Big Mama as she loved gardening and healing other and the same love of garden and natural medicine.
​The plan is to cultivate Big Mama’s land as the home of one of many land beautification projects that will beautify vacant lots and service the In Search of Our Garden Apothecary.
