Pulaski looks to reclaim its past from Klan

ADVANCE FOR SUNDAY NOV. 2 AND THEREAFTER - A Friday Sept. 5, 2014 photo shows the home Matt Gardner in Elkton, Tenn. Art professor Bernice Davidson is using her Heroes Project to tell the stories of Pulaski's unsung local figures. Among the heroes is Matt Gardner, a freed slave and prolific farmer. As the locals tell it, warning shots fired at the prominent black farmer's home forced him to keep to the backyard for the last several decades of his life. His home has been closed to tourists for a year and is awaiting repairs. (AP Photo/The Tennessean, George Walker IV) NO SALES ADVANCE FOR SUNDAY NOV. 2 AND THEREAFTER - A Friday Sept. 5, 2014 photo shows the home Matt Gardner in Elkton, Tenn. Art professor Bernice Davidson is using her Heroes Project to tell the stories of Pulaski's unsung local figures. Among the heroes is Matt Gardner, a freed slave and prolific farmer. As the locals tell it, warning shots fired at the prominent black farmer's home forced him to keep to the backyard for the last several decades of his life. His home has been closed to tourists for a year and is awaiting repairs. (AP Photo/The Tennessean, George Walker IV) NO SALES

By Associated Press November 1, 2014 1 min read

PULASKI, Tenn. (AP) – Racists scared Matt Gardner off his front porch in Giles County more than 100 years ago.

As the locals tell it, warning shots fired at the prominent black farmer’s home forced him to keep to the backyard for the last several decades of his life.

The Ku Klux Klan, meanwhile, was free to grow up around him.

So while Gardner’s legacy faded – builder of schools for black children, minister to three churches and a prolific farmer until he died in 1943 – the rise of the Klan became synonymous with the south central Tennessee county and especially with the city of Pulaski a few miles north of his homestead.

Now people in the community want to take Gardner’s porch back – and a lot of other things, too.