Washing Our Hands in the Clouds: Joe Williams, His Forebears, and Black Farms in South Carolina

The history of a region reflected through the life and struggles of one Black farmer and his ancestors

In Washing Our Hands in the Clouds, Bo Petersen masterfully crafts a reflection on the Civil War, emancipation, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement in the personal story of how it affected one man's life in a specific South Carolina locale. Petersen's accomplishment is that, in studying the Pee Dee region of Dillon and Marion Counties, he illuminates those issues throughout the Deep Sou...