CHARLOTTE, Tenn. (WSMV) – Along the back roads of Dickson County sits a community born out of strength, courage and determination.
In the years after the Civil War, newly freed men and women from the Cumberland Furnace walked a few miles from slavery. They bought their own land and built more than 50 homes, stores, three churches and an elementary school on what would become about 1,000 acres known as Promise Land.
Names like Nathan Bowen, William Gilbert, Joe Washington Vanleer, John and Arch Nesbitt — U.S. Colored Troops veterans — turned former plantation ground into a place where Black families could learn, worship and build wealth for the generations that followed…