Coming in October 2024
from the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Free Library

ALL THAT REMAINS  

I spent nearly four decades reporting and writing for Newsday on Long Island. Some of those stories centered on people in Cutchogue, where I live. The book Heaven and Earth: The Last Farmers of the North Fork, was born out of stories I wrote for Newsday in the 1990s.

In 2003-2004, I saw a Black man on a bike riding up Depot Lane near my house and going behind a big barn where potatoes grown on nearby farms were brought to be weighed, bagged, and shipped to market.

I followed him to a low, concrete building where he lived. I came back the next day and knocked on the door. I was greeted by an elderly Black man named James Wilson. He invited me in. The building was home to a handful of southern-born, Black men and women who worked in the potato barn.

I soon learned this labor camp was the last of its kind on eastern Long Island. I pitched a series of stories on the camp and its residents to my editor at Newsday, and soon I was visiting the camp almost daily.

With me was a talented Newsday photographer, Viorel Florescu. He had been all over the world for Newsday; now, I hoped he could capture this small group of farm workers, all of whom had spent their lives doing farm labor and who, as traditional farming was ending in the area, now faced an uncertain future.

Viorel and I spent the better part of three years reporting and photographing the camp. His work is a great example of documentary photojournalism at its best. Many of the camp residents had lost all contact with families in the South they had not seen in decades. We took two of them home – one to rural Georgia, the other to rural South Carolina.

Then the barn burned down and its remaining residents scattered. Having lost their histories, they struggled to find their way. Many could not cope. One long time resident, Bea Shaw, left the camp after the fire to live in an apartment in nearby Riverhead. She was murdered there one morning. Her body was found by her mother. Jimmy Wilson, then in his eighties, refused to return to rural Georgia where he was born. My research on his life showed he was born during a violent time. His personal story was American history written large.

Viorel’s photographs and my stories are now part of a book, All That Remains, that will be published in October 2024. Its publication was paid for by a generous grant from a local foundation, Side By Side, run by a remarkable woman named Jan Nicholson.

The book is the property of the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Free Library and can be acquired for circulation. Some copies can also be bought for a donation to this wonderful library. If you would like to see this book, contact the library at 631 734 6360.