P.O. Box 440357
W. Somerville, MA  02144-3222
www.cervenabarvapress.com
Where

                      The Eastern Arkansas Delta runs along the eastern
                      border of the state next to the Mississippi River. The region         
shares geographical and cultural similarities with the Mississippi Delta            
Region on the other side of the river banks.
Initial explorations of the newly acquired lands of the Louisiana                        
Purchase originated in the present-day Monroe County near the location         
of the Mayo farm in Montgomery Township.
With Little Rock to the Northwest and Memphis to the Northeast, it is a           
some ninety mile trip by car in either direction with the Mississippi                  
River twenty-five miles to the east at Helena, Arkansas.                                         
The closest town of any size to the Mayo Plantation is Holly Grove                    
thirteen miles to the North on Arkansas Highway 17.

On the eve of the Civil War in 1860 William Montgomery Mayo owned fifty-three slaves and Pretty Little Lies
chronicles the periods of slavery, Reconstruction, through the Jim Crow Era to the present with extensive
references to slave schedules, WPA slave narratives and census records as well as the Mayo Family's own archives
long kept secret now to reveal a racist past of ante- and post-bellum life.

Part of that past is buried on two known locations of the farm in slave cemeteries, and one of the few remaining
slave structures in the state, a slave bungalow house that still remains standing.
Mayo Plantation