Kowaliga, also known as Kowaliga Industrial Community and Benson, was a former unincorporated village and historically African-American community active from roughly 1890 until 1926, and located in Elmore County and later Tallapoosa County in Alabama, United States.
The area started as a Muscogee tribal land of the same name and in the same location. In the late 19th-century and early 20th-century the African American community was founded by John Jackson Benson with support from his son William E. Benson. Benson had been enslaved and upon release he worked to purchase his former owners plantation land. The community had been the home of industrial farming and business; the Kowaliga School, a private school for learning industrial and domestic skills; the Dixie Industrial Company, a business enterprise to provide work and experience for students and the community; and the short-lived Dixie Line, the first Black-owned railroad built in 1914. Not much is known about the detailed history but many photographs exist, and it has been a renewed focus of researchers starting in the early 2000s.
Part of the former community is now submerged under the Kowaliga Bridge spanning Lake Martin, which occurred after the completion of the Martin Dam in 1926. The name "Kowaliga" has been used to describe many modern-day places in the area of Lake Martin, particularly in or near the former community.
Pre-history
The name of the community was derived from a Native American name. The community has roots that date back to the Muscogee tribe. There is a local legend about a lone Muscogee man named Kowaliga that lived on the shore of Kowaliga creek, after being rejected for love by a women.
The historically African American community of Kowaliga was established by John Jackson Benson (September 1850–November 9, 1925), a formerly enslaved person, who was likely biracial. He was owned by James Benson, a Virginian who owned the Benson Plantation near Kowaliga Creek in Alabama. It is theorized by some researchers that John Jackson Benson's mother was a slave and James Benson may have been his illegitimate father. When his enslaver James Benson died, and the Benson estate divided among his relatives. John Jackson Benson was sent to Talladega to continue to work as a slave for an heir.
Many of the Southern plantations were seized during the war after the passage of the Confiscation Act of 1861. At the end of the American Civil War in 1865, John Jackson Benson was freed, given a mule, and went to Florida to find his sister and bring her back to Alabama. Benson had been separated from his sister in childhood and they were eventually reunited in Florida. He had the goal of purchasing the Benson Plantation but he needed money, so John Jackson Benson moved to Shelby County to work in the coal mines, which could be a fast way to make money at the time.
History
The purpose of the formation of the community was the creation of economic self-sufficiency for local African Americans, which was notable particularly in the late-19th-century and early 20th-century.
John Jackson Benson had earned US $100 from working in the coal mines and purchased a portion of the land from the former plantation, and worked that land. By 1890, he owned 160 acres of land, and by 1898 had acquired 3,000 acres of land. On this land he built a large farmhouse, a sawmill, a cotton gin, a gristmill, and a brickyard. Around forty Black and White families lived together on Benson's land. They grew cotton, sugar cane, and different types of wood for lumber (pine, oak, and hickory). John Jackson Benson used his wealth offering loans to both Black and White people.
Kowaliga School
John Jackson Benson gave his son William E. Benson (1873–1915) 10 acres in order to build a private school for the Black community. The goal in the school creation was for rural students to eventually find industrial work with their new experiences, or alternatively create an educational foundation for these students in order to continue their education at other institutions afterwards. The Kowaliga Academy and Industrial Institute (or Kowaliga Industrial School) was established in roughly 1895, the first building cornerstone was laid on August 1896, and it was incorporated in 1899.