Amanda America Dickson

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10337890/amanda-america-toomer

Amanda America Dickson was born to 40-year-old slave master David Dickson and 13-year-old slave, Julia Lewis in 1849. Legally, Amanda was still a slave until her grandmother's death in 1864. By the 1860s David Dickson was the richest planter in Hancock County, with 150 slaves, 350 cattle, 600 hogs, 200 sheep and 57 mules and horses. Amanda was still a teen-ager when she married her father's nephew, Charles Eubanks. Because of anti-miscegenation laws, they couldn't legally marry in Georgia. One of the first laws the Georgia State legislature passed after the war reinstated the prohibition against interracial marriage.

In 1873, Mr. Dickson deeded 1,560 acres of land worth $10,000 to Amanda. On Feb. 18, 1885, Mr. Dickson took his morning ride over the farm, came home, said he was cold and lay down for a nap. He never woke up. Clinging to his body, Amanda cried, "Now I am an orphan, though her mother was still alive. The bulk of his estate, 17,000 acres, valued at $500,000, went to Amanda -- making her the largest property owner in Hancock County. On July 14, 1892, she married Nathan Toomer of Perry, Ga. Amanda got sick. She was intermittently unconscious from nervous shock. The doctors diagnosed her with neurasthenia, a disease characterized by profound physical and nervous exhaustion. She died at 5 p.m. June 11, 1893. She was the richest woman in the south, at that, a black woman during the civil war era. Atlanta also has an "Amanda America Dickson" day they celebrate.

Heiress, Socialite. Born Amanda America on the Dickson Plantation, near Sparta, Georgia, Mrs. A. A. Dickson Toomer was, in her time, the wealthiest African-American woman in Georgia and possibly the United States. At the time of her birth, her mother was 12 year old Julia Frances Dickson, a house servant belonging to Elizabeth Dickson. Amanda's father was 40 year old David Dickson, son of Elizabeth and a wealthy white merchant, planter and slave owner. In her childhood, she was taken into the Dickson family and tutored by her paternal grandmother Elizabeth Sholars Dickson. Amanda married first to her father's nephew, Charles Eubanks, in 1866-67 and they lived on a plantation in Rome, Georgia. Eubanks was a Confederate Veteran. She bore two children from this marriage, Julian Henry and Charles Green. It was an unhappy marriage and Amanda left Charles in 1870, returning to the Dickson Plantation, where she was legally given the surname of Dickson for herself and her sons.

She left home briefly, between the years 1876 and 1878, to attend the Normal School of Atlanta University. When her father died on February 18, 1885, Amanda became the center of a famous lawsuit. She was the main heir to the estate of over 15,000 acres valued at $309,543. The will was upheld in Probate Court. The white members of the Dickson family appealed to the Superior Court of Hancock County and to the Georgia Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled in 1887 that Amanda was legally entitled to the inheritance under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that property rights are equal for blacks and whites, including the offspring of black and white citizens. Her father had stipulated that Amanda, and her children after her death, were the beneficiaries, and no future husband or Dickson family member could "interfere". During the contest of the will, Amanda purchased a beautiful three-story brick house in the elite downtown neighborhood of Augusta, Georgia, which was at the time an integrated city. This house still stands on 452 Telfair Street.

In 1892, she married Nathan Toomer of Perry, Georgia. He had been the slave of Richard Pilkinson of Chatham Co., North Carolina, the personal assistant and slave of John Toomer of Houston Co., Georgia, and finally the property of Col. Henry Toomer of Perry. Amanda remained married to Nathan Toomer until her death from Neurasthenia, or nervous exhaustion, considered to be caused by an unbearably hot train ride home from a month's stay in Baltimore for her health. She was buried in her wedding dress, in a metallic coffin, which was lined in rose colored plush fabric. The funeral was held at Trinity Colored Methodist Church. She died intestate, but the Dickson will stipulated that her sons receive the inheritance upon her death, which included $100,000 to each son and part of the remaining $247,000. Kent Anderson Leslie's 1995 biography Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege: Amanda America Dickson, 1849-1893, was written about her life, and from this book came the 2000 film, "A House Divided," starring Sam Waterston and Jennifer Beals as David and Amanda Dickson. For newspaper articles concerning the Dickson estate and will, and Amanda Dickson, refer to The Atlanta Constitution June 12, 1893; June 14, 1887; June 19, 1887; November 15, 1885; July 5, 1885.

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Amanda America Dickson, the daughter of a slave and her owner, became one of the wealthiest black women in nineteenth-century America when the Georgia Supreme Court upheld her claim to her father's contested will. Dickson inherited his estate in Hancock County upon his death in 1885.

She was born on November 20 or 21, 1849, on the Hancock County plantation of her father, the famous white agricultural reformer, David Dickson (1809-85). Her birth was the result of the rape of her slave mother, Julia Frances Lewis Dickson, when Julia was twelve years old. At the time, David Dickson was forty and the wealthiest planter in the county. Amanda America Dickson spent her childhood and adolescence in the house of her white grandmother and owner, Elizabeth Sholars Dickson, where she learned to read and write and play the piano—the survival skills of a young lady but not ordinarily the opportunities of a slave. According to the Dickson family oral history, David Dickson doted on Amanda, and Julia quite openly became his concubine and housekeeper. - Kent Anderson Leslie

Amanda, then15, had a relationship with her 29-year old white cousin Charles Eubanks and had two sons, Julian and Leslie, near Rome, Georgia. The couple were essentially married, although Georgia laws forbade interracial weddings. She left Eubanks four years later and returned home to her father's plantation, where she and her mother moved into a new home that had been built on the property. Amanda attended Atlanta University from 1876-1878.

In the early 1880's, Dickson gave Amanda three-quarters interest in 13,000 acres of Texas farmland, several thousand dollars worth of property bonds and a home in Augusta, Georgia, where she and her mother often stayed during shopping trips.

David Dickson died unexpectedly in 1885, 12 years after the death of his wife, Clara. His estate included thousands of acres of property in Georgia and Texas as well as the rights to his agricultural seeds and compounds.

It was practically a statewide scandal when it was discovered that Dickson willed the bulk of his $300,000 estate- $8 million in todays dollars- to his only child, Amanda.

Although dozens of white relatives fought the case in court, Amanda prevailed under the 14th Amendment, with the Georgia Supreme Court noting "all distinction as to right's pertaining to citizenship between the two races are abolished, and as to their civil rights, they stand on the same footing."

The former slave-turned-millionaire purchased a home at 448 Telfair St., Augusta, Georgia, primarily to distance herself from irate relatives in Hancock County, Georgia.

Amanda was not only one of the wealthiest Blacks in the U.S., but also one of the wealthiest people in the country.

In 1892, Amanda married Nathan Toomer, a wealthy widower from Perry, Georgia. Toomer was also of mixed race.

Amanda died just one year later after becoming ill during a trip to Baltimore with her husband. She died on June 11, 1893, at age 43. According to obituaries, Amanda was a socialite involved in many types of philanthropic and charitable work, including donations to Paine College and Trinity CME Church (where her funeral was held].

Amanda Dickson was the inspiration for a 2000 television movie "A House Divided" - with actress Jennifer Beals playing Dickson - and the biography "Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege", by Kent Anderson Leslie.