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    True Stories of Black South Carolina
    True Stories of Black South Carolina
    True Stories of Black South Carolina
    Ebook174 pages4 hours

    True Stories of Black South Carolina

    By Damon L. Fordham

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    About this ebook

    From the Upstate to the Lowcountry, African Americans have had a gigantic impact on the Palmetto State. Unfortunately, their stories are often overshadowed.
    Collected here for the first time, this selection of essays by historian Damon L. Fordham brings these stories to light. Rediscover the tales of Samuel Smalls, the James Island beggar who inspired DuBose Heyward s Porgy, and Denmark Vesey, the architect of the great would-be slave rebellion of 1822. Learn about the blacks who lived and worked at what is now Mepkin Abbey, the Spartanburg
    woman who took part in a sit-in at the age of eleven and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. s visit to Charleston in 1967. These articles are well-researched and provide an enlightening glimpse at the overlooked contributors to South Carolina s past.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateMar 7, 2008
    ISBN9781614234623
    True Stories of Black South Carolina
    Author

    Damon L. Fordham

    Damon L. Fordham was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and raised in Mount Pleasant, near Charleston. A graduate of the University of South Carolina and the College of Charleston, he is the author of four books, a public lecturer and an adjunct professor of history at The Citadel and Charleston Southern University.

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      Book preview

      True Stories of Black South Carolina - Damon L. Fordham

      assistance.

      Introduction

      This book is not an official history of blacks in South Carolina; rather, it is a collection of historical articles and anecdotes regarding African Americans in the Palmetto State.

      As I mention in some of these chapters, I grew up listening to my father and other elders tell fascinating stories about their experiences and their recollections of history. Years later, I would conduct research projects as a professional historian and occasionally stumble across these same stories in obscure newspaper articles. These would often consist of little-known stories that were missed by the history books and are collected in this volume.

      During my days as a columnist for the Charleston Coastal Times from 1994 to 1998, on weeks where there was little of note to comment upon, I would write stories about growing up in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina’s African American community in the 1970s. Three of those articles begin this book. The other chapters were either published elsewhere as noted or were written especially for this book.

      While some of the better-known stories of South Carolina’s black history, including those of Robert Smalls and the Jenkins Orphanage among others, are absent, I decided to focus on the lesser-known stories that have not been written about extensively elsewhere. There are a few chapters that involve some familiar incidents such as the Denmark Vesey revolt and the Stono Rebellion, but these articles cover some less familiar aspects of these events.

      For the Brothers Who Aren’t Here

      Not too long ago, I saw the classic 1975 movie Cooley High on television for the first time in years. For those of you who don’t know, this comedy/drama about black teenagers growing up in Chicago inspired the late 1970s television comedy What’s Happening!!

      There is a scene midway through the film in which the teenagers are drinking wine in an alley. One of them pours the remaining bottle of wine down the gutter. When asked why he is doing this, the young man replies, This is for the brothers who ain’t here.

      Although I had seen this film before as a child when it first came out, this sequence had added relevance to me upon seeing it as an adult. The film made me contemplate the fact that although I am a young man in my late twenties, there are a lot of brothers who aren’t here with whom I shared the joys of childhood. In the neighborhood cemetery alone there is Reginald Neal Linyard, who died in his early twenties in 1987. He was a pretty nice guy who taught me how to ride a skateboard. Then there is Dudley Do-Right Richardson, the neighborhood joker who made up crazy songs and dances and who was killed in a car crash. He would have gone far on television. Buried not too far from him is another person who stood tall in my childhood—Jerome Gordon Parker Jr.

      Gordon Parker (1966–1990). Courtesy of Mrs. Minnie Parker.

      Gordon was in the second grade and I was in the third when he moved to our neighborhood in Mount Pleasant in 1973. Although one year tends to make a big difference among children at that age, it did not when it came to our friendship. Along with Thomas Rouse, Tyrone Swinton, my cousin Lee Brown, E.E. Jones and Anthony Dip Hazelton, we formed our little group and, for the most part, lifelong friendships.

      Gordon was quite a funny and good-hearted fellow. About a year after his arrival, our Cub Scout troop had a talent show. Another childhood friend named Erwin White imitated Ed Sullivan as our master of ceremonies, and Gordon did a skit portraying the comedian Jimmy J.J. Walker as he tried to join the army. He portrayed Walker doing all sorts of crazy dances as he was supposed to be marching with his squadron. This brought both our friends and parents into hysterics and, if I recall correctly, he won the show.

      However, what cemented our friendship took place around October 1974 when I was in the fourth grade. I was over at his house one day when his mother, a kind schoolteacher named Mrs. Minnie Parker, was preparing to take Gordon and his siblings to see the movie Charlotte’s Web, a cartoon about a spider that saves a pig’s life. Since I wasn’t raised with my sister, I was an only child, and usually when I visited friends and their parents wanted to take them somewhere, their parents would say that it was time for me to go home. I was about to do just that when Mrs. Parker asked, Damon, where are you going? I replied that she probably didn’t want me around since she was going to take her children to the movies.

      Mrs. Parker replied, Listen, go home quickly and ask your father for some money. You are coming with us.

      That was the first time I ever saw a movie in a theater, and my fondness for both Charlotte’s Web and Mrs. Parker lasts to this day.

      About a year later, Gordon and his family moved to another neighborhood, but we would still get together from time to time. Not long after their move, we learned that Gordon had been hit by a car and was fighting for his life. Members of our church held a huge prayer session for him, and there was not a dry eye in the place. Fortunately, Gordon survived, and we threw a huge party for him at the local community center; but his motor abilities and speech were impaired for the rest of his life.

      In spite of this, he refused to give up. In the years to come, he built up his strength and was able to join the Wando High School wrestling team. He went on to graduate and served as an inspiration to the community. The last time I saw him he was wearing a T-shirt with the various heroes of black history printed on it, and he was able to identify each hero and what they had done. I gave him a high-five and said, You GO boy!

      Several months later on Christmas day in 1990, I was celebrating with my sister Bobbie when I received a phone call with the shocking news: Gordon had died of a heart attack at the age of twenty-four.

      All of our old friends from the neighborhood attended the wake, but I was not able to attend the funeral. However, I made it a point that for every Christmas afterward, I would visit Mrs. Parker and send her a card. So far, I have kept my promise.

      I suppose that each of us over a certain age could tell stories like this about the brothers (and sisters) who aren’t here. So when you think about them, share their stories so that, though they as people no longer exist, memories of them will last.

      Charleston Coastal Times, October 1994.

      The Spirit of Miss Martha

      I have often stressed in these articles the need for African Americans to form a Battle on Both Fronts to fight the twin battles of political protest for equal treatment and the internal struggle for self-improvement. This article is about a true soldier who fought the battle for self-improvement within her community for all of her life. Her name was Mrs. Martha W. Jenkins, better known to those around her as Miss Martha.

      Mrs. Martha Wilson Jenkins was born on Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, on February 11, 1906. After graduating from Charleston’s Colored Industrial School (now Burke High), she moved to New York City where, among other things, she listened to sermons by the legendary Reverend Adam Clayton Powell. Later, she returned to Charleston and attended Avery Institute and Columbia’s Allen University to pursue a teaching career. She married Mr. Albert Jenkins of Mount Pleasant and had two sons, Dr. Albert Jenkins Jr. and Dr. William Jenkins.

      Along with teaching in various local schools for thirty-five years, she was also dedicated to the youth of Mount Pleasant’s Old Village community. She taught Sunday school at her beloved Friendship AME Church, served as the director of the youth division of the Charleston Branch of the YWCA, was an organizer of the Busy Bees (a club that taught young girls such values as respect for self and others) and acted as den mother for Cub Scout Troop 107, of which I was a member.

      Miss Martha saw to it that the young people of her neighborhood were occupied with positive things to do so that we would represent ourselves, and our community, in the right way. Along with teaching us values and organizing drives to feed the poor and the hungry, she was fond of taking the local youths on trips to expose us to different things. One trip that I recall in particular occurred in August 1980 when she chartered a bus to take us to the Six Flags Amusement Park in Atlanta. During that visit, she took us to see her sons, who were both doctors in Atlanta. Many of us were impressed to see African Americans living in such a grand fashion.

      Since Miss Martha lived across the street from me, I knew her very well. She often called at our house to ask me to mow her lawn or go to the store for her, et cetera. Although I was told never to ask her to be paid for this, she usually gave me something anyway. Whenever she went on a trip, she would ask me to house-sit while she was away. Whenever I did this, I would read and learn from her huge collection of old black magazines such as Ebony and The Crisis.

      When I went off to college, she would occasionally give me small gifts of money. I know how it is when you get hungry up there, she would say. I later learned that she would do this for the other neighborhood kids who went to college as well. Unfortunately, she was very ill by the time I graduated and she passed away on March 28, 1997, not long after a street in McClellanville, South Carolina, was named in her honor.

      In speaking with a group of old friends recently, we all agreed that while she occasionally got on our nerves at the time, she did so because she cared, and our community was better off with people like Miss Martha around as a positive influence on the youth. One thing that I did not notice when she was alive was the fact that I never heard her speak ill of a young person because of who their parents were or how much or how little money or education their parents had, or any other unimportant reason. A child of her community was a child of hers, as far as she was concerned.

      Unfortunately, as Miss Martha became ill, the Cub Scout Troop and the Busy Bees died out and, despite some of our efforts, many of the current generation of young people in our community have become living examples of the saying, the idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Some of us have tried to reintroduce positive programs to keep them off of the streets, but to little avail.

      Most of you would probably agree that the spirit of Miss Martha is badly needed in most communities today. Unfortunately, many old people today are afraid to talk to the youth, and some youths live in areas where the elderly are too sick, bitter or negative to pass on any useful information to the young. Therefore, it is up to those of us who are old enough to have benefited from the spirit of Miss Martha and others like her, and yet are still young enough to relate to the youth and to pass that spirit on down so that our communities may survive.

      Coastal Times, April 23, 1997.

      Appreciation of Life

      Last Sunday was a day of

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