We Are Charleston

by Herb Frazier

  When Jones was released following eleven days in the county jail and the county’s prison camp, Glover told him to go home, put on a suit, and go to Morris Street Baptist Church. The church was filled to capacity, and people stood outside waiting to get in. When they arrived, Jones and other youths who had been arrested outside the newspaper were asked to speak at a mass meeting. This was a big event, and Harvey Jones was just a teenager. He had experience participating in protests, but he knew nothing about public speaking. He was shaking with fear—and didn’t have any idea what he would say. But he stepped up to the podium, opened his mouth, and as if it were divinely inspired, out came: “I just spent eleven days in jail for freedom and, if necessary, I would go back again.”44 The church erupted in applause and cheers.

  After thirteen weeks of picketing, ninety King Street merchants met the NAACP’s demands and were willing to allow black customers to try on hats, dresses, and other clothing; serve customers as they arrived without consideration of their race; hire black people for sales jobs; provide equal pay and rank to black clerks; use courtesy titles to black customers; and desegregate the lunch counters, fitting rooms, restrooms, and other services available to customers. The NAACP called the victory the most significant and productive breakthrough achieved as a result of a desegregation demonstration in the South.45

  In 1965, Glover took a new job, leaving Charleston for the presidency of Allen University. At this point in his activist career, he had earned a reputation—the local newspaper recently called him the dean of the civil rights–era ministers in South Carolina.46 Some parishioners at Mother Emanuel were sad he was moving to Allen, while others were happy he was leaving. Glover’s tough talk and his practice of not backing down to police when ordered to return to the church might have inspired and impressed young demonstrators like Harvey Jones, but it made more conservative members of the congregation extremely nervous. In not-so-subtle attempts to force him out, some members of Emanuel held separate services at Harleston Funeral Home across the street from the church, and Glover’s monthly salary was sometimes cut to six dollars. Some of the older people in the church believed that a pastor of Glover’s status should not lead teenagers in street protests. The writing was on the wall for Glover.47

  The year 1965 was significant for another reason. The Voting Rights Act passed that summer, suggesting the ongoing strength of the civil rights movement; however, within days of its passage, the Watts section of Los Angeles erupted into one of the worst race riots to occur in American history. Soon other cities exploded in violence, and these episodes revealed that the civil rights movement was closer to its beginning than its end, particularly in the realm of economic justice.

  Street protests marked with some violence also arrived in Charleston in the late 1960s, when the teaching hospital at Charleston’s Medical College of South Carolina—located directly down Calhoun Street several blocks west from Emanuel—became the center of a major struggle for economic justice and human dignity. Black employees’ grievances against this institution were long-standing. As late as 1965, the college had no black students, nor were there African American professional staff members or faculty.48 In 1969, the firings of black licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and nursing assistants led Mary Moultrie (another African American hospital employee) to begin organizing a labor union.49 This seemingly small step, in combination with other events, set the stage for a strike that grew into a class and racial struggle.

  On March 20, 1969, black hospital employees—mostly women—walked out to protest the firing of twelve nurses’ aides. They demanded recognition of their union, higher wages, and respect. In many cases black employees earned less than minimum wage and often less than white employees who did the same job. Additionally, some white supervisors referred to black nurses in derogatory terms, such as “monkey grunts,” using such racial epithets openly.50

  The walkout evolved into a strike, and for ninety-nine days several hundred employees and local residents took to the picket lines. The strike spread to the nearby Charleston County Hospital, and as it dragged on, services were reduced, forcing Medical College of South Carolina president William McCord to consider closing the state’s teaching hospital. During the most violent period of the strike, a King Street business was burned, and the National Guard was deployed to enforce curfews. Medical College employees joined a New York–based hospital union—1199 Drug and Hospital Workers’ Union—on its first organizing push to the Deep South.

  The striking nurses were in the middle of one of the city’s bloodiest and most bitter labor protests. Described by a New York Times editorial as “the country’s tensest civil rights struggle,” the protest represented a larger set of issues. It was a struggle between the “haves” and the “havenots.”51 It was similar to the struggles that had already played out on Charleston’s docks and in the hot cigar factory.

  Lillie Mae Marsh Doster was still toiling away in the cigar factory when the hospital strike spilled into the streets. The union formed at the cigar factory during that strike continued to operate from an office inside the factory, where she served as the union secretary. The union office became a place where medical college worker Mary Moultrie and her fellow striking nurses and their community supporters could go to think and plan.

  The striking workers also gained support from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, one year after a sniper’s bullet had killed its president, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was the SCLC’s first attempt in Charleston in the Poor People’s Movement. During a massive protest on Mother’s Day 1969, King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, made an address at Emanuel Church. Doster and union organizer Isaiah Bennett had recommended that the hospital workers contact the hospital union in New York, and with the help of activist Septima P. Clark, the hospital employees got the SCLC’s attention.52 Moultrie and her followers were buoyed by the marriage of civil rights and labor that had come to support their cause in Charleston.

  After the strike was settled in June 1969, the fired workers were rehired, but they didn’t return to a welcoming work environment. They didn’t get a contract or win union recognition.53 The strike left painful memories among those who were disgruntled that its outcome didn’t go the way they had expected.

  The hospital strike transformed the city’s race relations, and when it was finally over, it led to the creation of an agency to investigate workplace grievances within state agencies. In Charleston, the strike unified black residents across class lines to dispel myths that had sustained the racial status quo. Black voter registration also rose in the 1970s, giving voice to a black electorate that had been shut out of the political process. William Saunders, a community organizer who advised the strikers, points proudly at the accomplishments: “The strike solidified the black community and all people of good will. It also proved that there is power when the masses of people are organized properly and that power has to be reckoned with by the people who control the economy and police.”54

  ELEVEN

  PEOPLE IN SERVICE TO THE CHURCH

  Bishop Richard Allen was at his Philadelphia home in 1809, when twenty-six-year-old domestic worker Jerena Lee came unannounced to share her story of being called to preach and the troubling night she had fretting whether it was truly God’s calling or the devil’s trick. After listening to her passionate plea, Allen authorized her to lead meetings, prayer services, and unorganized gatherings in the AME Church, but he did not give her permission to preach from the pulpit. The AME Church Discipline, he told her, did not call for women preachers.

  Lee’s acceptance of the bishop’s decision did not last long. For eight years she served as a Methodist minister without official recognition from the church. Based on the belief that her calling came from a much higher power, she gave an estimated 178 sermons, traveling widely. In her journal she posed this probing question: “Why should it be thought impossible, heterodox, or improper for a woman to preach, seeing the Savior died for the woman as well as the man?”1


  Lee’s travels eventually led her back to Bishop Allen during a Sunday morning service at his church on the day that a guest minister lost his voice and his place in the text during the sermon. As the distraught minister returned to his seat, Lee rose confidently from the audience to take the minister’s place at the lectern, where she proceeded to repeat the text he had delivered and complete his unfinished sermon before an astonished audience. Because the platform was reserved for ordained ministers, Lee returned to her pew knowing she had violated church rules in the presence of the bishop who had earlier forbidden her from preaching from the pulpit. Although Allen informed the congregation he had refused to ordain Lee, he praised her evangelizing and the sermon she had just given. He then ordained her because he believed her calling was equal to that of any man. Allen assigned her to his church.2 Lee opened a trail for other women ministers in the AME Church—such as Emanuel’s first female minister, Hilda Blanche Scott, who in turn set an example for other women at Mother Emanuel.

  The weight of the June 17 tragedy at Emanuel was heaviest on women, as six of the Emanuel Nine victims were women, and three of them—Myra Thompson, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, and DePayne Middleton-Doctor—were ministers in the church. Nevertheless, the loss was sweeping, taking its toll on people—women and men—who gave their lives in service to the church and the Charleston community.

  Service to the church defines many “strong women” of Emanuel, but Reverend Hilda Scott perhaps stands out because she challenged a male-dominated church to become not just a minister but also a role model for generations of Emanuel’s children. The nattily dressed and feisty Scott moved quickly through the Emanuel sanctuary with a feverous devotion not only to the church but especially to the young people who lovingly called her “Mama Hilda.” From the mid-1940s through the early 1990s, she served as Sunday school superintendent, presiding over teachers and students who assembled in the ground floor area where the Emanuel Nine lost their lives.3 A thin line separated Scott’s warmth from her stern discipline. Her hallmark punishment for misbehaving inattentive juveniles was a pinch to the upper arm or an earlobe yank.

  Despite Scott’s stern disposition, Emanuel trustee pro tempore Leon Alston remembered Scott as a warm, loving person in the church—and especially in the neighborhood where her husband, Oscar Scott, often stopped by the Alston home on Saturday mornings with a package of whiting (a local fish) for his mother from “your girlfriend Hilda.” Alston tells the story of a day he and his friends spent the Sunday school hour throwing rocks at the John C. Calhoun statue not far from the church. “We had read in our book that he was one of the slave owners in South Carolina,” Alston says. “Mama Hilda wanted to get us back in Sunday school, so she made us join the Sunbeam Choir. But after a couple of years of that, she realized I couldn’t sing, so she said, ‘I think you are best suited for the junior usher board.’ ”4

  At Emanuel, Scott blazed a trail for women ministers, such as Thompson, Coleman-Singleton, and Middleton-Doctor. Emanuel steward emeritus Ruby Martin had mentored Thompson and Coleman-Singleton. She bought textbooks and a book on women in the Bible and supported them financially in other ways. “Sharonda was being ordained, and I took communion with her and her family, and Myra was about to rise to another level in her ministerial studies before she died,” Martin says. “I knew Myra as a young woman. I made the motion for her to get a license to preach and wrote a letter to the board of examiners for her to preach, and I knew where she was in her Christian movement.”5

  Anthony Thompson also knew Myra but when they were much younger. She used to come over to his house to play with his little sister, but to him she was a little kid, four years younger than him, and he didn’t pay much attention to her. They never could have foreseen when they were children how often their lives would continue to intersect over the years.

  The story of the Thompsons is the kind of love story that movies are made of. No matter what they were doing or where they were, they simply kept bumping into each other. Little by little their friendship deepened into the kind of relationship that everyone wishes for: a marriage based on mutual respect and admiration and a deep, deep abiding love.

  Both Myra and Anthony Thompson grew up in Charleston, and as fate would have it, they both ended up at Benedict College in Columbia at the same time, despite their age differences. Anthony was finishing up his last year of college after a stint in the navy, and Myra transferred from Livingston College in North Carolina. Anthony was driving in his car one day when he saw Myra walking down the road. She was visibly upset because she had missed the bus to Charleston, where she traveled every weekend to see her baby son, Kevin, and to work at McDonald’s. Anthony had a wife and son at home in Charleston, and he would also go home on weekends, so he offered her a ride. She told him that she knew he was going where she was going, but she didn’t trust him. Thompson can smile about it now in retrospect: “She was no-nonsense. She was always focused and so serious.”6 Anthony was impressed. Soon, he gave her a ride home every weekend, dropping her off on Fishburne Street at “Miz” Mabel’s house. Mabel took care of Kevin during the week when Myra was away at college. Myra graduated from Benedict with a degree in English education.

  The years passed by, and Anthony and Myra both ended up back in Charleston. He was living on Line and Coming Streets downtown, and she was living on Coming Street near the fire station, so they would bump into each other occasionally. Then Myra got married and moved. Anthony and his family also moved away from the Coming Street area, but he and Myra, of course, relocated to the same neighborhood. They continued to cross paths, and her son, Kevin, got to know Anthony. Myra also gave birth to a baby girl named Denise. She eventually began working at the Cathedral School, where Kevin was a student, and Anthony would often run into her there. At the time, both of their marriages were troubled, and they began to talk to each other about what they were going through, which brought them even closer. A few years later they were married. According to Anthony, after decades of friendship, once they were married, “everything came together.”7

  Myra Thompson was always driven and focused. She worked as an English teacher, and she taught at both Cathedral School and Brentwood Middle School. She earned two master’s degrees at the Citadel—one in counseling and one as a reading specialist. According to her husband, she did it for her students who needed help with reading, not for the paycheck: “When she did something, there was always a purpose behind it, and it was always to help someone else.”8

  Myra had a difficult childhood, and it’s possible that her sense of purpose can be traced back to those earlier years and a need to create stability and independence. Her father was absent from her life, and her mother was a struggling alcoholic. When Myra was a student at Burke High School, her mother made arrangements with her next-door neighbor and friend, Kathy Coakley, to take her in, so Myra went to live with the Coakley family. They were members of Mother Emanuel Church, and Myra soon joined the church as well. She became a lay leader too; it’s clear her church home was a solid, stable force in her life.

  Myra’s father was married three times, and he had multiple children from each marriage. But Myra was his firstborn child, and this is a role she took very seriously. Once she became an adult, she made enormous efforts to create family out of these disparate parts. “Her goal was to bring her family together, and she did everything she could to make sure her life with her children would not be like her life with her mom,” Anthony Thompson comments, adding, “She was very strong; I admired that about her.”9 Myra and Anthony Thompson were married for thirteen years, and during that time they reunited with all of Myra’s siblings, making many weekend trips to visit them. There were eleven in all—a few were her full siblings, but most of them were half sisters or half brothers. The family is so huge, in fact, they had to hire a bus for them for the funeral, because they all came. Myra had more than fifty nieces and nephews; a son, Kevin Singleton; a daughter, Denise Quarles; and a stepson, Anth
ony Thompson. She also had two grandchildren.

  Myra even had the opportunity to see her father’s mother before her grandmother died; they had met only one other time. Myra kept a photograph of her wearing a fur coat, and that was all she could remember about her. When the two finally met again, Myra was astounded at the similarities between them, their characters and mannerisms. Myra was thrilled to bring her children and grandchildren to meet her grandmother.

  At Anthony’s urging, Myra also reconnected with her father, and that’s really when they began a relationship. Myra was in her forties at the time. She also maintained a relationship with her mother, who passed away some time ago. Myra’s father lived in Hampton, South Carolina, and he helped start Clementa Pinckney’s political career—driving him around town, talking about politics and how to run a campaign. According to Anthony, Clementa Pinckney got a kick out of that connection.

  Myra Thompson and Rev. Pinckney worked closely together when she was the head of Emanuel’s property committee, working to restore and maintain the historic church. She also served as the children’s church instructor and trustee pro tempore and on numerous panels, including one to put in an elevator so everyone could have access to the sanctuary. It’s not surprising, given her devotion to her church, that Myra would choose to become an AME minister. She pursued her seminary studies at night, and she had delivered a number of sermons as part of the process—all of this leading up to conducting Bible study on the night of June 17, a task usually undertaken by Daniel Simmons. According to her husband, she had thoroughly prepared for the evening and had practiced the discussion many times. She had received her license renewal earlier at the Quarterly Conference. It was a proud night for her.