We Are Charleston

by Herb Frazier

  Chapter Seven: Resurrection

  1. James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992), 624–25.

  2. William E. Gienapp ed., This Fiery Trial: The Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University, 2002), 150, 184.

  3. W. E. B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880 (New York: Atheneum, 1971), 122.

  4. Ibid., 122.

  5. Charles Joyner, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1984), 225; Elizabeth H. Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands (New York: Arno Press, 1968), 11.

  6. “Freedmen’s Jubilee,” Charleston Courier, March 22, 1865.

  7. “Fort Sumter: Restoration of the Stars and Stripes,” New York Times, April 18, 1865, http://www.nytimes.com/1865/04/18/news/fort-sumter-restoration-stars-stripes-solemn-impressive-ceremonies-gen-anderson.html.

  8. Drew G. Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2008), xi; Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 1998), 375.

  9. John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper, “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me”: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2000), 9, 15; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863–77 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 74–75.

  10. Rob Crilly and Raf Sanchez, “Dylann Roof: The Charleston Shooter’s Racist Manifesto,” Telegraph (UK), June 20, 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11688675/Dylann-Roof-The-Charleston-killers-racist-manifesto.html.

  11. “The First Missionaries to the South, from the A.M.E. Church,” Christian Recorder, May 30, 1863.

  12. “Charleston Correspondence,” Christian Recorder, June 3, 1865.

  13. Ibid.

  14. “Meeting of the South Carolina Conference,” Christian Recorder, June 3, 1865.

  15. Ibid.; Daniel A. Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Nashville: A.M.E. Sunday School Union, 1891), 470.

  16. Bernard Powers, “ ‘I Go to Set the Captives Free’: The Activism of Richard Harvey Cain, Nationalist Churchman and Reconstruction-Era Leader,” in The Southern Elite and Social Change, eds. Randy Finley and Thomas A. DeBlack (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas, 2002), 35–36.

  17. “The African M.E. Church,” Charleston Courier, May 31, 1865.

  18. Ibid.; John O. Wilson, Sketch of the Methodist Church in Charleston, S. C., 1785–1887 (Charleston: Lucas, Richardson, 1888), 23.

  19. “Charleston Correspondence,” Christian Recorder, October 14, 1865; Alada Shinault-Small, “Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church: Abridged History” (pamphlet, in Dr. Bernard Powers Jr.’s possession).

  20. Reginald Hildebrand, The Times Were Strange and Stirring: Methodist Preachers and the Crisis of Emancipation (Durham, NC: Duke University, 1995), 59. Additionally, this definition of black nationalism is found in Sterling Stuckey, The Ideological Origins of Black Nationalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 1–2.

  21. “Charleston Correspondence,” Christian Recorder, October 14, 1865.

  22. Ibid., “Emanuel Chapel,” Christian Recorder, April 15, 1875; Shinault-Small, “Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.”

  23. For examples, see “Information Wanted,” Christian Recorder, December 9, 1865, April 14, 1866, and April 27, 1867; “Temperance and Religion,” Christian Recorder, June 8, 1882.

  24. Ibid., “Meeting of the South Carolina Conference.”

  25. Ibid., “Charleston Correspondence,” October 14, 1865; “Remember Now Thy Creator in the Days of Thy Youth,” Christian Recorder, June 29, 1867.

  26. “Charleston Correspondence,” February 11, 1871; “Emanuel Chapel;” Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861–1877 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1965), 190–91; James L. Underwood and W. Lewis Burke, At Freedom’s Door: African American Founding Fathers and Lawyers in Reconstruction South Carolina (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 2000), 118.

  27. “Programme of the Funeral Services of Bishop Richard H. Cain, January 21, ’87,” Christian Recorder, February 3, 1887.

  28. Powers, “I Go to Set the Captives Free,” 47.

  29. Thomas Holt, Black over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1977), 96.

  30. Powers, “I Go to Set the Captives Free,” 46–47, 50–51.

  31. “The General Conference,” Christian Recorder, May 24, 1888; Powers, Black Charlestonians, 123–24.

  32. “Civil Rights Ride 2013—Clementa C. Pinckney, SC Senate, Pastor Mother Emanuel A.M.E.,” YouTube video, 3:08, from a public address given at Emanuel, posted by Mullikin Law Firm, February 20, 2015, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP35_JVnP6g.

  33. Ibid., 11:52.

  34. Suzy Khimm, “Clementa Pinckney’s Political Ministry: ‘Righteous Indignation in the Face of Injustices,’ ” New Republic, June 18, 2015, https://newrepublic.com/article/122077/clementa-pinckneys-faith-fueled-his-politics; Kevin Sack and Gardiner Harris, “President Obama Eulogizes Charleston Pastor as One Who Understood Grace,” New York Times, June 26, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/us/thousands-gather-for-funeral-of-clementa-pinckney-in-charleston.html; Scott Calvert, “Slain Pastor Clementa Pinckney’s Mission Suited His Storied Church,” Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/pastor-state-sen-clementa-pinckney-among-dead-in-charleston-shooting-1434638129; Andy Shain, “Pinckney ‘Was The Moral Conscience of the General Assembly,’ ” The Buzz (blog), June 18, 2015, http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article24839449.html.

  35. “Civil Rights Ride 2013,” 1:57.

  36. Ibid., 10:31.

  37. Susan Millar Williams and Stephen G. Hoffius, Upheaval in Charleston: Earthquake and Murder on the Eve of Jim Crow (Athens, GA: University of Georgia, 2011), ix, 127.

  38. “The Earthquake,” Christian Recorder, September 30, 1886.

  39. “Charleston in Ruins,” New York Freeman, September 18, 1886; “The Charleston Disaster,” Christian Recorder, September 16, 1886.

  40. “On the Wing,” Christian Recorder, September 30 and October 7, 1886.

  41. “The Man and the Hour,” Charleston News and Courier, September 8, 1886; “Charleston Earthquake and Cyclones Collection of Pictures and Clippings 1886–87 (CECCPC),” W. A. Courtney Collection, Charleston Library Society (CLS).

  42. “The City Out of Doors,” Charleston News and Courier, September 7, 1886; “Wiping Out the Traces,” Charleston News and Courier, September 8, 1886; “Life in the Camps,” Charleston News and Courier, September 10, 1886; “An Appeal, “Christian Recorder, October 21, 1886; Williams and Hoffius, Upheaval, 110.

  43. “The City Out of Doors,” Charleston News and Courier, September 7, 1886.

  44. Williams and Hoffius, Upheaval, 92, 105–6, 110; “Suffering Charleston,” New York Freeman, September 25, 1886.

  45. “The Colored Clergy,” Charleston News and Courier, September 7, 1886; CECCPC, W. A. Courtney Collection.

  46. CECCPC, W. A. Courtney Collection; Williams and Hoffius, Upheaval, 115.

  Chapter Eight: Jim Crow

  1. “Mr. Rind Talks,” Charleston Evening Post, June 10, 1896, NewsLibrary.com, accessed June 30, 2015, transcribed by Dr. Bernard Powers Jr.

  2. Ibid.; “ ‘Racist’ Spray Painted on John C. Calhoun Statue,” WLTX News 19, June 23, 2015, http://www.wltx.com/story/news/2015/06/23/john-c-calhoun-statue-vandalized/29162911/.

  3. Michael Johnson and James Roark, No Chariot Let Down: Charleston’s Free People of Color on the Eve of the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1984), 7, 128.

  4. “Calhoun Unveiled,” Manning Times, May 4, 1887, Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/68237180/?terms=calhoun; “Sold as Old Metal,” Charleston Evening Post, August 8, 1896, NewsLibr
ary.com, accessed June 30, 2015, transcribed by Dr. Bernard Powers Jr.

  5. Works Projects Administration, Slave Narratives: South Carolina Narratives, vol. 1 of Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves (Washington, DC: Scholarly Press, 1976), 196.

  6. Mamie G. Fields, Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir (New York: Free Press, 1983), 57.

  7. George Tindall, South Carolina Negroes 1877–1900 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 2003), 58.

  8. Walter Edgar, South Carolina Encyclopedia (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 2006), 217; Edmund Drago, Initiative, Paternalism, and Race Relations: Charleston’s Avery Normal Institute (Athens, GA: University of Georgia, 1990), 116.

  9. William Archer, Through Afro-America: An English Reading of the Race Problem (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1910), 172–73; Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, 88.

  10. Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, 263–64.

  11. “Who was Jim Crow,” Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Ferris State University, accessed January 3, 2016, http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/who.htm; Robert C. Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 75, 88.

  12. Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, 293.

  13. Bernard Powers, Black Charlestonians: A Social History 1822–1885 (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas, 1994), 264–65.

  14. William Archer, Through Afro-America, 176; Fields, Lemon Swamp, 64–65; Powers, Black Charlestonians, 265.

  15. Fields, Lemon Swamp, 52, 55–58.

  16. R. Scott Baker, Paradoxes of Desegregation: African American Struggles for Educational Equity in Charleston, South Carolina, 1926–1972 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 2006), 4, 14.

  17. Sherman Pyatt, Burke High School 1894–2006 (Charleston: Arcadia, 2007), 7–8; “Oral History Interview with Eugene C. Hunt, 1980,” August 28 and November 4, 1980, http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:23399; and “Oral History Interview with Eugene C. Hunt, 1985,” December 4, 1985, http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:23400, Avery Research Center Oral Histories Collection, Lowcountry Digital Library, College of Charleston Addlestone Library.

  18. Drago, Initiative, Paternalism, and Race Relations, 175–76.

  19. Louise Allen, A Bluestocking in Charleston: The Life and Career of Laura Bragg (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 2001), 63, 80.

  20. Fields, Lemon Swamp, 47–48.

  21. Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, 238–39.

  22. Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, Race, Law, and American Society: 1607–Present (New York: Routledge, 2013), xxix.

  23. Peter Lau, Democracy Rising: South Carolina and the Fight for Black Equality Since 1865 (Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2006), 50–51.

  24. Ibid., 52–53.

  25. Ibid., 52.

  26. “Negro Teachers Are in Earnest,” State, March 11, 1910, GenealogyBank .com, accessed July 27, 2015, transcribed by Herb Frazier.

  27. Elizabeth R. Bethel, Promiseland: A Century of Life in a Negro Community (Philadelphia: Temple University, 1981), 214–18.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Ibid.

  32. “A.M.E. Conference Here,” News and Courier, December 20, 1919; “Hundreds Here from All Parts of Country for A.M.E. Councils,” News and Courier, February 25, 1937.

  33. “Negroes Plan Program,” News and Courier, January 20, 1934.

  34. “ ‘Heaven-Bound,’ Sunday Night,” News and Courier, April 15, 1936; “Azalea Festival Events Listed by Steering Committee,” News and Courier, March 16, 1940.

  35. “Mass Meeting at Emanuel Church,” News and Courier, March 7, 1919; “To Sing ‘Heaven Bound,’ News and Courier, April 23, 1936; “Race Relations Sunday,” News and Courier, February 9, 1935.

  Chapter Nine: Life in the Borough

  1. Dr. Frank R. Veal, “Charleston Negro Congregation Believed About 160 Years Old,” News and Courier, July 17, 1950.

  2. Al Dunmore, “Annie and Her Church,” Courier magazine, February, 23, 1952.

  3. Walter Brown, interview by Herb Frazier, October, 8, 2015.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Bernard Powers, Black Charlestonians: A Social History 1822–1885 (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas, 1994), 127–33.

  7. “The Charleston Steam Cotton Mill Now in Operation,” Charleston News and Courier, December 29, 1882.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Walter Hill, Family, Life, and Work Culture: Black Charleston, South Carolina, 1880 to 1910 (doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland College Park, 1989), 82.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Rev. M. W. Gilbert, “The Negro and the Vesta Mill,” News and Courier, February 2, 1901.

  12. National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form, Cigar Factory, http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/charleston/S10817710113/S10817710113.pdf, accessed January 21, 2016.

  13. “Local Cigar Factory Hires 25 New Workers Each Week,” News and Courier, June 27, 1931.

  14. Marguerite Michel, interview by Herb Frazier, September 9, 2015.

  15. William Black, interview by Herb Frazier, October 13, 2015.

  16. Lillie Mae Marsh Doster, interviewee, Southern Oral History Program, University of North Carolina Libraries, accessed January 26, 2016, dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/5770/rec/1.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Brown, interview.

  19. Doster, interviewee, Southern Oral History Program.

  20. Richard Field, interview by Herb Frazier, October 28, 2015.

  21. Doster, interviewee, Southern Oral History Program.

  22. Bo Petersen, “ ‘We Shall Overcome’: Civil Rights Anthem Rose to Prominence in Charleston Strike,” Post and Courier, September 21, 2003.

  23. Black, interview.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Alissa Clare Keller, “ ‘Turning Shambles into Showcases’: Herbert A. DeCosta, Jr.’s Role in the Ansonborough Rehabilitation Project in Charleston, South Carolina” (graduate thesis, Clemson University, May 2011), 36–42, http://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2133&context=all_theses.

  26. Historic Charleston Foundation, unpub. notes; Leland, DYKYC, October 21, 1983, Charleston County Public Library, Business District, accessed January 26, 2016, http://www.ccpl.org/content.asp?action=detail&catID=6024&id.

  27. Philip Simmons Foundation, Inc., About Philip Simmons, accessed January 26, 2016, http://www.philipsimmons.us/aboutsimmons.html.

  28. Keller, “ ‘Turning Shambles into Showcases.’ ”

  29. Ibid., 37.

  30. James M. Hutchisson, DuBose Heyward: A Charleston Gentleman and the World of Porgy and Bess (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 169.

  Chapter Ten: Civil Rights

  1. William Roger Witherspoon, Martin Luther King, Jr.: To the Mountaintop (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 109.

  2. “The Charleston Movement,” NAACP Report to the Community, undated, Emanuel AME Church archive.

  3. John H. Wrighten, speaker at Emancipation Day program, Palmetto Voters Association, Progressive Club, Johns Island, South Carolina, January 3, 1959, tape-recorded program provided by Gail Glover Faust and Oveta Glover, transcribed by Herb Frazier.

  4. In 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first black person appointed to the United States Supreme Court.

  5. Walter Fraser, Charleston! Charleston!: The History of a Southern City (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1989), 394.

  6. Benjamin Glover, speaker at Emancipation Day program, Palmetto Voters Association, Progressive Club, Johns Island, South Carolina, January 3, 1959, tape-recorded program provided by Gail Glover Faust and Oveta Glover, transcribed by Herb Frazier.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Robert E. Botsch, “Briggs v. Elliott (1954),” University of South Carolina Aiken, accessed January 17, 2016, http://polisci.usca.edu/aas
c/briggsvelliott.htm.

  9. Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 1998), 523.

  10. Ibid., 524.

  11. Ibid., 528.

  12. Undated petition from the Emanuel AME Church archive.

  13. Edgar, South Carolina: A History, 527.

  14. Fraser, Charleston! Charleston!, 405.

  15. Ibid., 401.

  16. Edmund L. Drago with Marvin Dulaney, Charleston’s Avery Center: From Education and Civil Rights to Preserving the African American Experience (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2006), 243.

  17. Charles Foster in 1966 was the first black student enrolled in the Citadel’s Corps of Cadets. Foster graduated from Charles A. Brown High School, which had opened in 1962 across the street from the American Tobacco Company’s cigar factory.

  18. J. Arthur Brown, presentation on November 5–6, 1982, South Carolina Voices of the Civil Rights Movement (document of video transcript), Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture archive, College of Charleston, transcribed by Herb Frazier.

  19. “Negroes Denied School Transfer,” News and Courier, October 10, 1960.

  20. Oveta Glover Faust, interview by Herb Frazier, November 9, 2015.

  21. In January 1963, Charleston resident Harvey Gantt, a Burke High School graduate, was the first black student enrolled in Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina.

  22. The eleven students were Millicent Brown, Cassandra Alexander, Eddie Alexander, Gerald Alexander, Ralph Dawson, Jacqueline Ford, Barbara Ford, Gale Ford, Oveta Glover, Clarisse Hines, and Valerie Wright.

  23. Faust, interview.

  24. Millicent Brown, presentation on November 5–6, 1982, South Carolina Voices of the Civil Rights Movement (document of video transcript), Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture archive, College of Charleston, transcribed by Herb Frazier.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Faust, interview.

  27. Millicent Brown is project director of Somebody Had to Do It: First Children in School Desegregation, established in 2008.

  28. James Blake, presentation on November 5–6, 1982, South Carolina Voices of the Civil Rights Movement (document of video transcript), Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture archive, College of Charleston, transcribed by Herb Frazier.