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    Greenville County, South Carolina
    Greenville County, South Carolina
    Greenville County, South Carolina
    Ebook217 pages59 minutes

    Greenville County, South Carolina

    By Leola Clement Robinson-Simpson

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    About this ebook

    Cradled at the foothills of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains and once known as the Textile Center of the South, Greenville has evolved into a prosperous hub for corporate development and global commerce. Greenville County s African American community, proud and resourceful, has strong roots dating back to 1770, when blacks helped to carve the county out of an upstate wilderness. The experiences of the black community and its long relationship with whites up to the civil rights movement helped to create the climate for the kaleidoscope of races and cultures in Greenville today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJan 31, 2007
    ISBN9781439617526
    Greenville County, South Carolina
    Author

    Leola Clement Robinson-Simpson

    Author Leola Clement Robinson has collected vintage photographs and exciting images from national and local archives and family collections. These images portray the struggles and accomplishments of African Americans in the past, on whose backs stand the remarkable achievements of the present, and offer a torch light of promise and challenge for the future.

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      Book preview

      Greenville County, South Carolina - Leola Clement Robinson-Simpson

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      AUTHOR’S PREFACE

      In 1986, author Leola Clement Robinson-Simpson was a member of the Greenville County Bicentennial Committee. This committee was formed under the auspices of the Greenville Urban League and charged with compiling African American contributions in Greenville from 1786 to 1986. The bicentennial committee was cochaired by Alberta T. Grimes, Rev. Joseph D. Mathis, and Sam Zimmerman Sr. The coordinator was Sylvia Wood-Fowler. Other committee members included Myron Robinson, executive director of the Greenville Urban League; Julia Adams; Ralph Anderson; Judith Gatlin Bainbridge; Douglas Brister; Ruth Ann Butler; Rev. S. C. Cureton; Ennis Fant; Fred Garrett; Lottie Gibson; Morris Hall; Thomas Hooper; Mattye Jones; Thomas Kerns; Jeanne Lenhardt; Carol Martin; Dorothy Mims; Xanthene Norris; Bobby Settles; Lenny Springs; Doug Smith; Joseph A. Vaughn; Rev. Q. H. Whitlock; and Rev. Willie Wilson. This committee conducted research, collected images, and produced the booklet We Are a Part of the Bicentennial Celebration of Greenville County: 1786–1986. Unfortunately, none of the photographs or images collected in 1986 was included in the bicentennial-committee booklet.

      Thirty years later, the author, a longtime civil rights activist, educator, school board member, and founder of the Center for Educational Equity (CEE) Saturday Success School, was moved to write Black America: Greenville because of students who wanted to know more about the early history of African Americans in Greenville. This daunting task involved collecting images from the past and resurrecting some of the findings of the bicentennial committee and the research of Joseph D. Mathis. Some of the images collected could not be reproduced due to poor photographic quality. The references to the terms African American and black in this book are reflective of the generational metamorphosis of a people who stretched the limits from survival to unheralded accomplishments from the 1700s to the present.

      Young people today have many opportunities for a brighter future because of our past. The resilience of African Americans in Greenville and their stellar achievements in spite of adversities must be recognized as more than a footnote in local history. Enveloped in this recognition is the challenge to African American youth, in particular, to continue the proud legacy of achievement in the future.

      INTRODUCTION

      The roots of African Americans in Greenville run deep into the red soil of the Upstate and can be traced back to before the Revolutionary War, when Greenville was a wilderness. The story was told by Lydia Dishman that Virginia trader Richard Pearis brought 12 enslaved Africans with his wife and three children when he cleared about 100 acres around Reedy River Falls on land acquired from the indigenous inhabitants, the Cherokee Indians, in 1770. By the mid-1800s, Greenville was thriving. The We Are a Part . . . booklet states, this upcountry town was primarily a summer resort for rich white folks from Charleston and the Low Country. The white settlers did not come alone. Their enslaved servants traveled with them and laid the foundation for Greenville. The unwavering belief that the servants would one day be free cemented the docile and compliant relationship with their captors and fueled incredible African American achievements against the odds.

      Though Greenville was a traditional mill town, employment in manufacturing tended to be restricted to the white populace. However, in the 1870s, there were 70 African American businesses on Main Street in Greenville, including six barbershops, three retail stores, one meat market, and three restaurants, and the only brick manufacturing company in town was owned by an African American businessman. African American businesses flourished and spread to adjacent downtown streets. Thrifty and business-savvy African Americans accumulated sizable amounts of property and wealth though recently freed from bondage.

      Unfortunately, with the rise of Jim Crow and the Klan in the 1900s, African Americans lost control over the traditional barbering, hacking, and drayage industries, as well as over the downtown stores in Greenville. As the older established African Americans passed away from the scene, they were systematically replaced by whites. It was during this sad era in Greenville’s history that whites began the process of wrestling from the hands of African Americans the prized businesses and property that had been owned by African American families since the early 1800s. For instance, Joseph D. Mathis found that the Mansion House Barber Shop in Greenville had, from its founding, been operated by African Americans. However, in 1898, it began advertising that its barbers were all-white tonsorial artists, none but the first class employed.

      After the Civil War, African Americans had a burning desire to be educated. According to We Are a Part . . . , an early African American school was located in a log cabin at Jubilee Baptist Church. Many of the trailblazers in education have long been forgotten. In 1866, Charles T. Hopkins, a freedman, with the help of Lewis Rivers and Cecil Coleman, began teaching African American children in a room of a deserted hotel using his personal resources. Massalina V. Lawrence Bowens taught for 50 years at the Allen School starting in 1909. Her motto was, I am not so much a teacher as I am a reacher. I strive to reach the hearts and minds of each child with whom I come into contact. Prof. John Henry Chapman founded the Chapman Grove School under trying circumstances in the 1920s.

      Ten years after the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the federal courts finally intervened to address separate but equal public education. The courts issued an order for freedom of choice, allowing Elaine Whittenburg, L. R. Byrd, Donald Sampson Jr., and two other students to enter formerly all-white junior and senior high schools in Greenville amid much racial tension and protests. District-wide desegregation was mandated on February 17, 1970, with African American students bearing the brunt of the burden. All–African American schools that had been a bootstrap for academic excellence, leadership, character building, and service for more than five generations of African Americans in Greenville were no more.

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