Contradiction: The Controversies of the Joy and Pain of Living in South Carolina

By Lornabelle Gethers

This picturesque book, Contradiction: The Controversies of the Joy and Pain of Living in South Carolina, deals with the tragic events and the elements of racism that happened in Charleston and North Charleston during the year 2015 as she attempts to give a birds-eye view into this as well as the history of the racism of decades and even centuries. It is the authors hope that by bringing more light to this subject, all will work harder to resolve racial issues so that something as tragic as what happened at the Emanuel AME Church, where someone just randomly chose to massacre a group based solely on their race, will never happen again. She also gives a small sample of the joy of South Carolina by sharing poetry dedicated to her heritage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514472088

Lornabelle Gethers

Lornabelle Gethers is an author, poet, and Gullah Geechee speaker from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Her two previous books, Honey Bea’s Everlasting Gift and Honey Bea’s Gullah Stew Fuh De Spirit, both honor the Gullah Geechee culture of the Charleston Lowcountry as well as her parents and other ancestors going back as far as the day they were emancipated from slavery on a plantation in upstate Abbeville, South Carolina.

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Bible Citation

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ALL POETRY IN THIS BOOK WERE WRITTEN BY AUTHOR, LORNABELLE GETHERS OF MOUNT PLEASANT, SC.

Copyright © 2016 by Lornabelle Gethers. 731622

ISBN:   Softcover       978-1-5144-7207-1

              EBook           978-1-5144-7208-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 03/19/2016

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Reverend Senator Clementa Pinckney

The Outcome of the Civil War

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

THE CHARLESTON HEROES OF 2015

The Letter: By Charleston Civic and Community Leader, Linda Ketner

Legacy of the War Starting State-The Race War

Why Black Lives Matter

The Pain of 2015

No More Lying to the Races

Mrs. Mamie Julia Lewis Rearden

Kelly Said That She is Going to Be a Racist

The Joy of Living in South Carolina

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FEATURING PHOTOS OF THE VARIOUS PEOPLE OF THE CITY OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA. IT IS LORNABELLE’S HOPE THAT OTHERS WILL BE ENLIGHTED AND THAT OUT OF THIS WILL COME MORE DISCUSSIONS TO FIND SOLUTIONS TO END RACISM. SHE IS ALSO WORKING ON A PROCLAMATION WHICH WOULD CALL FOR DECORATION DAY TO BE CELEBRATED ANNUALLY ON THE LAST SATURDAY IN THE MONTH OF MAY AT HAMPTON PARK IN CHARLESTON AS IT WAS CELEBRATED BY THE NEWLY FREED FORMER SLAVES IN MAY OF 1865 AS A MEMORIAL DAY TO HONOR THOSE WHO HAD FOUGHT FOR FREEDOM.

Make us glad according to the days in which you have afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. – Psalm 90:15- New King James.

(A Gullah Geechee Poem of Praise)

I gee God all the praises jess fuh one more day. I gee him all the tenks more than my words could ever say. Ee breng me tru danger, many seen and unseen. Ee get me from dirt and ee make me fuh be clean. Ee pick me up out the muck and miry clay. I gee him all the tenks more than my words could ever say. If I had ten thousand tongues, I couldn’t praise him enough. Ee smooth out them days that use fuh be so rough. Lord look where ee done breng me from. I gah praise him from now till kingdom come. When I tink of ee goodness and all ee breng me tru. I sing hallelujah cause ee all feel brand new.

Love to you Father God. I feel your presence daily and I thank you for allowing me to feel my ancestors through the heritage that you have given to me through them. Through that heritage they have passed down a hunger and a thirst for my own history, as well as a desire for social change and equality for all. I hear my ancestors’ voices through the soulful songs of gospel as well as Sam Cooke’s A Change is Going to Come, Common and John Legend’s Glory, and more recently, I have felt their pain through Pharell Williams Freedom.

I dedicate this book to those who are trying to make a difference to right the wrong that have been done to so many through racism and social injustice. May others be enlightened and may they learn to love their neighbors as they love themselves once concluding that every human is to be considered their neighbor and justly worthy of that love.

INTRODUCTION

I was born and bred in the Charleston Lowcountry area of South Carolina in the town of Mount Pleasant. I have joy in the city of Charleston and I especially love the area of my home town of Mount Pleasant. I am rejuvenated daily by the beauty of this place when it comes to the lovely beaches, the peaceful rivers, and the other scenic areas like the parks such as Alhambra Park and Hampton Park and even the historic places of Fort Sumter and the Battery. And very few cities have restaurants that come even close to the great taste of those that we have right here. Also, I love the Gullah Geechee Heritage that is a large part of the culture here and the fact that Mount Pleasant is the home of the Sweetgrass basket, in which there is a direct link to West Africa. I find joy and peace as well as a connection in the fact that this is a place where we have been able to hold on to much of that motherland’s culture. This beautiful, loving place is what I call home. I have lived here practically all of my life and I can’t really say that I have had more than one in your face acts of racism personally in my many years.

Some say that the city of Charleston is quite different from the rest of the state when it comes to overt racism because it is overrun with Democratic Yankees that some from the upstate still to this day, sometimes call, carpetbaggers.

I’m not too sure about all of that, but I do know that starting in 1975 during my youth, a Democratic Mayor, Joseph Riley was elected in Charleston and he had remained for forty years until he chose to retire in 2015. Mayor Riley had also at one time elected a Black police chief several years ago and I still remember when the mayor marched with me and thousands other in 2000 in an attempt to have the confederate flag removed from the Statehouse in the capital in Columbia.

Starting from North Charleston, and going upwards through Summerville, Moncks Corner and beyond, there is a completely different story when it comes to race relations. In many parts of this state, racism runs rampant, but I guess that I really didn’t know that quite as much in recent years as I did until the year 2015. That was the year that racism literally slapped so many of us in this state right smack dab, in the middle of our faces.

It should almost go without saying that I can love anyone regardless of color or nationality and that I have friends as well as family members of various races and nationalities as I live in a very diverse world in today’s society. It is my hope that this would now be the norm for everyone.

In creating this hodge-podge collection into a book, I am hoping to open a dialogue about a very volatile subject and that it will also help to bring about social change and justice equally for everyone. That subject is racism.

I already know, that because I am even discussing racism, there are some who are going to call me something that I do not even have the capability of being, and that is a racist.

It is my hope that more will become understanding of those who have been afflicted and who have not had a fair shake at even something as simple as just living. I also want those to know that suppression, segregation, and white supremacy are what has made groups like the NAACP through-out history a necessity and not a means to further separate or segregate, as well as the recent group, Black Lives Matter. These are not hate groups. They are love groups. It was out of a love for human equality and for social change and social justice in an unfair society that they were even birthed.

As a self-proclaimed student of Black History and especially that of South Carolina’s Black History, I am very familiar with the unfairness of racism and the heritage of slavery and white supremacy that has been embedded into the very fabric of this state. I know that some of the most stanch racist and separatist such as John C. Calhoun during the slavery era, Ben Tillman during the supposedly Reconstruction Era, and even in more recent years, Strom Thurmond during the Civil Rights era all came from the upper parts of this state.

And they of course were not the only ones who were die hard in their beliefs that the role of the Negro should either not be one of citizenship at all or only one that was of a second class citizen at best.

South Carolina has always been a state that rarely did anything on its own to thwart racism or separatism without intervention from the federal government and even then most would go down screaming and kicking.

Centuries ago, it was a representative from here was one of the main persons to decide that black people should not be listed on the census by name during slavery because it