The Past Is Not Over

"If They Could Make Bread by Figures"

2009-10-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

A family letter arrived last week from Potts Creek, delivered by Google Search.

A mere 139 years old, it dates barely four years after the War Between the States. It is full of family news and comments on Reconstruction-period North Carolina.

Today Potts (or Pott's) Creek meanders through the peaceful countryside of Cleveland County, North Carolina, near Kings Mountain, intersecting with US 74 (the Shelby Road) not too far from the old El Bethel Methodist cemetery burial place of the letter writer.

Nine years earlier in 1861 he had children aged six, four, and two, a pregnant wife, and a job as a mechanic, possibly at a grist or cotton mill, or even at the box manufacturing company owned by his brother. Then "Davy" Whisnant enlisted and became a Corporal in the Confederate "Cleveland Guards." By 1863, he had been wounded both at Chancellorsville (in early May) and at Gettysburg (in early July). Who knows what other action he saw.

Perhaps Gettysburg ended his soldiering days; at any event, he would be home in 1865. Another daughter was born that year, and in this January of 1870, after bragging about his one-year-old son ("the brag baby east of the Rocky Mountains"), he ironically refers to himself as "a disenfranchised rebel in all of its various moods and tenses."

Davy, the younger brother of Phillip Sellers Whisnant (grandfather of Eugene and Edna) was responding to a letter from the Collins sisters of Cherokee County, Georgia. Most likely they were his sisters-in-law, who had moved there from Cleveland County. He imparts the sad news that his oldest, Addy, aged 14, had died in September 1869 during an epidemic in the county and that typhoid was still around. [Mary Adeline Whisnant is buried near her father at El Bethel.] After listing about a dozen mutual acquaintances who had succumbed, he suggests some common remedies of the time:

"the less physic the better. Keep the bowels open moderately, drink freely of black snake root tea, cold water on the head when the fever is high and use spirits freely when the patient is in collapsed stages is about as good treatment as I can recommend; as a preventive use whiskey, garlic & gum Feotida combined.”

Davy also reports that the two oldest boys are attending school, and he would send their younger sisters, "but it is too far," probably too far to walk for five and seven-year-olds. Wightman is good at arithmetic: " that is proverbial: with the Whisnants if they could make bread by figures, they would never perish." No wonder there are so many engineers in the family!

Of his own circumstances, Davy reports he is building a new mill "as the Old one has nearly give out it may be completed so far as I am interested under the Sheriffs hammer," but he doesn't expect completion before the fall. The previous summer was dry enough that "corn is scarce with us selling at $1.25 cts per bushel, wheat from $1.50 to $2.00 per bushel."

Reporting on the rest of the county, Whisnant says,

"Field hands can be had from $8 to $12 per month. Freedman [the Freedman's Bureau] has played out - no man [or?] account is the universal cry here. They will perish here, for work they won't and steal they dare not do, for fear of the Ku Klux, who have become a terror to evil doers in this country. - Though we are cursed with high Taxes and will be until we can get a new hearing, which will be at the next election in this state. Then the carpet baggers will have to go under."

Davy also mentions emigrants' leaving by railroad for Arkansas because rail travel is so cheap ("$10 or $12 to Memphis") and predicts that the rail will be completed to Shelby that year "but may never be completed to Rutherfordton."

Three years later, David D. Whisnant would die at 47. Whether it was lingering effects of his wounds in the War or another epidemic of typhoid that took him, his self-deprecating and ironic view of life makes it seem almost like yesterday.

Family Genealogy Hunt Connects with Murder-Suicide

2009-08-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

The records of the Abernethy and Whisnant clans show hard-working, respectable, religious people. So how did one of these families become connected with a lurid murder-suicide that made the front page of the Washington Post and other newspapers across America, even though it occurred in Savannah, Georgia.

The story and its characters became one of those family skeletons that no one passed down to descendants. That its outlines can be told now shows the power of the Internet and, especially, search engines such as Google in unraveling mysteries.

This much is known.

Eugene Whisnant, older brother of Edna Whisnant Abernethy, graduated from VPI early in the 1900s and found a job as an engineer in Savannah, Georgia. There he met and courted a young woman named Katherine Kittles. During the summer of 1906, he contracted typhoid fever and returned to Charlotte, to his parents' house in the prosperous Fourth Ward. In late July or early August he was deteriorating fast, so he asked the young woman to come to Charlotte. According to newspaper accounts (in 1913), on his deathbed he asked her to marry him so that he could die knowing that she was his wife. He died five days later.

That's a very sad, romantic story with no salacious details or wrong-doing on the part of family members, so why wasn't it told? Read on.

Seven years later (in the summer of 1913) Katherine Kittles Whisnant carefully purchased cartridges for her revolver that she kept in her purse, traveled to her doctor's office with a female companion, asked the doctor to write prescriptions for her, and then shot at him six times while chasing him around the medical offices. She made sure that he was dead, laid her body across his, and shot herself in the head.

The Whisnant family evidently was so embarrassed by the coverage that the story became unmentionable. How was it found? Many years ago Eugene's younger sister, Helen, told me that the family never got over Eugene's death (that was easy to believe) and that he had a girlfriend whom she seemed to remember was Spanish but she didn't know what happened to her. She indicated the family didn't think much of her. Since Helen was old enough to remember both the deathbed marriage and the later tragedy, let's call this an obfuscation.

The story would have ended there except that in July I found Eugene's father's family Bible and flipped to see if any records were in it. Surprise: there was the marriage date of Eugene and Katherine Kittles! After it was a brief notation that Eugene died the same month. It took a Google search of her name linked with his to unearth the deathbed marriage and the 1913 events

Don't you wonder what other stories are out there?

Abernethy One of NC's First Modern Doctors

2009-05-28T07:10:00.000-07:00

The North Carolina Medical School (originally the old Presbyterian Hospital) as it appeared in Charlotte near the turn of the twentieth century.
The North Carolina Medical College as it made its first appearance on the campus of Davidson College in Davidson in the 1890s.

After World War I when returning American soldiers suffered the plague of the "Spanish" flu (as it was then called), Dr. Miles Burwell Abernethy of Reidsville, NC, was put on the U.S. Department of Health's list of physicans approved to minister on troop ships in New York harbor and elsewhere. Only doctors trained in modern medical practice were so honored. He was called to duty in New York.

Miles Burwell Abernethy first took premed courses at Davidson College under the tutelage of Dr. J.P Munroe, who advertised those classes as early as 1896, when "Burwell" (as he was called) was a farm boy of 15. Probably Dr. Munroe recruited him as an undergraduate while he was still a promising day student, living on a farm (property now under Lake Norman) in Cornelius.

After the clinical section of the Medical College moved its upper classes to Charlotte in 1902, Dr. Abernethy must have moved with it and been among its first students, as he graduated around 1905. Family descendents know why the move to Charlotte was significant for him: while he was a student in the building on West Trade Street, he met a young woman then studying music at Charlotte Female Seminary (aka Queens College) who was to become his wife in 1907.

The Medical College existed in Charlotte for a scant 11 years, but that was time enough for Dr. Abernethy to see Edna Whisnant not far from her home near the College wheeling Isaac Marshall, her much younger brother (born in 1901 when Edna was 16), in a baby carriage . He enquired after the baby's health, not knowing she wasn't the mother. And then. . .

Memorial Day in the South: Beaufort

2009-05-23T07:58:00.000-07:00

It began as a memorial to the Union dead called Decoration Day, so those from outside the South should not be surprised that only in recent years has Memorial Day been celebrated in South Carolina with any enthusiasm. After all, there still exists Confederate Memorial Day, which in South Carolina comes about 10 days earlier (May 10) and commemorates the death of Stonewall Jackson.

We can point to World War I as the war that brought North and South together on this point. According to one source, "By 1890 [Memorial Day] was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war)."

With some irony I note that my parents are buried in Beaufort National Cemetery, one of the most beautiful of these honored spots. Irony because my mother's ancestors fought for the South, and the cemetery boasts large memorials to the Union fighters. Appropriate because my father fought with the Marines at Iwo Jima and in other Pacific battles, and their grave is located at the edge of rows of Ohio troops from the Civil War.

Not long before the first celebration of Union dead in the North, Henry Timrod of Charleston wrote an "Ode on the Confederate Dead" for a day of decorating the graves of the Confederate soldiers buried in Magnolia Cemetery on the Charleston Neck. One line sticks in my mind: "Sleep sweetly in your humble graves."

Shoot Down a Satellite? Reagan Would Smile

2008-02-15T18:04:00.001-08:00

It was the craziest idea proposed by that crazy, right-wing president, Ronald Reagan. Star Wars--its very name suggesting a pie-in-the-sky attitude towards its effectiveness. Surely I'm not the only person who remembers the barrage of mocking, negative comments about this proposal?

Yet here we are in 2008, somehow grateful that we may be able to shoot down a satellite that could cause problems--with just that technology, or I should say, an advanced version of that idea!

Have you heard the mass media mention (or, heaven forbid, thank) Reagan for pushing his vision? Down the memory hole. The fact remains that the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)--whose initials have changed several times in the last 20 years--was proposed by Reagan in March 1983.

You Don't Have to Be a Tree Hugger

2008-01-26T17:57:00.000-08:00

What makes Charleston and its environs more beautiful than practically anywhere else on earth? [Hint: it's not its lovely, painstakingly-restored 19th-century houses, found only in relatively small areas.]

On either side of the entrance to my home just outside of Corpus Christi, Texas, stood two small but healthy trees. There among the mesquite and palms the species looked vaguely familiar, so I had to ask.

Well, yes, they were stunted versions of the gloriously full-size and moss-draped live oaks I knew from the Lowcountry. Corpus reminded me of Charleston in many ways--a Naval Base, beautiful beaches--but it lacked large trees, thanks to its semi-arid climate.

What a difference those trees can make!

So when I hear about hundreds of trees being cut down in "buffer zones," even if it's in Berkeley County, I fear for Charleston's future. As reported Saturday in the Post and Courier [see Felled trees net man 110 tickets] , so do others: "[Berkeley] County officials say clear-cutting has become a widespread problem; developers can cut down 100-year-old live oaks on their property without penalty. The article suggests that "Charleston County, which has a tree removal ordinance, also is grappling with the problem."

Some of us are old enough to remember when the "Savannah Highway" near its intersection with Wappoo Road was lined on both sides with those grand oaks. We can remember the heavy equipment moving in to remove them and the locals who said nothing could be done to stop their removal. We can remember the appalling raw look when they were gone. Many of us have never gotten over it.

Yes, old houses can be beautiful, but even a run-down shack surrounded by gorgeous live oaks partakes a little of heaven. I learned that in Corpus Christi, where a run-down shack was just, well, a run-down shack.

Prell Shampoo and the $19 Conditioner

2008-01-19T17:52:00.000-08:00

If you admit to remembering Prell as the leading shampoo along with Breck, you date yourself. You even understand references to John Edwards as the "Breck girl."

Last week I was reminded of Prell for the first time in years as I watched one of those morning talk shows that purported to show how to save money in the New Year. I don't remember how much Prell cost, except that it cost more than the other brands my mother wanted me to use. It did produce better results. Whether they were better than results from today's heavily researched and promoted products, I have no idea.

What stuck in my mind about the program, however, was not the cost of Prell. The two women advised buying a cheaper shampoo and a more expensive conditioner. Needless to say, what they considered cheap was what I considered expensive. Their advice was to purchase shampoo that cost only about $4 per bottle and conditioner that cost only about $19 per bottle (as opposed to those expensive ones!).

I had already discovered the advantage of purchasing the cheaper shampoo and more expensive conditioner, just in a different price range. Yes, my advice, for what it's worth, is to go with the $1 or less bottle of shampoo and the $4 bottle of conditioner. That's $5 as compared to $23 per supply. Of course, with BOGO and coupons, I never pay as much as $5.

Those women need to get out more. Come to think of it, on their salaries it doesn't matter!

Well, Golly! Everything Old Is New Again

2008-01-16T17:37:00.000-08:00

Flash!! Stop the presses--or is that computers? We have incoming news of startling import. . . [drum roll, please]:

Professional educators have discovered single-sex education!

What, you say. How can that be?

Apparently, when they have tried everything else that doesn't work, they occasionally go back into the dim, dark recesses of the past and discover something that did! Amazing.

So we are treated to headlines such as "Federal Rules Back Single-Sex Public Education" in the New York Times and to an editorial on "Single-Sex Education" in the Washington Times, and, to top it all off, a survey reported by the SC Department of Education "Students say single-gender classrooms boost self-confidence, ability to succeed"

Well, duh.

The Twelve Days of Christmas? Over

2008-01-03T15:24:00.001-08:00

Christmas ends with Epiphany, January 6th. Those of us who decline to put up our Christmas trees at the beginning of Advent and choose to leave them up until after New Year's to celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas have become the minority in a commercial and secular holiday season.

How many trees are out on the curb on December 26th? Count them next year. They're a measure of what's gone wrong with the celebration of Christ's birth.

The Blizzard of 1950: Time to Head South!

2007-12-18T16:42:00.001-08:00

Now, this looks just like what I remember of the winter of 1950 east of Cleveland, Ohio.

My father had to cut through the screen door of the kitchen to hollow out the snow that had banked six feet high and prevented the door from being opened.

We (the neighborhood kids in Euclid) made snow igloos and tunnels that lasted until spring. Snowball fights? Are you kidding? Sledding? You betcha.

Nothing moved on the road for days. No school. Food ran low and neighbors shared. The milkman finally appeared and we were able to buy milk and bread.

My father dropped his glasses next to the car in the snow and didn't find them until spring. There was no way to get to work.

My mother said it was time to head back south of the Mason-Dixon line. We left that summer.

According to one history of Cleveland,

The 5-day 1950 Thanksgiving blizzard began when an arctic air mass lowered temperatures to 7 degrees. The next day, 24 Nov., low pressure from Virginia moved into Ohio, causing a blizzard with high winds and heavy snow which closed the airport. Mayor Thomas Burke called for the National Guard and mobilized snow removal equipment to clear the 22.1" of snow brought by the storm; however, snow drifts and over 10,000 abandoned cars blocked the effort.

Burke declared a state of emergency, banned unnecessary travel, and later asked downtown businesses to stagger hours to reduce transit burdens. Nonessential cars were banned downtown. The storm weakened on Monday, but most area schools closed. The storm ended, and all guardsmen were dismissed by Wednesday, but Cleveland schools remained closed all week to keep children off transit lines. The auto ban lasted until the last CTS line reopened on Saturday; while parking problems remained, police no longer monitored traffic. Normal conditions returned as the temperature hit 53 degrees. The storm had paralyzed the area for a week and cost over $1 million and 23 lives.

If Not for Pearl Harbor, I Wouldn't Be Here

2007-12-07T19:21:00.000-08:00

Strange to imagine the scene on December 8th.

My 20-year-old father, Al Stone, sits in a classroom at Cleveland College (now part of Case Western Reserve) as the professor turns up the radio to broadcast FDR's famous "Day of Infamy" speech. He and most of his classmates head for enlistment as soon as possible. The Army Air Corps rejects him for his eyesight. His father says the only real men are in the Marines anyway.

South to Parris Island, then to Camp Lejune, the USO, and a first-year high school teacher with red hair and the last name of Abernethy. Voila.

How many more thousands of World War II stories are like this?

Seattle's School District's Turkey of a Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T10:22:00.000-08:00

The Seattle school district's letter to teachers about the "mourning" of Native Americans on Thanksgiving Day [posted all over the blogosphere] should make Charlestonians thankful not to live there. Its writers should be required to read Mayflower, an accurate history of the Pilgrims and their "city on a hill" at Plymouth.

It turns out that the area that the Pilgrims settled had been a large settlement a few years before with productive fields cultivated by Indians, yes. However, when Bradford and his congregation landed there in 1620, the settlement was completely gone and the land was empty--with scattered bones suggesting a holocaust of sorts, not by Pilgrims or other Indians but by, as we know now, epidemic.

Now, one could argue that epidemics that wiped out Indian villages along the coast were brought by Europeans. Probably true. Those would originate with explorers, fishermen, and trappers who frequented the coast beginning shortly after Columbus's discovery of the New World. There is no way that contamination could that have been avoided once the rest of the world knew the land was there, especially when they didn't even realize they were bringing new diseases and germs.

In fact, another recent (if controversial in its conclusions) book called 1491 makes the case that the Americas were heavily populated prior to Columbus's discovery and that the Indians of both North and South America were both genetically and environmentally susceptible to the diseases brought in by newcomers. If so, this was a holocaust waiting to happen.

As it was, the Pilgrims, after their persecution in England, just wanted to be separate, and the empty land near Plymouth Rock fit their purposes. Squanto, they believed, was sent by God to help them. Farther south and a few years earlier, John Smith, far from being racist, wanted to promote alliances with the Indians in Virginia by intermarriage--one epitomized by the marriage of John Rolfe, made wealthy by his discovery of tobacco as a cash crop, and Pocahontas, daughter of the area's most important chieftan.

Yes, later Indians were mistreated, but let's not blame it on William Bradford. His intentions were for the "city on a hill" to enlighten the rest of the world. Some of us would like to believe that legacy still survives.

Lest We Forget--Family Veterans

2007-11-11T18:47:00.001-08:00

Lest we forget, especially family members who have served: husbands, fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, who-knows-how many-great-grandfathers--we salute you.

St. Andrew's? What's That?

2007-11-01T19:21:00.000-07:00

On All Saints' Day I cannot help but be reminded of a well-known song that I do not associate with the day itself:

Oh, when the saints go marching in
Oh, when the saints go marching in
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in

What better song for a high school football team?

Once upon a time a public high school in Charleston County went by the confusing name of St. Andrew's Parish High School. Now that same area is saddled with a high school with the santized name of West Ashley.

Why this desire to discard local history in a city where so much effort is put into preserving local buildings? Why, even Byrnes Downs (named after a former governor and erroneously identified around town as "Byrnes Down") has become the subject of preservation!

Did it become too burdensome for St. Andrews' graduates to explain that they did not graduate from a Catholic high school? Was the Charleston County School District making sure that non-Episcopalians would not suffer the slings and arrows of Anglicanism that the school's name suggested? Or was CCSD ignorant too?

Probably only a small percentage of the area's residents realize that they live in one of the earliest Church of England parishes of the colonies, or even that the Lowcountry was originally divided into parishes, or even that Anglicanism was the official religion of the colony of South Carolina. It's history, too.

Also, the school's ring, apart from using St. Andrew's cross, featured a carving of a crossed pick and shovel. No, it did not purport to be educating ditch-diggers; the school was built on the site of an old phosphate mine. There were phosphate mines all over the area, in fact.

Oh, yes--THAT's why it's called Ashley PHOSPHATE Road!

"West Ashley"? Small wonder, despite its size, it's a pale shadow of the original in terms of education. Next thing you know, they'll take the "St. Andrew's" out of St. Andrew's Elementary.

I know. They can use the Russian solution--as done to St. Petersburg in Russia--change it to "Andrew's Elementary." Even better, name it after a local school board member. That should be memorable.

Taiwan Is Where?

2007-10-24T19:13:00.000-07:00

My high school students love puns. Daily I put one on the board for them to solve. Yes, they probably cause minds to stray from the topic at hand, but I find they are also educational in surprising ways--as well as responsible for getting a dictionary or thesaurus into a student's hands spontaneously. Thanks to many "punny" websites, I have a ready supply.

Today's pun (paraphrased):

When you get a blood transfusion in Taiwan, you expect to get ____ blood.

Some students got it immediately. Others needed a hint, so I suggested they go up to the map and look at Taiwan for hints.

The response (from at least two students)? "But I don't know where Taiwan is!"

What a lack of modern history is revealed by that comment, apart from lack of geography! Some did know the slogan "Made in Taiwan" but didn't connect it with all the stories about Chinese goods.

P.S. The answer is "Taipei" [Type A]--groan. So today they learned that Taiwan is off the coast of China and what its capital is. Not bad for English class.

My father would be proud. He used to drive me crazy with puns at the dinner table.

Another State Entirely

2007-10-21T19:29:00.000-07:00

"Greenville? Isn't it in North Carolina?" So spoke a student of AP US History on the return from Greenville to Charleston last weekend.

Where will this ignorance leave America, or South Carolina, for that matter? A friend has suggested that it results from the decline of memorization in education.

So when this student reads that Charleston is competing with Greenville for industry, will she think that we're competing with North Carolina?

Those in their sixties or over (or those who have gone through the rigorous geography course at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown) can orient themselves reasonably well in the world. What will happen to the American experiment when all that's left are those who couldn't find Chicago on a map? who wonder why we have time zones and if it's earlier or later in London? can't understand why Japan would be concerned about China? Wonder if the inhabitants of Iran are Hindu? I could continue, but it's just too demoralizing.

Help!

Geography of Old London-Town

2007-09-28T19:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel like Jay Leno himself, "Jay-Walking" when I ask questions of students. Even though I try to grab every opportunity to point out the location of whatever we're reading about, I know I can't catch every misunderstanding.

Still, I wasn't happy today to learn that a former student apparently believes that London is a country.

I hope she's not planning to enter any beauty contests.

Proving My Point About Geography

2007-08-28T19:07:00.000-07:00

Can't find the United States on a map? What a surprise. Not.

Last April I worried about the geographical ignorance of high school students today. [See Friday, April 20, 2007: Could They Find Baffin Bay? ] I still do. For example, today my sophomores couldn't tell me what country lies east of Israel. I clarified that Jordan is Moslem, just in case.

This week Miss Teen USA South Carolina's flustered utterances saturate news, talk, and internet. To what end? So that all can gloat over the proto-typical "dumb blonde"? So that the rest of us can feel that our 18-year-old selves wouldn't have suffered a meltdown in those circumstances?

Although South Carolina's schools have many shortcomings, let the girl's high school share the blame with whoever coached this young woman prior to the contest. Clearly she was told that, whatever the question, she should try to sound familiar with world events. Thus her peculiar references to South Africa and Iraq.

Lost in the shuffle is the original statistic. Tell me, how can voters decide what should be done in Iraq and Iran when they don't even know where the United States is? What do we do, hope they don't vote?

George Washington, All-American

2007-07-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

A recent visit to the Northern Neck of Virginia turned up interesting facts related to George Washington's desire to be considered "American" and not as the descendent of landed Englishmen. The site was George Washington's birthplace near the Potomac (and only seven miles from the birthplace of another famous Virginian, Robert E. Lee!).

Nothing remains of the original plantation except the site, but the site itself is of interest. It seems that the Washingtons managed to carve out for themselves a plantation containing the only level land with access to the Potomac River for miles. Hence, the access for shipping and receiving goods by other landowners was controlled by the Washingtons. How enterprising! How American!

Interestingly, George's original immigrant ancestor left England to escape Cromwell, an action that puts him with the Cavaliers, supporters of the king.

Now, that's irony.

Jaywalking Through History

2007-07-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

Let me first state that I really don't like the Jay Leno show. I have never been a fan of late night shows, even those dating back to Johnny Carson--too much smut and innuendo for my taste. Nevertheless, thanks to my husband's viewing habits, I do occasionally see one of Leno's favorite stunts--what he calls "Jaywalking."

These sidewalk question-and-answer interviews can be painful to watch, especially when college students or teachers cannot answer the simplest of questions, but one recent broadcast practically symbolized what has happened in education in the last 40 years. Leno stopped a middle-class family visiting what appeared to be Universal Studios in California. The night's questions were about the American Revolution--simple ones such as what was the last name of the woman named Betsy who sewed the flag, why did her flag have 13 stripes, what year was independence declared, and what country were the Americans fighting.

I don't need to tell you that the family's two average, clean-cut teenagers couldn't answer these questions, do I?

Their parents, who appeared to be in their mid- to late- forties couldn't answer them either.

However, their GRANDFATHER, who appeared to be in his late sixties or maybe 70, answered every question correctly. I would bet that he probably has fewer years of schooling than his children do, since that would be typical of most families.

This IS discouraging, isn't it?

Unfortunately, this educational demographic cuts across all racial and ethnic backgrounds. This middle-class family just happened to be African-American.

Langston Hughes: Coming of Age In America

2007-06-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

Most know Langston Hughes as a poet, but those of you who have not read his prose are missing something. My North-Carolina-born-and-raised mother would easily recognize the world of Langston Hughes's first novel, Not Without Laughter, published in 1930. Yet his fictional setting is based on Lawrence, Kansas, just prior to World War I, and hers was Piedmont North Carolina just after it.

The similarities in black-white relationships are also remarkable, the only exception being Kansas's integrated schools. Not only that, but many of Hughes's believable and well-developed characters, with all their strengths and weaknesses, even seem to share characteristics with whites straight out of Faulkner's novels of the same time period.

The protagonist's aunt runs away with a traveling carnival and follows the same trajectory as Caddy in The Sound and the Fury. Another aunt is so desirous of social status that she becomes an Episcopalian and refuses to eat watermelon; think Snopes.

Are these similarities because it IS the same time period, even if Faulkner writes of northern Mississippi? Or because Hughes wished to reach a white audience as well as a black one with this first novel? Or maybe both of them are writing stories that are identified as black or white but simply mirror the human condition of the time.

I'd like to believe the latter.

Strangely enough, Hughes's characters also mirror the human condition of the 21st century. But then a good novel never loses its relevance.

Arthur Conan Doyle Does Mormonism

2007-06-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

What could be more exotic for the British reading public than the Mormons contained in Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, the first of the famous series with Sherlock Holmes? And what American would predict that Mormons would figure prominently in this work?

Published in 1887 and supposedly taking place in 1881, this portrait of Mormons is a bloody and ruthless one. In fact, it reminds me of recent fictional portraits of wild-eyed evangelical sects or cults, Jim Jones, or the shootout at Waco. The long second section is a flashback to the American West providing a background to two murders committed in London that seems to justify killing exaggeratedly wild-eyed and vindictive polygamists--to the point that Holmes in later years wrote an apology to the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

Polls suggest that some Americans would never vote for a Mormon. According to a column by commentator Mark Shields,

In 2006, the Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times Poll asked, "Just thinking about a candidates' religion, could you vote for a (Jewish/Catholic/Mormon) for president, or not?" Fourteen percent of registered voters admitted they could not vote for a Jewish nominee for the White House, and 9 percent revealed a similar objection to a Catholic. But a full 35 percent of registered voters said they "could not vote for a Mormon candidate."

Remarkable, really. I could understand if they said they couldn't vote for a Muslim, but a Mormon?

Is the sensationalism of 19th- and 20th-century novelists still affecting 21st-century Americans? Are the media somehow perpetuating stereotypes?

Can the national campaign of Mitt Romney overcome such prejudice? What about the high profile of Harry Reid? Does the public even realize he's a Mormon?

Again, the past isn't dead, is it?

Planting for the Future

2007-06-03T11:07:00.000-07:00

About forty years ago a person I have never met planted these hydrangeas in my back yard. Ever since, despite a little benign neglect, they have bloomed profusely come rain or shine.

For most of what we planted forty years ago ourselves, we will never know what pleasure (or pain) it might be granting others today. And I'm not thinking just about plants!

Could They Find Baffin Bay?

2007-04-20T19:39:00.000-07:00

Why do particular memories stick so vividly? Usually they are associated with some strong emotion, I suppose, but that emotion is not always obvious in retrospect.

From the years and months and days I spent in elementary and high school, I vividly remember a textbook illustration from Stephen Vincent Benet's "By the Waters of Babylon"; the moment the light dawned (in my head) in geometry class as buzz saws cut down trees outside; and a second-grade pilgrimage to the roof of Upson School in Euclid, Ohio, to see silhouettes made by objects on our sun-sensitive paper.

Another vivid vignette comes from fourth-grade geography, the only geography course I ever had. I can't remember the name of the fictitious Inuit boy now, although I carried it around with me for decades. (Of course, he was an Eskimo then.) I can still visualize the geography book, the wall map showing Baffin Bay, and the classroom's wooden floor and desks and practically smell the chalk dust. I have no idea why I remember.

How important is geography? Apparently not all, if you look at statistics, such as how many geography majors our universities produce, how many geography courses high school students take, and how many ordinary people understand time zones or know whether Atlanta fronts the coast.

I will admit I'm a largely self-taught (and lectured by my expert husband) convert to geography. In high school I don't believe I fully appreciated that geography is more than the four points of the compass. But, of course, as we realize today, knowing where to locate the world's oil and coal reserves or which countries are largely Muslim IS important.

The hiliarious answers to Jay Leno's sidewalk quizzes do represent American ignorance on this topic. I'm reminded every day as I teach.

Last week a junior told me confidently that Jamaican natives speak French. In the past few months I have been treated to the ideas that Pakistan is mostly Buddhist and that Switzerland is a Scandinavian country. For several painful minutes another junior could not find Chicago on a map of the United States. Another student thought that Louisiana was in the Midwest.

Several years ago when I taught not five miles from the Hudson, my class of honors sophomores could not tell me what river separated New York and New Jersey. Another class of mixed-level honors students here in South Carolina surprised me by sneaking to the map of the United States to see whether Boston is north of New York City (at least they looked). Others have been shocked to find out that there's oil in Nigeria.

This generation has more information at its fingertips that imaginable even five years ago, and, yet, knows less than any preceding generation. Why?

Two obvious culprits are lack of reading, even the reading of newspapers and magazines, and lack of dinnertable conversation. Schools can do very little to change those dynamics.

But social studies killed geography. At least that's my theory. In most middle schools students do not (horrors!) memorize facts because memorization is boring and old-fashioned. Educators (notice I don't call them teachers) theorize that facts can always be looked up. Sometimes they can, but if students have no knowledge in their heads to build upon, they cannot make the creative connections needed "to think globally."

Those who worry about the ice caps' melting--could they find Baffin Bay?

I'm Not Alone: Letters on "Song of the South"

2007-04-10T07:18:00.000-07:00

Check the Post and Courier from Tuesday, April 10th, for two letters to the editor from those who also believe that Song of the South should not be singled out as a supposed corrupting influence.

http://www.charleston.net/assets/webPages/departmental/news/Stories.aspx?section=letters&tableId=138222&pubDate=4/10/2007

The Melody Lingers On

2007-03-31T18:45:00.000-07:00

Who has not heard of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby?

In recent months three national politicians have gotten into semantic trouble by referring to the "tar baby": that would be (1) Governor Mark Sanford, of Florida and South Carolina; (2) Senator John McCain of Arizona; and (3) Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Utah. It's not exactly a Southern idiom!

In fact, Robert Roosevelt, wealthy New York politician and uncle of Teddy, made the first effort to publicize the Brer Rabbit tales in Harper's late in the nineteenth century by transcribing stories told by his Georgian aunts. However, Joel Chandler Harris, illegitimate child of poor white Georgia, invented the Uncle Remus who first appeared in print in the Atlanta newspaper 1880, producing for himself a successful writing career. In each case the stories were told originally by Georgian slaves, although some suggest that the sea islands' Gullah culture also has tales of "Buh Rabbit."
By 1946 these African-based tales were famous enough that Walt Disney released his cutting-edge (technologically-speaking) Song of the South. Then the tales written by Harris became even more well known, if possible, after fifty years on the bookshelves of children all over the world. The next year the U.S. Postal System released a stamp in honor of Harris.

Sixty years later we are shoving this shared past under the rug like a broken vase. Thus, not only can't Song of the South be shown in theaters, it can't be released on video! Joel Chandler Harris, who once was as popular as Mark Twain (his friend), has been excised from American literature textbooks, even in discussions of local-color writers. It's a somewhat ironic twist of history that Harris was "progressive" in his day in regard to race relations!

No one can deny that the world of Uncle Remus had become fully ingrained in American (and, I suspect, world) culture by 1946, else why would Disney take these tales from the post-Civil War years and make them into a movie? Not even I am old enough to have seen the picture in 1946, but I did after its re-release in 1956. Who can forget "Zip-a-Dee-do-da"? It became a hit, sung by Bing Crosby, no less.

The major objections to the film seem to be its depiction of the "myth of the happy slave" and the impression that the tales originated with Harris. In the first case, I must ask, what about Gone with the Wind? It clearly shows more of these characteristics in its depictions of the slaves owned by the fictional O'Hara family. Years ago I was amazed to find it the favorite movie of a recent Chinese immigrant I taught in New Jersey. It enjoys world-wide distribution even today.

In regard to the second objection, I don't believe that Harris ever said that the tales were his. It is fairly clear that he based the figure of Uncle Remus on people that he knew. Marcus Cox, of the Citadel's African-American Studies program, has suggested that under the proper conditions "the film could be a valuable teaching tool."

I must query State Sen. Robert Ford, who has said "he would expect widespread controversy and calls for Disney's top officials to step down" if Disney changes its policy. Would it not be educational to SEE what stereotypes are in the film? Is our progress on the racial front so tenuous that seeing it would change the ways in which we view each other?

The Rev. Joseph A. Darby, pastor of an influencial AME church and officer in the Charleston NAACP is quoted in the Post and Courier saying that, "American history has to be treated gingerly."

I must respectfully disagree. It needs to be confronted because it is still with us. We need to know our history.

Lee's Traveller and John Murtha's Great-Grandfather

2007-03-28T17:18:00.000-07:00

The floor is scuffed and wooden, as are the desks lined up in neat rows facing the blackboard. Above it hangs a large painting of Robert E. Lee standing next to his horse Traveller. Not the one here, I think, for no battle flag was in evidence. Perhaps other pictures dotted the faded walls, but none sticks so well in my memory.

In this second-floor classroom of old St. Andrews Parish High School on the site of an even older phosphate mine, Miss Seabrook conducted homeroom with daily Bible readings by students and taught United States history to a mixed group of new suburbanites and old farmers' kids ("dungarees" were banned in honor of the latter), all white, mostly children of the South, most with English last names.

That was nearly half a century ago. Even then Traveller had long ago gone to his final rest (with a commemorative plaque) at Washington and Lee University, and most history teachers cared little about his existence.

This is my past, but it is Charleston's past also. And the past of America. And it's not over.

Take the case of Rep. John Murtha of western Pennsylvania. He recently extolled his great-grandfather's service and loss of an arm for the Union cause, calling that Civil-War experience a source of his inspiration before Congress in debate and again to Chris Matthews on Hardball (March 23rd).

Matthews seemed genuinely shocked that Murtha had a great-grandfather in the Civil War! Please, Chris. How many other hundreds of thousands are alive today whose great-grandfathers served in that same war?

My teenage maternal great-grandfather, captured at the Battle of Gettysburg, spend the remainder of the war at the notorious Point Lookout, Maryland, prisoner-of-war camp. When the war was over, he walked (yes, just like in the movie) all the way home to Charlotte. On my wall hangs his photograph with my Aunt Jane (a two-year-old) on his knee. He seems to be wistfully looking out a window.

I wonder sometimes about his memories. I think he would have liked to see Lee and Traveller on the wall.

The Past: Always With Us

2007-03-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

Posts on The Newsless Courier recently have validated my decision to explore the ramifications of the past into the present--for myself, for my family, for Charleston (where I grew up), for South Carolina, and for my country.

Most people are more familiar with George Santayana's quote, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it," as a quick Google search will reveal. However, a search will also reveal New York Times reporter Bob Herbert's familiarity with Faulkner: see "Slavery Isn't Dead. It Isn't Even Past" in the Times March 1st issue regarding Al Sharpton's discovery of his link to Strom Thurmond.

I'm confident that Sharpton, though he's not one of my favorite people, would agree that the past is indeed alive for him.

Southerners have always been accused of living too much in the past, but maybe we have some insight there!