Standing on Holy Ground: A Triumph over Hate Crime in the Deep South
352
Standing on Holy Ground: A Triumph over Hate Crime in the Deep South
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Overview
A sweeping epidemic of hate crime targeted over one hundred Southern Black Churches between 1995 and 1996, leaving them in charred ruins. St. John Baptist Church in Dixiana, South Carolina, was one of the first destroyed. This small, isolated church had faced dark times before. It had been viciously desecrated in 1985 and withstood more attacks until it was burned down in August 1995.
From the beginning, two friends--a white woman named Ammie Murray, and a black woman named Barbara Simmons--rallied volunteers to rebuild the historic St. John. Much to their amazement, hundreds of people from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds responded to their call for help. They refused to stop rebuilding the church-despite repeated attempts on Ammie and Barbara's lives and relentless attacks on the church. Soon, these two heroic women joined the leaders and congregations from two other burned, black churches-Macedonia Baptist and Mt. Zion AME-in leading the nation in a courageous battle against hate crime in the deep South.
Beautifully rendered with warmth and grace, this inspiring story of enduring friendship, reconciliation, spiritual strength, and hope shows us how we can triumph over racial hatred.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429975957 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/16/2002 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| File size: | 341 KB |
About the Author
Sandra E. Johnson is a regular guest columnist for The State, South Carolina's largest newspaper. Her work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Transitions Abroad, and Columbia Metropolitan magazine. She lives in Columbia, South Carolina about twenty miles from St. John Baptist Church, and participated in its rebuilding.
Read an Excerpt
Standing on Holy Ground
A Triumph Over Hate Crime in the Deep South
By Sandra E. Johnson
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2002 Sandra E. JohnsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-7595-7
CHAPTER 1
Silent Tongue
The morning of January 2, 1985, started out ordinarily enough for Ammie as she maneuvered her Topaz sedan into its customary parking space behind the small office building where she worked. Winter's chill made the air crisp and glittered the ground with frost. She looked forward to getting into the office and finding out how her close friend and coworker, Barbara Simmons, had enjoyed the holidays.
Gathering her purse and briefcase, she thought back to the day seven years earlier when she first met Barbara. The shy, full-figured African-American woman had come into Ammie's office looking for a job. With large, golden hoop earrings that swayed in cadence with her words, Barbara said, "Joanne Helms is a friend, and she told me you may need some help over here."
Indeed, Ammie had mentioned to their common acquaintance, who ran a store and restaurant where Barbara worked part-time, that work was running her ragged. In a man's world of labor-union organizing, she was the business manager for a laborers' union and office manager for an ironworkers' union. She loved working for the two unions, which shared an office across the bridge from downtown Columbia. However, between her career, a recent marriage, raising two teenage daughters from her first marriage, maintaining a home, and being active in Democratic Party events, she was barely keeping up.
Ammie explained to Barbara that Charles Murray, who headed the union, needed to be consulted before any hiring decisions were made. As they continued to talk, Ammie guessed that Barbara, at best, only had a high school education, but there was something about her easy smile, warm openness, and shy but determined manner that Ammie liked. She hired her on the spot, doubting that Charles would take issue with her spontaneous decision. After all, in addition to being president of the union, he was also her husband.
Barbara came in each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. In the beginning, she mainly cleaned the offices, but as time passed, Ammie taught her how to type, file, and help out with other clerical tasks.
The two women often had the place to themselves, and it was during those quiet periods that they opened up to each other about their lives. A strong friendship soon replaced what had been only a business relationship — though Barbara insisted on calling her Miss Ammie, no matter how many times Ammie asked her to drop the "Miss." As far as she was concerned, she and Barbara were equals, regardless of the differences in their racial, educational, and economic backgrounds.
They shared an admiration for Mary Modjeska Monteith Simkins, an African-American octogenarian who had been a local civil rights leader for decades. They looked up to Ms. Simkins because of how she had broken away from the conventional roles that black women of her generation were normally relegated to, and she became a trailblazing advocate for minorities, the poor, and the disenfranchised. No one was too lowly for her aid and no one too high for her sharp, witty criticism. Even at her advanced age, she still spoke occasionally at various functions around the state, and whenever she did, Ammie, Barbara, and Barbara's husband, Willie, went together to see her.
As one of the few female union officials in the country, Ammie particularly identified with the difficulty of adopting an untraditional role. She also had a high profile in the state Democratic Party. All of this resulted in her being under constant pressure, and Barbara continually looked for ways to cheer her up. Like many Southern women, Barbara often showed her affection through cooking. Ammie would frequently come into the office to discover that Barbara had placed a plate of hot, deliciously fried fish on her desk or had fixed her a ham and buttermilk biscuit made from scratch. Other times Barbara would put a few pieces of candy or a little card on the desk — never anything expensive, but always from the heart. Sometimes the small gifts bordered on being gags. Once, Barbara found a little plastic pig, put it in ajar, and poured some dry pinto beans around it. The gift went on Ammie's desk with a small hand-lettered sign — PORK AND BEANS.
Both women were overjoyed when Barbara and Willie discovered they were going to have another child. They already had two sons — Willie Lee and Jonathan — along with Barbara's teenage daughter, Robin.
Ammie couldn't stop herself from worrying about the pregnancy; Barbara was in her late thirties and nearly fourteen years had passed since her last pregnancy. Although she wasn't much older than Barbara, both joked that she was acting like a mother hen because of how she nagged Barbara to take her vitamins and get plenty of rest.
When Willie called to tell Ammie that Barbara had given birth to a baby boy they named Michael, she couldn't wait to get to the hospital to see them. A nurse blocked her as she stepped out of the elevator at the hospital's maternity ward. "Visitation is for family only," she said.
"I am family," Ammie told her.
Eyeing her blond hair and blue eyes skeptically, the nurse asked, "What relation?"
"Grandmother to the baby," she answered, sailing past without a backward glance.
Barbara got a big laugh out of the escapade and added, "We're salt and pepper, Miss Ammie. We season each other."
After getting out of the car, Ammie walked to the rear entrance of the office and wondered what surprise Barbara would have on her desk that morning. It hadn't been long since Barbara had returned to work from maternity leave, and Ammie hoped that the Simmonses had enjoyed Michael's first Christmas.
She opened the door. The office was strangely quiet and devoid of the aromas of Barbara's good cooking and freshly brewed coffee.
"Barbara?" she called out.
No answer.
"Are you here?"
Looking around, she saw that the empty room appeared exactly as it had before they closed it for the holidays.
Walking in the next room, she called her friend's name louder. Again, silence greeted her.
Growing worried, she searched another room and another, until she ended up in the conference area. She found her there.
Barbara sat slumped over in one of the fold-out metal chairs, her face buried in her arms which she gripped tightly as if in great pain.
Ammie dropped to her knees to face her. "Barbara! What's wrong?"
Slowly, with obvious effort, Barbara raised her head, tears streaming down her dark face. She was so distraught, she couldn't speak. Ammie knew something horrible had happened.
"Is it Mikey?" she asked, using her nickname for Michael.
She shook her head, tears steadily flowing.
Ammie asked about the other three children and Willie. Barbara shook her head after each name, and Ammie was nearly in tears herself trying to figure out what had happened. In all the years they had been friends, she had never seen Barbara so upset.
"It's the church," Barbara was finally able to say.
"St. John?" Ammie asked. She had heard Barbara frequently speak of her small Baptist church out in the country. Ammie had never seen the church but had helped her make flyers or programs whenever any special events were held there.
Nodding, Barbara said, "Somebody's hurt the church real bad."
Barbara agreed to take Ammie down to St. John. They went later that afternoon, allowing time for Barbara to pick up Robin and Michael.
As Ammie followed her to the church, she realized she had driven past the turnoff to the dirt road leading toward St. John probably hundreds of times. Her mother's people had lived a few miles away since colonial times. During her frequent visits to them, she had never noticed the turnoff because it was nearly hidden by pine and scrub trees, and it bore no street sign, only a black-and-white numerical county marker.
After less than one hundred yards, the blacktop disintegrated into a hard-packed dirt road that was so brutal, the entire Topaz shook and barely held together as she followed the cloud of dust rising behind Barbara's car. She felt like she was driving over endless rows of railroad tracks.
The denseness of the trees and brush choked out even the sounds of traffic from nearby Interstate 26, and the tops of the trees intertwined to create live canopy. Had she freed her imagination, she could picture herself in another time, before the frenetic pace of modern living.
They arrived at the church, a simple whitewashed cinder-block building set in a clearing beneath spiraling longleaf pines. The first thing she noticed as she got out of her car was that all the bulbs on the light poles had been shot out. Looking around, she saw that every single window of the church and the adjoining Sunday school building was shattered. The ground was covered with bullet casings, crumpled beer cans, and cheap liquor bottles. "KKK" had been carved in huge letters across the wooden front doors that were chopped up and barely hanging by the hinges.
Taking a deep breath, Ammie stepped inside. Still shaken, Barbara remained inside her car with her two children.
More bullet casings crunched beneath her feet. Whoever had done this had shot bullets into the pews, tearing them to pieces and then knocking them over. What they hadn't shot, they took an ax to. An old woodstove in the corner lay smashed to bits, as did the water cooler in the vestibule. Her heart ached more when she saw what they had done to the piano. As she was a former music teacher, pianos were precious to her. Someone had chopped it up, breaking it apart and even chopping the strings inside. It was destroyed so badly, she couldn't tell whether or not it had been an upright.
The vandals had chopped the chairs on the pulpit, including the pastor's. They got hold of the crucifix, chopped at the figure of Christ, and left his arms to dangle from the nails. They threw what was left of his body on the floor before the altar amid condoms — used ones. She struggled to keep her composure and hold down the nausea rising in her throat.
Barbara summoned the courage to get out of her car and followed Ammie at a distance along with the kids. They trailed her into the Sunday school building.
Ammie felt acutely nauseated when she saw what the vandals had done to the Communion cloth. She remembered Barbara speaking of how the ladies of the church had raised funds to order it and dressed in their finest to drive up to Columbia and buy it from Tapp's, an upscale department store. The Communion cloth had been removed from its storage area, spread on the floor, and defecated on.
Not able to take it anymore, Ammie turned to Barbara and the children. "Let me walk out in the cemetery for a while, you know, kind of give me a few minutes to myself."
It only got worse. One of the church members had died recently. The vandals had driven onto his grave and spun their tires through the freshly dug soil until his vault showed through and bore tread marks. Ammie ran to the edge of the cemetery and vomited.
She sat on a stump near the border of the cemetery, trying to gather enough strength to stand, and wondered what kind of people could do something so monstrous. More important, what could she do about it?
Steadying herself, she forced herself up. Though still weak from nausea, she managed to find Barbara, who had taken the kids back to the car and sat waiting for her. Ammie looked down into the frightened face of her friend. "I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm going to do something. I'll call you later on tonight."
As Barbara drove home, she realized she had broken what fellow congregation members called the "silent tongue," the agreement not to speak to anyone outside of St. John about the mounting vandalism that had now culminated in the complete destruction of the church. They had pleaded with her not to tell for fear of what the church's attackers would do in retaliation. She understood their fear. Out of the forty-six counties in South Carolina, the Klan was strongest in Lexington County, where the majority of the congregation lived and where the church was located. When the KKK, formed in Tennessee by six ex-Confederate soldiers, first entered the state in 1868, it gained a foothold in the upstate, where fewer African Americans lived and could mount an armed resistance. For example, in York County, which bordered North Carolina, nearly 80 percent of all white males were Klansmen by 1870. As decades passed, its strength spread, and even public officials such as Gov. Coleman Blease (1911-1915) openly advocated the lynching of African Americans as "necessary and good." Elderly members of St. John had vivid memories of the "Invisible Empire" attacking and murdering blacks with impunity.
At its height in the mid-1920s, between four and five million Americans belonged to the Klan. Despite the hate organization losing strength and splintering into various factions, it still remained a dangerous force within the state, particularly in areas like Lexington County, historically sparsely populated by blacks. Indeed, blacks only composed about 12 percent of the county. Just two other counties — Pickens and Oconee, both in the upstate — counted lower percentages of African-American residents. Of the two Klan factions remaining active in the state, one of them, the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was based in Lexington. The other was the Keystone Klan, centered in the upstate county of Laurens. It was difficult for law enforcement officials to pinpoint accurately how many members belonged to either cell, but it appeared that the Christian Knights was the more dominant of the two. Even as recent as the late 1970s, they drew two to three hundred people to their rallies.
Before their Grand Dragon, Horace King, helped start the Christian Knights in the state, he belonged to the United Klans of America. Based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the UKA was the most violent of the more than one hundred Klan factions scattered across the country. Its members were responsible for the 1961 attacks against the Freedom Riders, the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church — in which four young black girls died — and the 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo as she drove Selma civil rights marchers. King found Lexington County to be fertile ground for recruiting poor whites looking for someone to blame for their troubles. The fact that he lived only about a fifteen-minute drive from St. John and held Klan meetings within a few miles of church was more than unnerving to the isolated congregation.
But while Barbara recognized the reasons for keeping the "silent tongue," it had not been making things better through the years, only worse. She had no choice but to break it and hope the others would understand. She hoped they would realize she would do whatever she could to protect them and St. John.
She had fallen in love with the church and its people the first time Willie took her there. It had been his maternal grandparents' place of worship, and he had attended it since childhood along with his brothers and sisters. He told her how he grew up watching his granddaddy, who was the senior deacon, open the church up every Sunday and prepare for services. In the winter, that meant chopping and toting wood to feed the potbellied stove so that the place would be nice and warm. In the summer, he opened the windows and made sure there were enough paper fans from a local funeral home for people to cool themselves with. When he died, a fellow named Roscoe Sulton took over his church duties and also became a surrogate grandparent to Willie and his siblings.
St. John's congregation had always been small. On a good Sunday, a few dozen people came. Most of them were frail and bent with age — children or grandchildren of the slaves who lay in the cemetery that formed a semicircle around the sides and rear of the cinder-block building. Keeping with old ways brought from West Africa, some of the graves were still decorated with plates, silverware, clocks, and other favorite personal objects of the dead below, things that helped them journey from this world to the next in peace. The items were purposely broken to free the person's spirit of the need to return. Breaking the things or punching holes in them also severed death's chain, preventing other family members from immediately following the deceased. Because West Africans viewed the world of the dead as being a watery, upside-down one beneath that of the living, it was important that graves be located near water — in St. John's case, near the Congaree River — and that the deceased's broken possessions be turned upside down. Clocks, set to the time of death, symbolized that while alive, blacks were bound to the oppressive schedules of whites, but through dying, were finally free.
To Barbara, sometimes it seemed as if time had forgotten about the tiny house of worship located in the middle of what had once been a large plantation that stretched to the banks of the Congaree, which flowed about one mile behind the cemetery. After talking to Willie, Deacon Sulton, and others about recent changes, she wished that time had indeed left St. John alone. The recent years had been cruel.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Standing on Holy Ground by Sandra E. Johnson. Copyright © 2002 Sandra E. Johnson. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,INTRODUCTION,
BOOK ONE,
ONE - Silent Tongue,
TWO - Lifted Hands, Open Hearts,
THREE - Who the Hell Is Ammie Murray?,
FOUR - Whatcha' Helping That Nigger Church For?,
FIVE - From the Past,
SIX - Honey Bear and Max,
SEVEN - Under Attack,
EIGHT - Do You Have a Death Wish?,
NINE - Rebirth,
TEN - Halloween,
ELEVEN - Stick and Bulldog,
TWELVE - Lost Soul,
THIRTEEN - Smoke and Ashes,
FOURTEEN - Different Colors, Same Message,
FIFTEEN - A Stranger from Texas,
SIXTEEN - The Lord Is Standing By,
BOOK TWO,
SEVENTEEN - We're Watching You,
EIGHTEEN - Fire in the Night,
NINETEEN - A Season for Justice,
TWENTY - A Lesson from Galatians,
BOOK THREE,
TWENTY-ONE - Saying Good-bye,
TWENTY-TWO - An Expression of God,
TWENTY-THREE - There's a Rainbow Waiting,
EPILOGUE,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
Copyright Page,