Flying High

American rock icons, The Eagles, swoop into Greenville

The Eagles flew onto the music scene with five No. 1 singles and four No. 1 albums in the early 1970s, and they remain one of the most successful recording artists of the twentieth century. Two of their albums, Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 and Hotel California, rank among the ten best-selling albums ever.

The Eagles have sold more than 120 million albums worldwide, earning four Grammy Awards, and they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Today, they continue to soar. Their fall 2007 release, Long Road Out of Eden, has gone platinum seven times. And the Eagles won the 2008 Grammy for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocals for "How Long." Who knows how long it will be before they return to Greenville again?

Want to go?
Bi-Lo Center, 650 N. Academy St. Saturday, January 19, 8 p.m.; $45-$65. (864) 233-2525,
www.ticketmaster.com

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Prison Playwrights

World-premiere production brings jail writings out of the cell block and into the spotlight

If you’re ready for a Valentine’s Day date more thought-provoking than a box of chocolates and a night at the movies, check out the Warehouse Theatre’s production This Prison Where I Live. Created from the ground up by the members of the theater’s Journeyman program for early-career actors, the production is based on writings by men and women imprisoned for their political, social, or intellectual beliefs. Though this powerful performance explores the harsh reality of prison life and oppression, there is a recurring bright theme, says director Paul Savas: “It’s a celebration of the thriving of the human spirit in horrendous situations.”

—A.A.M.

Want to go?
The Warehouse Theatre, 37 Augusta St. February 13-15, February 20-22, 8 p.m. and 3 p.m.; $10
(864) 235-6948, www.warehousetheatre.com

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Datebook

G—The Magazine of Greenville will be sponsoring the

following events. Plan ahead to join us!

Red Cross Wine Auction

Presented by the American Red Cross Upstate South Carolina Chapter, “An Affair With Flair” 2009 Fine Wine Auction will celebrate Old World Tuscany with a wine tasting, silent and live auctions, and a seated dinner, all raising money for the local chapter of this international aid agency.
Hyatt Regency, 220 N. Main St. Saturday, 6 pm. $150. (864) 271-8222, www.redcrosswineauction.com

Bachelor Bid Ball

Join the G and the Greenville Jaycees for this raucous event where Greenville’s most available and attractive bachelors and bachelorettes are auctioned off at the second annual "Bachelor Bid Ball," all in the name of a good cause. Proceeds benefit the Jaycee Camp Hope, an outdoor camp at Clemson University for mentally challenged children. The Handlebar, 304 E. Stone Ave. Saturday, 7 pm-midnight. $25-$35. (864) 294-5400, www.bachelorbidball.org

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Counter Stories

Downtown’s historic Woolworth’s building remains a symbol of Greenville’s civil rights struggles

The Woolworth’s building in downtown Greenville may soon disappear. Yet those who transformed it into a symbol of racial equality won’t easily forget what this now-vacant building has long stood for.

The setting was the early 1960s, a time before McDonald’s or Wal-Mart. Typical of five-and-dime stores of that era, Woolworth’s was popular for its assortment of inexpensive merchandise—as well as its lunch counter. But the lunch counter, like the community itself, was racially segregated. Whites ordered chocolate shakes and grilled cheese sandwiches at the front, while blacks were relegated to the “negro counter” in the rear.

“Woolworth’s was just a five-and-dime store to me,” recalls Benjamin Downs. But thanks to Downs and his classmates at all-black Sterling High, that was about to change.

The store was well-known to Sterling students, who popped in to escape the cold and grab a bite while waiting on bus transfers to and from school. In 1960, after Downs and a handful of classmates participated in demonstrations at the public library, they shifted their attention to Woolworth and other segregated lunch counters.

The students were idealistic and, inspired by a nationwide activism movement, determined to end racial discrimination. Their Woolworth sit-ins were staged mostly in the afternoon when customers were few. After the students refused to leave, management would invariably shut down the lunch counter. Downs recalls the protests as peaceful, though he was arrested briefly several times.

Those early, spontaneous acts of civil disobedience grew more deliberate, says Leola Robinson Simpson, currently a local school board member. She served on the Youth Council of the local NAACP chapter that, along with its adult advisers, began to think strategically. Protesters, who included sympathetic whites, received instructions in non-violence in the Springfield Baptist Church basement.

Simpson contends their efforts helped bridge social barriers that ultimately contributed to Greenville’s progress. “We were young and foolish, but we were not without reason,” she says.

If the redevelopment of the Woolworth’s property succeeds, as it is predicted to, that progress will stand in juxtaposition to a public memorial at the corner of Main and Washington streets that now testifies to the courage of those same Sterling students.

—Gary Hyndman

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Old Testaments

North Greenville University’s Miller Bible Museum houses some rare forms of the Good Book

Incandescent lighting. Dust-free glass cases. Climate controls. The most published book in history has never had it so good. North Greenville University’s Miller Bible Museum is one of only three known permanent U.S. collections of the Holy Bible open for public viewing.

The collection, housed in the school’s library, features texts published in more than seventy-five languages. There’s also a color facsimile of the Gutenberg Bible; a page from an Algonquin Bible; the first Bible printed in America; and a 1778 King James edition, the only Bible ever authorized by the U.S. government.

“The story of how (the Bible) came into being is as impressive as the story it has to tell,” says Jonathan Bradsher, the university’s director of library services. Bradsher credits the rare archive to Lewie Miller Jr., the school’s late chaplain. Miller, who amassed Bibles over many years, loaned his collection to the 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair. It later accompanied him to North Greenville, where a portion of the collection was put on display in 1985 in memory of his wife, Edith.

North Greenville has since grown the exhibit, featuring dim lights and plans for temperature and humidity controls to preserve its delicate documents. In the meantime, this rare collection remains one of Greenville’s best-kept secrets—so spread the Word.

—G.H.

For More Info:
Additional screening times and locations are available at the SC Film Group’s website, www.myspace.com/scfilmgroup.

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Local Aid

American Leprosy Mission recognizes World Leprosy Day at home and abroad

When a devastating cyclone hit Myanmar earlier this year, a Greenville-based nonprofit was among the first to arrive with aid. The same organization recently raised nearly half a million dollars toward funding a vaccine that would eradicate one of the most misunderstood diseases still in existence today.

The American Leprosy Mission is the oldest and largest nonprofit in the United States that provides medicine and care to people affected by leprosy around the world. The disease, which is most prevalent in some of the poorest nations across the globe, can be cured for only $300 per person, and ALM has, for more than one hundred years, delivered that cure to places like Angola, Thailand, and Nepal, among others.

Few in the Upstate realize, however, that this organization’s headquarters are right here in Greenville. This year, the nonprofit will have donated more than $200,000 in aid to Myanmar, in the wake of damage and devastation left behind by a headline-grabbing cyclone that struck this summer. Myanmar has the highest prevalence of leprosy in the world—nearly six in ten thousand people are afflicted.

It shouldn’t take a natural disaster to bring awareness to this worthy organization, though. The fifty-fifth annual World Leprosy Day will be recognized on Sunday, January 25. Churches across the globe and throughout the Upstate will join together to provide compassion, courage, and collections to eradicate leprosy. So mark your calendar, or better yet, take a moment to learn more about this disease and the local agency that is working to improve the lives of those afar afflicted with it.

—H.C.W.

Want to Help?
For more information about the ALM and World Leprosy Day, visit www.leprosy.org
or call (864) 271-7040.

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{ Top Shelf }

Yester-Reads

Local authors offer insight and context to Greenville’s colorful, sometimes creepy past

Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave
by Leonard Todd, W.W. Norton and Co., 2008
David Drake was one of the most proficient and innovative African-American potters of the South whose life and work in Edgefield, South Carolina, bridged the Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras. For Todd, as a descendant of Dr. Abner Landrum—the man who founded Edgefield's pottery industry and owned Dave—the story begins as one about family. It broadens to encompass details of day-to-day factory operations and pottery production, the African and American “cultural syncretism” that informed Dave's techniques and aesthetic possibilities; and the cruel realities of slavery.

A Guide to Historic Greenville
by John M. Nolan, History Press, 2008

Greenville, over the past twenty years or so, has become a city transformed. Nolan’s fascinating guide leads visitors on five historic tours: the West End, South Main Street from the Reedy River to Coffee Street, North Main Street from Coffee Street to Elford Street, and two tours highlighting other distinctive architectural and cultural treasures (including the Beattie and Kilgore-Lewis houses, Christ Episcopal Church, and more). Falls Park and Liberty Bridge reside in the West End on the Reedy River, essentially where Richard Pearis founded Greenville in 1769. Nolan charts the successful integration of Greenville's present development with its past.

Greer
by Ray Belcher and Joada P. Hiatt, Arcadia Publishing, 2007

This volume begins with a concise historical overview, noting Greer’s progressiveness, its emphasis on textiles and agriculture, its reliance on the railroad, and its “small-town American spirit.” In chapters titled “Farms and Mills,” “Streets and Residences,” “Trade and Business,” “Schools and Institutions,” and “Churches,” readers find photographs of Greer, past and present, accompanied by brief commentary. For example, an old photo postcard of Trade Street reveals Ponder’s General Merchandise Store with pedestrians passing by on boardwalks as a horse-drawn wagon makes its way up a dusty unpaved street. In subsequent photos, you see how Trade Street has changed over time, concluding with its present day incarnation.

More Ghosts of Upstate South Carolina
by John Boyanoski, Shelor and Son Publishing, 2008

With his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, author and journalist Boyanoski offers up a second helping of ghost stories about our region. Some of our ghosts have histories with a basis in fact (e.g., Mary Ingelman of Fairfield County, who was accused of being a witch in 1792 or infamous South Carolina governor “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman and other ghosts said to roam Winthrop University’s Tillman Hall). Boyanoski accompanies local paranormal investigators to a couple of ghostly environs, lending a pseudo-scientific patina of credibility to his tales. At the very least, these stories attest to the enduring popularity of ghosts.

—Lee Ehlers

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{ History }

Raising the Bar

Miss Jim Perry shattered glass ceiling for South Carolina’s female lawyers

At a time when women were still fighting for the right to vote and Greenville was undertaking a downtown building boom, one woman was paving the way for future generations of female attorneys. About 1895, James M. Perry, a professor at the Greenville Women’s College, welcomed his third daughter to the world, and, determined that one of his children would bear his name, she was called James Margrave Perry.

Because of illness in her early years, Perry attended only three years of public school, learning primarily at home. She entered Greenville’s Women’s College at about age fourteen, and, after graduating in 1913, “Miss Jim”—as she was later called—enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley. She emerged from Berkeley’s law school with a doctorate of jurisprudence in 1917 and, after passing the California bar, began practicing law. Just months after the South Carolina bar opened examinations to women in 1918, Miss Jim returned to Greenville and became the first female attorney in the state.

A Spartanburg Herald article reported on August 2, 1918, that when Miss Jim was introduced to the bar, every member “extended to her the glad hand of fellowship by rising and applauding.” Now able to practice law in her home state, Perry took a position with Greenville’s Haynsworth and Haynsworth law firm and rose in the ranks.

Perry blazed a trail for all of South Carolina’s female attorneys, but saw immediate change after her history-making career choice when two women—Julia D. Charles and Pinkney Lee Estes—joined the bar in 1919. Since then, she has made way for 2,910 female attorneys in the state; more than three hundred work right here in Greenville County, where Miss Jim got her start.

—A.A.M.

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{ Flashback }

Boys to Mend

Greenville businessman Charles Aiken opened a door for 8,000 young men and counting

On the German frontlines of the Second World War, Air Force aerial gunner Charles Aiken understood his military responsibility, yet abhorred its consequences: thousands of civilians would be killed or displaced; children would be left without parents and homes. But for Aiken, a native of Anderson County, this incomprehensible devastation sparked the idea for his own healing mission.

Aiken vowed to return to the States to provide shelter for neglected boys, understanding the critical importance of a nurturing environment. In 1958, he founded the Boys of America Home (later renamed the Boys Home of the South) in a rented school building in Anderson County. The home was one of the first of its kind in the Upstate, and Aiken, who also co-owned two Greenville-based companies that he started in the mid-1940s with his three brothers, straddled his time between attending to the home and his businesses.

Flash forward fifty years: fifty-two boys live on 127 acres in Greenville County, a donation from wealthy entrepreneur W.J. Greer. (Subsidies, both public and private, keep the home running.) Boys, ages 6 to 21, are referred to the home by DSS and other social-service organizations, or privately by families. In addition to their education at public schools or at the Charles Aiken Academy on campus, the boys enjoy field trips, celebrate birthdays and holidays, attend chapel, and bask in the love of caring adults.

Fred Sutton, one of the original eight residents, says the home offered not only shelter but a brighter future, as well. “It gave me the stamina to do pretty much all that I wanted to do,” Sutton says.

In 2008, its Jubilee Year—an Old Testament reference to the “year of joy, celebration, and returning,” says former executive director Glynda Caddell—the home celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Hundreds of men, a gathering of brothers, were called back to the dinner table to see the number of lives Aiken had touched. The result? Five decades after Aiken’s wartime revelation—that there is value in a single life—thousands have been changed for the better.

—Blair Knobel

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20 Answers with Jesse Jackson

We posed our questions to prominent civil rights leader Jesse Jackson to get him talking about growing up in Greenville, his activism, his vision for his hometown and the nation, and the misconceptions the public has about him. Here are his answers, continued from page 42 of G Magazine.

11. I played quarterback in high school and in college. I think I could compete today—against the people I competed against then (laughing).

12. I feel I can talk to any group in the world because of my English teacher at Sterling High School, Mr. Julius Kilgore. Also, Coach Allen taught physical education along with manhood and character.

13. The biggest obstacle I’ve faced in my career … has been tearing down legal and cultural walls, so that we can see each other. So long as there are walls between us, and we cannot see on the other side, there is ignorance, fear, hatred, and violence.

14. South Africa is so much like South Carolina. Both feel like home to me, though both need to develop democratic institutions so people can learn to live together. London is my second-favorite place to travel. It has a tremendous library system and historic monuments.

15. I visit several churches when I’m in Greenville—Long Branch Baptist, Springfield, and Bethlehem.

16. You can never come home again … unless you are coming home to make home a better place, as we did with the fight to have the King holiday recognized in Greenville.

17. Today I’m “The Great Unifier.” A childhood nickname … Growing up, my friends called me “Bo.” It was just a made-up, playful name.

18. On my bedside table is a copy of the King James Version of the Bible, and my son’s book A More Perfect Union; Slavery by Another Name by Wall Street Journal reporter Douglas Blackmon; and Barack Obama’s Audacity of Hope.

19. The greatest leader of all time is Jesus the Christ. In terms of mortal leaders, Lincoln proved his greatness as a leader as he led the drive to save the nation from secession. And Gandhi freed a million people and sent shockwaves across the world for social change.

20. Favorite quotes … “Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end faith will prevail and will not disappoint.” Also, “Vanity asks, ‘Is it popular?’ Politics asks, ‘Can it win?’ Morality and conscience ask, ‘Is it right?’ In the end, if it is morally right, politics and popularity has to adjust to the unyielding power of the moral center.”

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{ G Tunes}

Southern Soul

Prolific blues and folk musician Josh White found fame in America and beyond, but his roots lie right here in Greenville

Born in 1914 in Greenville’s working-class Sterling neighborhood, blues and folk musician Josh White rose to fame by traveling the humblest of paths, ascending to the top of the music charts playing alongside some of the biggest jazz musicians of his era, eventually befriending a U.S. president and his family.

Yet, in his own hometown, White remains largely unknown.

White lost his father, Dennis—a Methodist minister at Greenville’s historic Allen Temple—when he was only seven. To support his family, Josh became a child troubadour and street-performing sidekick to blind African-American musicians traveling throughout the South.

It wasn’t long before White picked up the guitar styles and repertoires of his mentors—including Blind Man Arnold and Blind Joe Taggert—and at age sixteen, found the silver lining in his family’s stark circumstances. ARC (later Columbia Records) discovered White after hearing studio recordings that he had made with blues, gospel, and folk musicians; they tracked down the teen at his mother’s home in Greenville and convinced the leery Mrs. White to co-sign her son into stardom, appeasing her fears by telling her that Josh would sing only gospel music.

From then on, like his guttural ballads, White’s life strung notes both high and low. In 1933, he began recording blues under the pseudonym Pinewood Tom (a disguise for his strict Christian mother who did not want her son to play “the devil’s music”). A Renaissance entertainer and a virtuoso guitarist, White recorded songs and played guitar as both a solo artist and studio sideman. But in 1936, he shattered a window with his strumming hand during a bar fight, halting his recording career until the mid-1940s when he rocketed to ultra-fame with his hit “One Meatball.”

White became one of the top-ten black recording musicians of the 1920s and 1930s, and he later worked in radio, starred on Broadway and in film, and performed with leading artists of his day, including Billie Holiday, Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, and the Golden Gate Quartet. After performing at Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 inauguration, White eventually became a confidant to the president and lifelong friend to Eleanor Roosevelt. The Roosevelts were actually the godparents of White’s son, Josh White Jr.

Like many McCarthy-era entertainers, musician-cum-activist White was blacklisted in 1950 because of his liberal political views, and he voluntarily appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to defend his civil-rights stance. His performance at the 1963 March on Washington had him playing in the presence of Martin Luther King Jr. and hundreds of thousands of supporters of equality. Although White’s career suffered because of the government’s allegations, his music would continue to highlight social injustices—particularly in the South—until 1969 when he died of heart complications. His legacy of activism lives on, in the soulful music created throughout his remarkable—albeit locally largely unrecognized—career.

—Gene Berger

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