By Scott Graber
It is Tuesday, gray and grim, and we’re just returned from the Performing Arts Center on Carteret Street where Susan and I did “Books Sandwiched In.” Today it was Margaret Seidler presenting her book, “Payne-Ful Business — Charleston’s Journey to the Truth.”
Seidler came to Beaufort’s popular, long-running program with Robert Adams who is currently the Executive Director at Penn Center. At first they explored Seidler’s personal journey and how that led to the writing of her book.
Seidler — a Charlestonian — grew up on land that was once part of the McCleod Plantation. This antebellum plantation at the intersection of Folly Road and Maybank Highway (on James Island) may be familiar to some because one can actually see a row of slave cabins from the highway. Notwithstanding her particular proximity to these still-existing slave cabins, Seidler had no clue that her ancestors had been involved in that City’s notorious slave trade.
Thanks to a black woman who said that she shared Seidler’s DNA, Seidler (who is white) began a search that eventually landed upon John Torrans, William Payne and Josiah Smith Payne — three generations of her family who were definitely engaged in the “domestic slave trade.”
That meant she had to confront the fact that her ancestors where up to their elbows in a very bad, arguably the worst chapter of the ongoing American Experience.
A chapter that led to the Civil War and 620,000 dead. A chapter that led to another 100 years of lynchings, cross burnings and a segregated system that was unequivocally unequal.
Finally, at least for Margaret Seidler, it led to the Mother Emanuel AME Church at the corner of Meeting and Calhoun Streets in downtown Charleston. Seidler, who had been a consultant to the Charleston Police Department, had a role working with survivors of that shooting.
The second half of the program, however, focused on what white people might do about these bad chapters; especially if one happened to have ancestors who were engaged in this “peculiar institution.”
As some of you might know my mother’s family were dirt farmers in Eastern North Carolina. These people raised cotton, collards and hogs and lived hard, relatively short lives usually felled in their 50s by small pox, tuberculosis or influenza. And yes, I’ve seen their Last Will and Testaments and know they died owning slaves. I am, however, somewhat comforted knowing that this number (of slaves) was in the single digits.
In the 1860s the Teacheys, Sutherlands and Riddicks marched off to war taking on a huge Union fleet at Fort Fisher, enduring a long, bloody siege at Petersburg and taking a final stand at Averasboro, N.C.
And so, yes, I have previously written about their desperation and personal valor knowing, full well, that they were fighting to save a degrading and disgraceful system.
So what does someone, like me, do with these facts.
According to Seidler the process begins with acknowledging and accepting that slavery actually happened and, from all accounts, was a miserable and barbaric way to live out one’s time on earth.
The second thing is to acknowledge and accept that “you were not responsible for what happened …”
The third thing is to feel empathy and to extend sympathy for those black descendants who continue to suffer the after-shocks of this dark and dismal chapter.
As Seidler and Adams were discussing concrete ways to make this sympathy and empathy manifest, meaningful, a woman in the audience stood up, remained silent for about 15 seconds, and then asked;
“What about reparations?”
It seemed to me that another 15 seconds passed before Seidler said, “My emphasis has always been relationships.”
And Adams added that “reparations are a powerful idea.”
There was then a brief discussion about the Manchester Guardian (newspaper) that put aside $10 million to be used for remediation in places like “South Carolina’s Sea Islands.”
But as we sat in the semi-darkness of the Performing Arts Center hearing phrases like “empathy” and “sympathy”, other phrases — phrases like “inclusion, diversity and equity”—were being removed from the mandates, contracts and grants awarded by the Federal government.
As the gray-headed audience was trying to decide whether to buy Seidler’s book, a whirlwind was howling through the country that was wiping away affirmative action and minority set-asides. As we talked about a “way forward,” an incoming tide of anti-woke sentiment was sloshing though the marshes of Beaufort County.
It seems the revolution has begun.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
