Martin Luther King: Close Ties with the Lowcountry
Penn Center became a place of refuge and restoration for King.
The year was 1964 and President Lyndon Johnson had just signed the new civil rights law. It created anger, violence, and resistance. Now the future of the South hung in the balance.
We honor Martin Luther King on the 3rd Monday of every January as the man who championed peace, justice, and equality.
While covering news in Atlanta there was never a story as prodigious as the struggles for racial equality in the South. Witnessing the inhumanity toward the black population is something I will never forget. Unthinkable incidents during this harrowing time included those of the Governor of the State of Georgia, Lester Maddox.
Maddox threatened three young black seminary students at gunpoint for attempting to enter his racially segregated Atlanta restaurant, The Pickrick. He pulled his pistol and pointed it at them saying “Get the hell out of here or I’ll kill you.” Rather than help the customers being held at gunpoint, the white patrons eating at the restaurant grabbed ax handles and chased them into the parking lot, threatening violence.
An all-white jury later acquitted Maddox.
While the Civil Rights Movement was raging, Atlanta was called “the city too busy to hate.” That was not the case. During these tumultuous days, I frequently invited Ralph McGill, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution and leading voice in the South for racial and ethnic tolerance to come on my morning show at WSB.
McGill used his position to highlight the effects of segregation, earning him the nickname the “Conscience of the South.” For most of his career, McGill was a lone voice, bravely breaking the white code of polite silence about racial discrimination and segregation.
Angered readers sent threats to McGill, some burning crosses on his lawn at night and firing bullets into his home.
His bravery and passion instilled in me courage for when the time came to report on a momentous event - the funeral of Martin Luther King at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. It was an extreme privilege to stand amongst reporters from around the world to honor one of the greatest leaders of our time.
King’s Close Ties with the Lowcountry
King visited St. Helena’s Frogmore community 5 times between 1964 and 1967. At that time the Penn Community Center had been established as a place of safety, a place of refuge, a place of restoration for black and white progressives fighting institutionalized Jim Crow racism at great personal risk. It was one of the few places blacks and whites could gather or spend the night together.
The magistrate said, “It was a hush-hush kind of thing, we certainly did not want anything to happen to him while he was here.”
His was a dangerous mission risking his life for his people, standing against the Klu Klux Klan, and seeking peace and justice during the agonizing days of the Civil Rights Movement.
Time spent at Penn Center was to be a time of relaxation for the man who was the figurehead for America’s red-hot civil rights movement, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the “I have a dream” icon. Here was a place where he could rest in a safe, secluded corner of South Carolina in a simple wooden cottage named for Hastings Gantt, an all-but-forgotten former slave. The link between these two men who never knew each other was sealed when President Barack Obama signed a proclamation establishing the Reconstruction Era National Monument in Beaufort County.
Remembering a slave named Gantt
Gantt was a hero of his era. Once a free man he bought land, raised cotton, made money, and continued to buy more land. He was repeatedly elected to the state House of Representatives and gave 50 acres to the Penn School allowing it to grow from its beginnings in 1862 as one of America’s first schools for freed slaves.
Hilton Head woman witnessed history and courage at King's funeral.
https://www.islandpacket.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/david-lauderdale/article33404427.html
https://www.islandpacket.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/david-lauderdale/article33404427.html
Journalist John Pruitt has a new book based on his experiences of over fifty years as a television news reporter and anchor in Atlanta, Georgia. His reporting has been honored with multiple awards including induction into the Atlanta Press Club and Georgia Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
