If you happen to be on Facebook and if you happen to follow the BDC's Facebook page, then you know that posts related to local African American history, people, places, and events are made frequently every month of the year.
In fact, every Wednesday that the Library is open, I make at least one "Black History Note" (BHN) post. During February 2021, my Wednesday Black History Notes featured materials that the BDC shares about the role of religion in African American life and culture.
Here's a recap of the BHNs I made on Facebook this month:
You can see Commandment Keeper Church on the Pioneers of African-American Cinema disc 5. The BDC has one that can only be watched inside our Research Room but Beaufort Branch has a copy of the DVD that cardholders can check out and watch at home. We also have a vertical file about the film and a vertical file for Hurston here in the Research Room.
If you'd like to learn more about this amazing African-American author, playwright, and dynamically outspoken woman, watch "Literature to Life: Zora!, ~ 20 minutes adaption of the theatrical biography of her life by Laurence Holder.
10 February 2021 - It
would be hard to overestimate the power of the church in the African
American experience in the United States. ETV's star, Professor Henry
Louis Gates, Jr., explores the 400-year-old story of the black church in
America, the changing nature of worship spaces, and the men and women
who shepherded them from the pulpit, the choir loft, and church pews.
You can watch "The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song"
four-hour, two-part series on SCETV on February 16 and February 23 at 9
pm. [You can check out the book upon which the series is based.]
24 February 2021 - Sometimes PhD dissertations end up as published books. Such was the case for The Abundant Life Prevails by Michael Charles Wolfe.
Rev. Wolfe is an ordained Methodist minister who examined the collision on St. Helena Island of the religious style adapted by the enslaved with roots in Southern evangelicalism and African traditions with the religious styles of Reconstruction era Protestant Northern missionaries like Laura Towne, William Channing Gannett, Ellen Murray and Harriet Ware. Because this book is based on religious traditions of St. Helena Island, we have a reference copy in the BDC as well as in the Local History sections at the Branch Libraries for you to borrow.
The Materials Monday posts in February also featured African-American letters in the BDC.
1 February 2021 - Corp. James Henry Gooding, a 26 year old member of Company C, 54th Massachusetts Volunteers, United States Colored Troops, wrote of his arrival at Port Royal on June 3, 1863:
Messrs. Editors:
-- After a long passage of seven days, we have arrived at Port Royal. We are still on board the vessel, and I write my first letter on the top of my knapsack, with one of the loudest noises around me ever heard, and heat enough to make a fellow contemplate the place prepared for the ungodly. There is nothing interesting to write as yet, for the very good reason that we have none of us been ashore. I write this letter to let the friends of the men know that we are all safe, except one, who jumped overboard the first night out from Boston. I think that he must have been cracked or drunk, more likely the latter. The men are all in good health and spirits, not one man in the whole regiment being now on the sick list. After we are quartered on shore, and have an opportunity to look around, you may expect better letters. -- J.H.G.
And indeed, Gooding wrote about 50 weekly letters to his local newspaper, becoming "a truthful andintelligent correspondent" (in the words of its Editors) for the staunchly abolitionist New Bedford (MA) Mercury newspaper. Eminent Civil War historian, James McPherson, describes Gooding as "observant, well informed,a fluent writer, passionately committed to the cause of Union, liberty, and black rights. He also possessed a sense of humor that makes these letters a delight as well as an education to read." The letters are one of the few known collections of materials by a United States Colored Troops soldier about USCT military actions and conditions. His eloquence helped persuade the Congress to provide equal pay for Black soldiers in 1864.
Gooding enlisted in the Union Army (though he had sea-experience from working on whaling vessels) on Valentine's Day 1863, seeing action in South Carolina including the assault on Fort Wagner, in Georgia, and in Florida where he was wounded in the thigh and captured in the Battle of Olustee. He died in Andersonville Prison on July 19, 1864.
The only copy of this title within SCLENDS is in the Research Room.
The letter begins the church's "145th Year Commemorative Journal." Bishop Norris and Mary Ann Norris wrote:
"This critically important gather of your history is an important undertaking for your church and for our Zion as we continually remember the sacrifices and the contributions made by Richard Allen and other leaders in establishing our church. This is an incredible milestone, and one that the church can reflect back on thankfulness and gratefulness to God who has steered us over the years....You offer a strong witness for the African Methodist Episcopal Church far and near."
The Research Room has almost 100 vertical files about Beaufort District's "Churches", including one about Grace Chapel. We'll be happy to show any - or even all 2500+ of the BDC vertical files to you - by appointment.
The Library was closed for Presidents Day on February 15th.
22 February 2021 -One of the major sources for African American military service records are pension records. Securing one for yourself or by your survivors can entail a great deal of paperwork - and documentary evidence.
Thanks to the Heritage Library, we have copies of They Served: Stories of United States Colored Troops from Hilton Head Island, South Carolina compiled and edited by Nancy Burke, Patricia Burke, and Susie Marquis (2017). It includes transcriptions of pension files of Black soldiers who served during the Civil War.
Among the men who sought pensions was Renty Miller. Miller had been a Black soldier who served in Company G, 21st Regiment, USCT from August 23, 1864 to April 25, 1866. Miller could read and write (albeit with some phonetic spelling like many others in the late 19th and early 20th centuries). He set up a side business as a scribe to other former soldiers on the island. He would write the Pension Commission Office on their behalf. However, in the letter dated August 16, 1916 shown in the image, Renty Miller asks about his own pension payment.
Dear Pension Commission SirI have Rote this few line for to ask you when my increse will commence. I have see all of the boys that is belong to the Same Regmeant have reseaved their increase and I having get mine same I have Rote to you for to find out sumthing about it. Please to oblig me to give me answer. Yours truly, Renty Miller, Co. G 21 Regt.
The Pension Commission Office registered receipt of Miller's letter three days later. His pension was increased to $21.50 a few days after that on August 23, 1916. At the time of his death, his USCT pension was $50.00 per month.
We have copies of They Served in the Research Room and more that can be checked out from the Local History sections at the Branch Libraries.
Other African-American related posts made on Facebook in honor of Black History Month 2021 were about Dr. Brent Morris's lecture on Reconstruction; an online webinar with Amy Murrell Taylor, author of Embattled Freedom, a recently donated religious revival flyer from 1963, Robert Smalls, Missionary Teachers to the Freedmen, other African-American related posts here in Connections, and Turner's seminal work on the Gullah language.
I trust that you will agree that the BDC honored some of the many significant contributions of African Americans to Beaufort District's long and storied history this month.
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