Ahead of Her Time in Yesteryear : Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman Comes of Age in a Southern African American Family [1 ed.] 9781572337367, 9781572337206

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Ahead of Her Time in Yesteryear

Ahead of Her Time in Yesteryear: Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman Comes of Age in a Southern African American Family

Kibibi Voloria Mack-Shelton With a Foreword by Hayward Farrar Jr.

The University of Tennessee Press / Knoxville

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Copyright © 2010 by The University of Tennessee Press / Knoxville. All Rights Reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. First Edition. Unless otherwise noted, all photos are from the private collection of Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mack-Williams, Kibibi, 1955– Ahead of her time in yesteryear: Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman comes of age in a Southern African American family / Kibibi V. Mack-Shelton. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. eISBN-13: 978-1-57233-736-7 eISBN-10: 1-57233-736-2 1. Zimmerman, Geraldyne Pierce, 1911– 2. African American women—South Carolina—Orangeburg—Biography. 3. African Americans—South Carolina—Orangeburg—Biography. 4. Older people—South Carolina—Orangeburg—Biography. 5. Orangeburg (S.C.)—Biography. 6. African Americans—South Carolina—Orangeburg—Social conditions. 7. African American families—South Carolina—Orangeburg. 8. Orangeburg (S.C.)—Rural conditions. 9. African American families—Case studies. 10. Intergenerational relations—United States—Case studies. I. Title. F279.O6M34 2010 975.7'79042092—dc22 [B] 2010015362

Dedicated to

Carter G. Woodson, John Hope Franklin, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and Eugene Genovese for their brilliant scholarship to the field of African American history

Contents Foreword xi Hayward Farrar Jr. Acknowledgments xv Introduction xvii Prologue Early Black Carolinians xxi Early Black Orangeburg xxiv Southern Black Families xxvii Chapter 1. Ancestors: The Pierces and Tatnalls, 1860s–1910 Introducing Grandfather Pierce Introducing Grandmother Tattnall The Pierce-Tattnall Union

1 5 8

Chapter 2. Jello: The Girl, 1910–1929 Child Rearing Education

13 23

Chapter 3. Gerry: The Young Adult, 1929–1933 College Days Love and Sex Courtship and Marriage

37 40 45

Chapter 4. Gerry: The Mother, 1933–1960s Gerry and Zin Love, Work, and Marriage Child Bearing and Rearing

77 86 91

Conclusion 113 Epilogue: Mrs. Z: Lady Maverick, 1960s–2010 Old Clubs, New Clubs Beloved St. Paul Episcopal Accolades for a Lady Maverick

115 117 119

Appendix. Population Statistics: South Carolina and Orangeburg 121 Tatnall-Pierce-Zimmerman Family Tree 123 Notes 125 Bibliography 153 Index 165

Illustrations Following Page 51 Franklin Pierce (1845–1905) Charlotte Davis (1845–1894) James Pierce (1876–1937) Mayesville Industrial Institute Photo of Antique Wooden Cigar-box Castle Matilda Buggs Tatnall (1862–1927) Hazel Frederica Tatnall (1888–1982) Georgia Day Tatnall (1883–?) St. Emma’s Military Academy in Rock Castle, Virginia Jello at Two Months and Three Weeks Viessa, Age Nine Months, and Jello, Age One and a Half Baby Boy Bubba Jello, Age Six or Seven Hazel Pierce and Husband James with Their Model-T Ford Jello, Age Twelve, and Bubba, Age Eight Gerry with Her “Bob” Haircut Fisk University Fisk University 1932 Commencement Program Gerry’s Husband, Dudley Malone “Zin” Zimmerman William Zimmerman (?–1923) Zin’s 1932 Bachelor of Science Degree

Geraldyne and Dudley’s 1935 Marriage License Geraldyne Early in Her Marriage Grave of James Piece, Colored Cemetery in Orangeburg Gerry and Zin with Five-Month-Old Malone, January 1942 Gerry and Zin’s Second Child, Rose Hazel Malone, Age Five, and Rose Hazel, Age Three Rose Hazel, Age Seven, with Grandmother Hazel Gerry’s Master of Science Degree Professor Geraldyne P. Zimmerman Professor Zimmerman Instructs Students, Early 1970s Professor Zimmerman Receives a “Gratitude for Service” Plaque Gerry at the National Science Foundation Summer Institute Gerry with Rose Hazel at the National Science Foundation Rose Hazel and Malone Model Their Christ the King Band Uniforms Rose Hazel Shows Off Her Bicycle, 1953 Malone, Age Sixteen, and Rose Hazel, Age Fourteen, with Their Dance Escorts Gerry and Zin Congratulate Their Son for Receiving the Eagle Scout Medal Zimmermans Hosting a Formal Holiday Gathering in Their Home, December 1958 Mom Hazel with Her Two Grown Children, Bubba and Jello, Late 1970s Four Generations of Zimmermans, 1995 Gerry and Mom Hazel Dressed in Period Attire Mrs. Z at Church with Her Girl Scout Troop, 1970s Gerry and her Links, Incorporated Members and Inductees, 1974 Gerry as Key Speaker on Geraldyne Zimmerman Day, 1959 Program for Geraldyne Zimmerman Day Mayor Clyde S. Fair Opens the Zimmerman Youth Center, 1963 Gerry Honored by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, 1976 Gerry’s Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Claflin University

Foreword Hayward Farrar Jr. It has been said that the past is a foreign country. If that is true, then Kibibi V. Mack-Shelton’s Ahead of Her Time in Yesteryear: Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman Comes of Age in a Southern African American Family gives a grand tour of a world utterly foreign to our present-day sensibilities. That world is of the African American middle and upper classes in the first half of the twentieth century. This was a world circumscribed by strict racial segregation, exclusion, and oppression. Yet, despite the immense disabilities placed upon them, many black families, such as the Pierce family, created a social order of pride and dignity and relative prosperity that gave their children the character and skills to be agents of transformative change. From this social order came the Civil Rights/ Black Power movements that dismantled Jim Crow in the South, rolled back racism in the North, and paved the way for the election of Barack Obama. The world brought to life by Professor Mack-Shelton’s book emphasized the values of hard work, fidelity, patience, prudence, perseverance, delayed gratification, and chastity to an extent almost unbelievable today. It also emphasized subtle but effective resistance to racial dehumanization. The Pierce family and many others of that era refused to internalize the values of white supremacy and black inferiority and conducted themselves insofar as possible as the equals if not superiors to whites. They refused to raise their children as racial inferiors; nor did they stifle their aspirations. At the same time, through strict parenting, the Pierces instilled in their children the values and character they needed to survive, flourish, and eventually bring about enormous social change. They had a strongly optimistic outlook and raised their children to struggle against and eventually push back the structures of white supremacy.

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The restrictions placed on “Jello” Pierce, especially regarding sex, by her family and by Fisk University are unimaginable today. Though she did rebel somewhat against her strict Victorian upbringing, her rebellion never went far enough to make her life dysfunctional. In fact this upbringing gave her the inner strength not only to endure the soul-destroying strictures of racist and sexist oppression, but to overcome these strictures and to live a most satisfying life as an educator, social activist, wife, and mother. Geraldyne “Jello” Zimmerman was a trailblazing educator, one of the few women, black or white, to become college professors of mathematics anywhere in the United States in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. She became one of the pillars of South Carolina State College as a mathematics professor from 1948 to 1976. She also contributed immensely to the black community of Orangeburg, South Carolina, through her founding of black Boy Scout and Girl Scout chapters. She established black women’s civic organizations too numerous to mention and worked with her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The black world that produced Jello Zimmerman also produced such giants in the community as Dorothy Height, John Hope Franklin, Lena Horne, Kenneth Clark, Whitney Young, Jackie Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald, Benjamin Hooks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, and others too numerous to mention. I contend that the African Americans born between 1910 and 1930 have been black folks’ “greatest generation” as they lived through and in many ways triumphed over the Great Depression and World War II and established the foundations for the Civil Rights and Black liberation movements. Against all odds they created relatively stable families and communities that became a force for transformative social change. In 1949 I was born into that world. While my parents did not live as affluently as the Pierce family, they and others lived by the values that the Pierces exemplified. My father, Hayward Farrar, was born in 1917 to Kenneth and Virginia Farrar in Mecklenburg County, Virginia. He was unable to receive a high school education in rural, racist Southside, Virginia. Still, he had the drive to migrate to Baltimore to better himself, acquiring skills as a carpenter and barber. He fought bravely and well in World War II, coming out a disabled veteran. He married my mother in 1945 and fathered me in 1949 and my brother, Ricardo, in 1953. He fit the stereotype of the uneducated, hopeless black man, yet he refused to live down to that stereotype. He had high hopes for my brother and me and literally worked himself to death to support our family, succumbing to hypertensive heart disease while working as a barber at the age of thirty-eight in 1955. He always wanted to be a doctor, but racism deprived him of that dream. So I became a doctor (a Ph.D. in history, not an M.D., but who cares?) and am now an associate professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Foreword

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My mother, Gloria Weaver Farrar, was born in Baltimore in 1921 to Mabel and Sherman Weaver. She was part of a family of eight girls. My grandmother, who was widowed in 1934, raised eight girls in the midst of the Great Depression and World War II and put three of them through college. When my mother graduated from high school in 1940, Maryland provided minimal higher education for its black citizens. Still she persevered, especially after my father’s death, becoming one of the few black women anywhere to purchase a house in a white neighborhood, in 1956. How she did this and got us out of the “projects,” I do not to this day know. Despite lacking a college degree, she taught in the Baltimore public school system and then went on to become a girls’ group home supervisor and mentor and a social worker. She was a civic leader as well, leading movements that resulted in the first school busing in Baltimore, pressuring the school system to build a badly needed new elementary school in our neighborhood, and finally keeping a new prison from being built in the neighborhood. Ironically, that prison was relocated to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and I taught in that prison from 1988 to 1992. My mother instilled in me the same values that Jello Pierce’s family instilled in her. In doing so she was assisted by her mother, the matriarch of our family, who died in 1998 at the age of one hundred, and her six surviving sisters. I grew up in an extended family so tightly knit that a cousin and I are the only members of that family to live outside Baltimore. The upbringing my family gave my brother and me provided the values and character to become productive black men in a tumultuous time. I followed my mother’s example in challenging white supremacy by moving into a white neighborhood in 1956, by attending predominately white public schools and then the almost lily-white University of Maryland from 1966 to 1970. While there I became a student activist presiding over the Black Student Union in 1969, serving on the committees that established the University of Maryland’s Afro-American Studies Department and wrote the school’s first affirmative action plan. Due to the activities of the BSU, black enrollment quadrupled during my time there. My mother encouraged these activities. Whenever she saw me on TV ranting at the university’s high command, she would call and offer to send five dollars, a lot of money in those days. After graduation from the University of Maryland, I earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago, became a naval officer, and then earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago, with John Hope Franklin as my dissertation director. During the 1970s these institutions were considerably whiter than they are now, and it is unlikely that I would have endured the stresses of racial isolation without the values instilled by my mother and other members of Jello Zimmerman’s generation.

Hayward Farrar Jr.

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I also followed in my mother’s footsteps in giving back to the black community by teaching in historically black colleges and universities such as Fisk, Spelman, and the University of Maryland–Eastern Shore, as well as by teaching black inmates in the Maryland prison system. Since coming to Virginia Tech in 1992, I have continued my community activism as faculty advisor to the VT branch of the NAACP and twice president of the school’s Black Caucus. My mother recently passed away at the age of eighty-eight. She lived a full life and lived long enough to see Barack Obama elected president. Obama somewhat resembles her late father, and she turned her house into an Obama shrine. Like Geraldyne Zimmerman, known today as “Mrs. Z.” and still going strong at ninety-nine, my mother was hale and hardy to the end. Ahead of Her Time in Yesteryear is an important work because it spotlights the values and behaviors of black folk who in many ways created the foundations for the black liberation movements of the 1950s and beyond. Ironically and tragically, the very values instilled in Jello Zimmerman, my mother and father, and many others of their generation began to be held up to scorn and ridicule from the 1960s onward. Due to the sexual revolution, the drug revolution, and other enormous social changes, values such as fidelity, patience, prudence, perseverance, delayed gratification, and chastity became less and less important. This can be seen in the explosion of out-of-wedlock births, sexually transmitted diseases, black-on-black crime, failure to establish stable marriages, and other social ills plaguing the contemporary black community. While outside structural factors such as deindustrialization, globalization, and intractable racism in jobs, housing, and education are among the causes of this social disorder, it is vital to remember that Jello Zimmerman and her generation faced even greater racial horrors than we do today, and they did not let their communities disintegrate. In fact, they laid the groundwork for transformative social change. By no means are we as black folk responsible for the racist oppression visited upon us, but we are responsible for our response to such oppression. Quite frankly, our response over the past forty years has become more and more dysfunctional, Barack Obama’s election notwithstanding. Geraldyne Zimmerman’s generation passed the torch down to my generation, and we and those who came after us blew it out. Now we wander around in darkness with, to paraphrase the great bluesman Robert Johnson, “hellhounds on our trail.” I believe Professor Mack-Shelton’s study of Geraldyne “Jello” “Mrs. Z” Zimmerman shows a path to lead us out of that darkness.

Foreword

Acknowledgments At the professional level, I want to first thank the University of Richmond’s Tyler and Alice Haynes Endowment Fund for supporting this project. It made it possible for me to travel to my research sites and transcribe the many hours of oral history tapes recorded during the research phase. Second, after using various transcription companies, I want to thank the “world’s best tape transcriber”—found right on little Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina—Anita Pelletiere of IGI Associates. You are the best! Furthermore, I want to express my appreciation to the University of Richmond’s dean of arts and sciences, Andrew Newcomb, for being a good friend and listener when I was stressed out while trying to complete this project; to administrative assistants Kathy Fugett and Deborah Govoruhk for assisting me with copying and showing me how to fill out the many travel forms; to history chairperson Hugh West and librarian Jim Gwin for being my best cheerleaders and showing unending interest in and support for my oral history projects; and to my peers, John “J. T.” Treadway, John “J. G.” Gordon, and Harry Ward, for making me smile when I felt like crying or laugh when I felt like screaming during my years at the University of Richmond. As always, on the personal level, family and longtime friends have been my rock and stabilizers. Hayward Farrar, Judith Smith, Thomas Robinson, and the late Elizabeth Fox-Genovese were there for me whenever I cried help. Guys, I’ll always “have your backs.” On the other hand, whether they need help or not, my daughters, Nabulungi, Yakini, Sibongile, and Abikanile, and my surrogate children, Shahid, Derek, and Sybil, continue to be my major, though welcomed, interruptions to any project I undertake, always making this mother feel needed and loved. Most important, I want to thank my loyal husband Ron and best-friend sister, Caroletta (Akanke), and her children,

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Kafele and Kanika, for unselfishly taking my place to care for our mom, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, during my many travels away from home. There are many things I could not have done without your being there. Last, I want to “spank” my two knuckleheaded puppies, Sir Banjee the Maltese and the baddest darn puppy in the world, standard poodle Basenjee. They both have successfully sabotaged this project from its genesis. It seems that every time I lifted my laptop to work, their bladders sent off a signal to come to me for outdoor walks. Yet I must confess that these two canine knuckleheads, along with my loving mom and my busy grandkids, Garvey, Chase, and Shabazz, all made me LOL in different ways while writing this book.

Acknowledgments

Introduction The inspiration for this book beamed from writing my first book, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges (University of Tennessee Press, 1999), which left me with an itching curiosity to learn more about one of the women discussed in the book, Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman. Zimmerman, a feisty African American nonagenarian, is one of South Carolina’s most respected Black female icons in education and community leadership. When I was collecting data for Parlor Ladies, I spent several hours afterward listening to her “back in the olden days” girlhood stories. The more she talked, the more I wanted to learn about Black culture and its impact on the women’s experiences from the old days. The focus of this book is on the child rearing, courtship, and marriage of Geraldyne Zimmerman, an African American female coming of age in the early-twentieth-century South. In this narrative, based on my many oral interviews with her, Zimmerman’s biographical and family cultural life are revealing and fascinating. The era of the Roaring Twenties in which she grew up, the books on proper Black etiquette and behavior, and the conservative social norms of courtship, sex, and marriage all played significant roles in shaping young Zimmerman into a feisty and, at times, a rebellious child and young adult. Throughout her life, Zimmerman always protested, with either subtlety or boldness, against rules she deemed unfair or ridiculous. Today, while modernday readers might perceive her life as “squeaky clean,” that of a “good girl” who never strayed in spite of her feistiness, it is important to remember that early twentieth-century norms were far more conservative than those of the latter twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the larger Black southern community this difference stemmed from a strong belief in God and the influences that both the church and preachers had on instilling the need to live a

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“God-fearing” life or face “burning in hell’s damnation.” What was considered deviant, disobedient, or devilish behaviors in “yesteryear,” such as being “mouthy, eavesdropping, cutting one’s hair without permission, or breaking curfew,” are practically considered normal behavior in today’s youth. In actuality, young Zimmerman was a maverick, and as of July 2010, at almost one hundred years old, she continues to be one. Growing up in the early twentieth century, she was definitely the new, modern female, born ahead of her time. She spoke her mind, had unusual interests, made radical decisions, demanded the same treatment her brother received from their parents, and, at times, chose to go left when all others went right. As a girl she considered herself equal to boys, and as a young adult she deviated from traditional thinking and the norms deemed appropriate for females of her era. While her demands or wishes might not have been met each time, she was feisty enough to assert them anyway. This book delves into Zimmerman’s personal family background to illustrate the life experiences that ultimately shaped the type of person she became. I uncovered some fascinating details on how early Black families reared their children, dictated their lives, and taught them the prevailing Victorian views of love, courtship, sex, and marriage well into the twentieth century. This book brings forth two almost forgotten aspects of early African American culture: family traditions and child-rearing practices. It should help us better understand how southern black children were reared, how they were expected to behave, and what they were taught about child bearing, gender relations, sex, pregnancy, courtship, and marriage between 1865 and 1965, the first one hundred years after slavery ended. I hope the history presented here will somehow lead modern families to readopt some of these past practices and thereby rear healthier children and restore the traditional civility and high moral ethics once found commonly among youth, the future parents of tomorrow. This book begins with a prologue, which provides insight into the kind of world Geraldyne Zimmerman and her ancestors experienced in early Orangeburg and South Carolina, and ends with an epilogue for the curious reader who wishes to know about Zimmerman’s later life, which was filled with daily civic work and eventually rewarded with recognition, awards, and the success stories of the youth she positively affected. Perhaps one day someone will pick up where this book stops and expound on this epilogue, as this part of Zimmerman’s life certainly warrants a completely separate book. Between the prologue and epilogue are four chapters followed by a conclusion. Chapter 1, “Ancestors: The Pierces and the Tatnalls, 1860s–1910,” introduces the earliest members of Zimmerman’s family and recollections of child rearing, courtship, marriage, work, and activism from her grandparents in

Introduction

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the 1860s to 1910. Chapter 2, “Jello: The Girl, 1910–1929,” describes the childhood of young Zimmerman and her parents’ child-rearing practices between 1910 and 1930. Chapter 3, “Geraldyne: The Young Adult, 1929–1933,” focuses on her formative and young adult years growing up in the Roaring Twenties, including her years away in college. And the final chapter, “Gerry: The Mother, 1933–1960s,” describes a grown-up Geraldyne, now called “Gerry,” and her child-rearing practices in the midst of balancing her life as a wife, mother, and community worker. In this chapter, child-rearing traditions employed between the 1860s and 1930s are compared to those Zimmerman used in the 1950s and 1960s. The conclusion examines the continuity of or departure from African American women’s roles as mothers or homemakers between the 1920s and the 1960s and the culture of courtship, marriage, and child rearing as depicted in the Pierce and Zimmerman households.

Introduction

Prologue The era in which the Pierces, Tatnalls, and Zimmermans emerged between the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, is quite different from the modern era of the mid-twentieth to the early twenty-first century. In this prologue I provide a brief overview of the early history and times of Black South Carolina, Black Orangeburg, and the Black family in Orangeburg. In doing so, I hope to shed enough light on this era of history for younger readers to better understand the unique world that young Jello and her ancestors entered at birth and grew up in. It is a world very different from the twenty-first century that this very wise nonagenarian, Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, continues to enjoy.

Early Black Carolinians The British province called “Carolina” was established in 1663 when King Charles II granted eight nobles a royal charter to settle the colony. During this early period, according to M. Eugene Sirmans, a marked preference for African labor existed long before the emergence of agricultural staples and plantations. Thus in 1671 the first West Africans were brought to this colony as slaves. By 1690 rice production required more labor and the population of African slave imports increased at a rapid pace. The colony prospered from its mass production of rice, indigo, and corn; in 1712 slavery was legalized, and by 1724 there were twice as many Africans as Whites in the colony.1 Tensions developed within Carolina Colony among its settlers, and in 1729, King Charles II divided the colony into two separate ones: North Carolina and South Carolina. In 1788, South Carolina became a state, and by 1790 the new state had 140,178 Whites and 107,094 slaves, the second highest number of slaves after Virginia. South Carolina passed harsh slave codes,

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largely modeled after the British colony of Barbados because many of its slaves arrived via Barbados. Treatment of the slaves varied, but George Williams argued that in early South Carolina, many Whites “did not care any more for the life of a Negro slave than for the crawling worm in their path.” By 1860, South Carolina’s White population had increased to 291,300, while its nonWhite population totaled 412, 408.2 When slavery ended, South Carolina had to rebuild the superstructure and infrastructure destroyed during the Civil War. Research of the Reconstruction era, between 1866 and 1877, shows that most African Americans refrained from having contact with Whites out of fear and social deference. A small number actively enjoyed their new public equality as they rode streetcars or frequented restaurants, theaters, and other places deemed “open to all.” Post-Reconstruction South Carolina, however, revealed increasing white resentment directed toward African Americans as a host of new laws called “Black Codes” were passed. These laws restricted Blacks’ movements and controlled their lives, from where they worked, lived, and socialized to how they voted or married. According to Walter B. Edgar, post-Reconstruction South Carolina enforced the continued practice of racial discrimination by intensifying its effort to keep the races separate when it declared in its “1895 constitution” that anyone having “one-eighth or more negro blood” was Black and “everyone else . . . white.” Thus when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, South Carolina was already positioned to move forward with legalizing racial segregation in all aspects of its social life and culture.3 As a result, Black South Carolinians lived under a permanent system of racial discrimination commonly referred to as Jim Crow segregation. In addition, their legalized inferior social status restricted them to work in the lowest-level jobs, reside in segregated areas of town, socialize only in designated areas, and continue behaving in the customary manner, showing grave deference to all Whites. According to Edgar, Blacks were expected to go to back doors and to address Whites as “Massa, Master, Miss, or Boss.” Had they used “Mr.” or “Mrs.,” they would have been considered impudent. Whites tried to avoid using “Mr.” or “Mrs.” when addressing Blacks, even in legal situations. Regardless of age, Whites addressed Black people by their first names. If a courtesy title were used, it would likely be “uncle, daddy, aunty, or mauma.” . . . White children learned not to use the terms “lady” or “gentleman” when referring to Black people.

Prologue

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Though some protested against losing their “civil and political rights,” Edgar added, the “public equality” that some earlier Black Carolinians had enjoyed during the Reconstruction era was officially “dead.” If African Americans broke one of the customary de facto or legal de jure Jim Crow laws, whether unknowingly or purposely, they lost their jobs, were evicted from their rented homes, and/or were physically beaten or “lynched,” all done by Whites with impunity.4 In 1900, Black Carolinians numbered as high as 58 percent of South Carolina’s population, but by 1950 their numbers had decreased to 38 percent as they migrated to northern urban cities to fill job openings during the World War I and World War II mass movements commonly referred to as the Great Migrations. Black Carolinians were forced to rely on their own skills and resources for daily survival from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s under racial segregation and unpredictable physical violence from the White community. Forced segregation caused Blacks to established their own businesses, churches, and clubs; it also forced them to attend the separate and qualitatively inferior primary and secondary schools that were set up in their communities. On the other hand, Black Carolinians happily boasted about their six historically Black four-year colleges and one two-year college in the state of South Carolina. As the majority continued to work hard in “dead-end,” low-wage jobs and their children attended inferior schools opened a few months a year, there was a significant minority of African Americans whose experiences were quite different.5 This significant minority were the entrepreneurs, the college-educated professionals, or the descendants of early prominent Black families who had the financial means to live comfortable lives, enjoying their high social status in their community. Within this more well-to-do and/or better-educated African American community, there were some who exuded snobbery toward African Americans outside their small social circle; for them, attaining higher education, being a member of a prominent political or well-to-do family, owning property, and having relatively high incomes were significant determinants in deciding who was or was not a part of the elite. For them, having some semblance of mixed racial ancestry, attested to by a light-skinned complexions and/or European-like hair, noses, lips, or eye color, was an additional quality that, in unspoken terms, they deemed more comely than and superior to African Americans’ darker skin tones and African-textured hair.6 Regardless of some Black elites’ superior attitudes toward others, Asa H. Gordon through his own personal observations and research described the ongoing unfair treatment of all Blacks from the set double standards of Jim Crow South Carolina. Gordon argued that in 1928, a “White business man can

Early Black Carolinians

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be certain that the Negro will be mostly confined to the support of his own race, the colored people, while he, the white man, can get customers from both races. White people in South Carolina will not, as a rule, insure their lives in Negro companies. They will not deposit their funds in Negro banks. White insurance companies and banks, while eager to get the Negroes’ money, will not freely lend it back to Negroes.”7 Despite Black Carolinians’ work productivity and advanced accomplishments, they remained “second-class citizens.” When the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Topeka ruling legally dismantled Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” culture, Black Carolinians joined leaders such as Septima Poinsette Clark, Benjamin Mays, James Sulton, and Mary Modjeska Simkins in peaceful demonstrations during the civil rights movement to implement the new policy of integration throughout the state.

Early Black Orangeburg Between 1730 and 1737, German-Swiss settlers immigrated into the interior of South Carolina and established Orangeburgh Township near the Edisto River. They received land as an incentive for making the daring settlements among the malaria-carrying mosquitoes, dense forests, and potentially unfriendly Indians. It was possible that these early settlers traveled with African slaves to perform the initial, arduous tasks. The early township prospered from the cultivation of grain, inland rice, and indigo; by 1800 the tiny village, now called Orangeburg, cultivated indigo, rice, and cotton as its main staples. In 1831, Orangeburg was incorporated as a town, and by 1850 most of its homes owned 1 to 5 slaves with six homes owning between 43 and 111 slaves. Of the 129 free Blacks listed, all except for 11 were “mulattoes.” Eventually, Orangeburg County had one of the largest populations of slaves in the state, second only to Charleston County. During the antebellum era, the bulk of the slaves were in rural Orangeburg County working as farmhands, but a significant minority were in the town of Orangeburg performing non-agricultural work.8 Between 1861 and 1865, Orangeburg “furnished her full quota of volunteers” for the Civil War and was eventually captured on February 10, 1865, by General Sherman. When slavery ended, the majority of Blacks remained in the rural areas while others migrated into Orangeburg Township seeking opportunities to improve their welfare. One White traveler reported that he observed male exslaves in Orangeburg meeting “trains to carry passengers’ baggage and drive them via wagons to their dwellings.” In addition, he saw both Orangeburg male and female ex-slaves working “in the local hotel cooking, cleaning, fan-

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ning flies, running errands, and other tasks [performed] under both physical and verbal abuse.” He noted that these African Americans were ill treated by Whites, including those northern Whites who worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau, the federal agency designed to help Orangeburg’s ex-slaves adapt to their new freedom. Amid the abuse and unending hard work for low wages, Orangeburg’s early African American freed community believed the rumored promise that they were to be given the lands abandoned by fleeing White planters. Believing “that such a golden age had come,” they, like the Black majority throughout the postbellum South, had their dreams shattered as these lands gradually “were . . . returned to their owners when pardoned by the government.”9 Amid the harsh Black Codes and other discriminatory laws that were being passed to “revitalize slavery” in South Carolina, Orangeburg’s Black majority worked as rural laborers and domestics on White-owned plantations, as sharecroppers, and as field hands on small farms. Rural Blacks who migrated closer to town were restricted to living on the outskirts of Orangeburg in the southeastern part of Orange Township, where they were employed in menial occupations such as washerwomen, nursemaids, cooks, maids, yard men, day laborers, and farm laborers. African American females, both young and old, working as domestics in White homes were still exposed to sexual harassment or molestation from White males, a continuum from their days in slavery. Black Orangeburg was forced to be self-reliant and gradually developed their businesses and assisted in employing their own race. The center of the Black shopping district was located across from the colleges of South Carolina State A&M and Claflin on Railroad Avenue, a street that ran parallel to the town’s railroad tracks. This street was perpendicular to the main road, Russell Street, which led to the White-owned stores in Orangeburg’s downtown shopping area. Maxwell’s Staple and Fancy Groceries was one of the stores located on Russell Street off the Railway Avenue area. Its black owner, “John Moreau Maxwell was the son of South Carolina State Senator Henry Johnson Maxwell and Martha Louisa Dibble Maxwell.” He “operated” his store “from 1904 until his death in 1938,” when his family took over. The Maxwell store “employed eleven full-time and several part-time workers, and was considered among the finest in the state according to Asa H. Gordon.”10 In early-twentieth-century Orangeburg, there were others like the Maxwells who thrived economically. This small minority of African Americans managed to escape the drudgery and harassment the Black majority endured; they were the financially comfortable and usually well-educated upper-class and upper-middle-class African Americans who were college presidents, deans, professors, physicians, lawyers, and owners of successful,

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sometimes rather lucrative, businesses. They were the ones who descended from Orangeburg’s early prominent Black families, including the Wilkinsons, Millers, Middletons, Fordhams, Pierces, Sasportas, Sultons, Maxwells, and Greens. They were the successful entrepreneurs and proprietors of businesses and/or the highly educated professionals, like other Black elites in the wider southern communities, they too took pride in their socioeconomic status and mixed ancestral backgrounds. They resided in the more respected areas of Black Orangeburg in their larger, finer homes; they socialized together in their private clubs and attended their “high-brow” church services at Claflin College’s affiliates, Trinity Methodist and St. Luke Presbyterian, or South Carolina State A&M’s affiliate, St. Paul Episcopal. Orangeburg’s elite African Americans consciously sought to marry into families from “preferred social backgrounds.” And they took pride in their mixed ancestral heritage, seeking to socialize and intermarry with those who also had the coveted “good hair” and skin tones from light brown to very light brown. Black Orangeburg was a microcosm of the larger African American communities found throughout the United States in all their diversities and similarities, economically, culturally, and politically.11 Whether they were the uneducated poor or the educated elite, Blacks in Orangeburg complied with both the legal and customary Jim Crow etiquette laws to avoid tension and violence. Though privately, among themselves, most expressed remonstrance against this inequity, there were individuals who occasionally spoke out in protest of being disrespected at the risk of receiving personal humiliation, retaliation, or even death. Of course, as Asa Gordon pointed out, even when they spoke out, their manner was probably “too diplomatically polite to be offensively rude.” According to Walter B. Edgar, although South Carolina newspapers might have “condemned lynching as a threat to law and order, there was little sympathy for lynch mobs’ black victims.” However, when baseball great Jackie Robinson arrived at the local airport in November 1959 after speaking in Greenville, South Carolina, but was not allowed in the White waiting room, local Black leaders bypassed challenging the discrimination via the court system and instead staged a peaceful protest march from a local Black church to the airport. In February 1960 a group of Black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University students staged their own “sit-in” at the local Woolworth store’s lunch counter to protest its refusal to seat and serve African American customers. “Within a few weeks, there were sit-ins all over South Carolina and the South,” according to Edgar. The civil rights movement had officially reached South Carolina.12 A few weeks later in 1960, Orangeburg’s NAACP organized demonstrations against racial segregation and discrimination by marching peacefully,

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carrying signs of protests, and singing “We Shall Overcome,” a “John’s Island folksong” that emerged as the “national anthem” for the civil rights movement. The movement largely followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s strategy of nonviolent protest, though physical skirmishes did erupt at times between White law enforcement agents and/or private White citizens and some of the younger Black student protesters. One such incident occurred in Orangeburg in February 1968, when several South Carolina State College students attempted to integrate a privately owned “Whites only” local bowling alley. Upon the owner’s refusal to admit Black patrons, the students left, but they returned with a larger group of students to demand entrance. A skirmish erupted and the students were reprimanded and told to return to campus. In turn the governor of South Carolina, Robert E. McNair, ordered the National Guard into Orangeburg to maintain order. On the unfortunate night of February 8, the National Guardsmen fired into a large crowd of students holding a rally on campus grounds after they mistook some students’ rock and bottle throwing as gunfire, leaving three students dead and several others wounded. By the early 1970s, a new guard of moderate politicians had replaced the old-guard segregationists and a more racially integrated South Carolina and Orangeburg gradually evolved.13

Southern Black Families Early southern Black families of varied social backgrounds have been thoroughly examined and discussed by past and current scholars, including W. E. B. Du Bois, E. Franklin Frazier, Charles Johnson, Benjamin Quarles, Gunnar Myrdal, Herbert G. Gutman, John Hope Franklin, Harriette Pipes McAdoo, James B. Stewart, Andrew Billingsley, Harold E. Cheatham, Robert E. Staples, and many others. While their conceptualizations of the Black family varied, most agreed that the Black family somehow managed to survive slavery, violence, racial discrimination, Jim Crow segregation, and poverty. In turn, they further demythologized many of the negative stereotypical images held of the Black family throughout history by depicting the many social factors that produce many problems experienced by the modern Black family.14 Both the Black family and Black church have long proven to be the strongest, most important institutions in the Black community. Charles S. Johnson’s research described the important relationship between the church and African American youth living in the rural South, a region where the majority resided in the early twentieth century. He explained the inextricable link and unending bond that existed between the family and church, rightly stating that “the church [had] been and continue[d] to be the outstanding social institution

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in the [Black] community” with “a far wider function than to bring spiritual inspiration to its communicants.” Though his discussion focused on rural African Americans, his assertions were applicable to the larger Black community when he stated that “the church [was] still the only institution which provide[d] an effective organization of the group, an approved and tolerated place for social activities, a forum for expression on many issues, an outlet for emotional repressions, and a plan for social living.” In addition, other scholars, including Carter G. Woodson, Eugene Genovese, and Thomas G. Poole, described how slaves used their new Christian religion as a survival tool. They secretly held their own church services and had their own religious leaders; they shaped their worship to comply with their personal cultural interests, they made certain their marriage ceremonies were performed by a preacher even though the law did not recognize their marriages. Lastly, they placed their family values “within the framework of Christian theology” intermixed with their own religious African survivals.15 Southern African Americans shaped their social lives, their philosophies, and their family lives to conform to this Christian biblical context during and after the slave era. According to Thomas G. Poole, the “church itself was considered extended family” where “the pastor functions as a male parent. . . . The first lady . . . as female parent. The governing board of deacons, elders. . . . as the older adults.” Hence, according to Poole, “the church functioned as an agent of social control with respect to the Black family.” Whether it was the impoverished Black majority attending the “grass-roots,” “old-time religion” Baptist or Pentecostal lively church services or well-to-do Blacks attending their more staid, high-brow Presbyterian or Episcopal services, religion permeated every aspect of Black family life, from how Blacks defined what clothing, music, or gender interactions were appropriate to how spankings or reciting Bible verses around meal times were necessary components in child rearing.16 In examining the African American family in South Carolina, Asa Gordon discussed the “evolution of the Negro home,” where the world “home” can be interpreted as synonymous with “family.” He agreed with W. E. B. Du Bois’s assertion that African slaves came to America with a system of morals different from that of their White masters and successfully integrated their cultural morality into their new life. However, while both Du Bois and Gordon agreed that the African tradition of “sex morality” was also integrated into their chattel lives, Gordon pointed out that South Carolina slaves gradually abandoned these morals in their adaptation to the peculiar system in which they no longer had control over their bodies or sexuality. From Du Bois’s study of the early-twentieth- century Black family, he generalized how “sexual immorality [was] probably the greatest single plague spot among Negro Americans . . .

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and the present utter disregard of black women’s virtue and self-respect both in law courts and in custom in the South.”17 While Gordon agreed with Du Bois’s generalization, he quickly defended and highlighted improvements in morality within South Carolina’s Black families. He argued there was a decrease in “miscegenation of an immoral nature” in the late 1920s. This was attributed “to a higher moral standard on the part of Negro women,” increased “race pride among [Blacks],” better protection from Black men, and an increase in morality among southern Whites.18 Gordon blamed the ills of the Black family in South Carolina on their deplorable state of poverty. They held high work ethics and worked hard, attended church and placed God first, and prayed for a better life that included education for their children. However, most Black Carolinians held jobs that paid the lowest wages, and as a result females were forced to work as domestics in White homes, exposing them to sexual immorality, while males were constantly tempted “to get things by stealing or [using] other immoral practices” to take care of their families. Gordon concluded that “immorality and poverty [went] hand in hand.” More important, he observed how poverty led to “the habit of early marriage” among impoverished Black Carolinians, further enhancing their “many maladjustments,” such as having large families they could not provide for or educate. Hence “a vicious cycle of poverty [was] established” from which it became virtually impossible for these African American families to escape.19 Regarding child-rearing practices in South Carolina in the early twentieth century, Gordon disagreed adamantly with Du Bois, who reported that in South Carolina “some few [children were] properly reared . . . [and a] majority . . . [did] not attend school. . . . [including] Sunday school.” Gordon described how South Carolina’s African American children were “very well cared for and attend[ed] school largely,” though improvement was still needed. One large Black Carolinian family that supported Gordon’s assertion were the Middletons. The Middletons worked hard to escape poverty and illiteracy by emphasizing work ethics, attending church, living good Christian lives, and striving for education and better lives for their children.20 The Middleton family’s origins were on a slave plantation in the low country Charleston area through their ancestral patriarch, Abram Middleton, who spent half his life as a slave and yet somehow learned to read and write. As a slave he was a skilled tailor and a “master carpenter”; he married a slave woman and they had six children, two of them dying early. After slavery, he attended Baker Theological School in Charleston and became a Methodist Episcopal minister; after his wife died, he remarried and had an additional eleven children. As a minister, Middleton made a living with his carpentry

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skills by traveling throughout South Carolina building and renovating churches. On Abram Middleton’s deathbed, he told his oldest son, Samuel, that “he was leaving him his property [a house] on Clark Street in Orangeburg and in return wanted him to make sure that each of [his] brothers and sisters got an education.”21 Using the carpentry skills learned from his father, Samuel Middleton worked hard on several different jobs to earn money to pay for the education of his younger siblings at Claflin College. Though he himself never received a college education, he married a college-educated teacher and raised their children as he continued to educate his siblings, a drain that caused “severe financial hardship on [his own] family.” In spite of these financial hardships and Samuel’s long work days, the family remained a strong unit. Contrary to W. E. B. Du Bois’s findings in South Carolina during the same time in the 1920s, this hardworking family did not neglect their children but stressed strong values to them, including “awareness of the needs of others around [them], attending to God and church, being personally accountable for [their] schoolwork, helping [their] parents with household and yard chores, and maintaining good character.”22 Early 1860 documentation revealed there were established Black households in antebellum Orangeburg. Though tens of thousands of Black Carolinians lived as slaves in undocumented households, there were twenty-two free Black families of about 129 people listed in the U.S. Census reports. More than likely, most were dirt poor and worked very long hours to earn minute wages. Yet the census records show that out of a total of twenty-two families, eleven were two-parent households with an average of two to three children per family. Also listed were eleven single-parent households, with nine being femaleheaded ones; these single-parent households had an average of three children, although two had eight and nine offspring, respectively. This data not only indicated the presence of family stability but also suggested how responsible these early free Black families were if they purposely kept the size of their families small to better live within their means, unlike enslaved families, whose masters encouraged them to bear large numbers of children.23 After slavery ended, Orangeburg’s African American couples legalized their marriages like so many other former slaves did throughout the South; now they focused on finding work to support their families, regardless of how meager the earnings. It seemed that the stability of Orangeburg’s Black families continued from slavery into freedom, as most families were still twoparent ones, with both parents engaged in some form of gainful employment. For example, in 1880 there were 160 two-parent families out of a total of 266 Black households, in 1900 there were 329 two-parent families out of a total

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of 535 Black households, and by 1910 there were 420 two-parent families out of a total of 708 Black families. For the remaining single-parent households, most were female-headed and the women heading them might once have been married but now were single because they were divorced or their spouses had been sold during slavery or killed in the war. In addition, there were probably a number of females who never married but had children, including those begotten via miscegenation.24 Whether or not Black Orangeburg had two-parent or single-parent households in the early twentieth century, all these families remained embedded in a religious fervor that continually shaped their morality, decision making, and social behavior; it was their strong belief in God and their uncompromising spirituality that led them to focus their personal, family, and social lives around that of the church. E. Franklin Frazier pointed out that by the mid-1900s, even with their best intentions, families had difficulties raising African American youth with a healthy, positive self-esteem. He argued that the task was even more difficult in poorer families since these parents themselves still had “attitudes of accommodation to an inferior racial status.” For them to raise children to not “act in a servile manner” yet to be respectful of Whites was a challenge, and their children rebelled by showing even greater hostility toward the White community. It was at these times that parents employed their “Christian faith to teach them to have good will toward Whites.” For the families of the Black hoi polloi, it was through music and singing in the church that they were able to express themselves freely. Frazier explained that this was because “the lower classes, especially the most illiterate and the most impoverished, find in the ecstatic form of religious services an outlet for their pent up emotions and frustrations.” It was in the church that they congregated with others who shared similar trials and tribulations, appealed to their preachers for prayers to protect their family, attended respectable church socials on Saturdays, and did missionary work such as visiting the sick or raising money for their churches. It was because of their religious fervor and the church that they raised their children to say their prayers, count their blessings, and praise the Lord.25 For Orangeburg’s African American elite, religion also played a major role in molding their families, but in terms of their personal, family, and social lives, their activities went beyond those at their churches due to their secular social clubs and civic organizations. Though the lives and cultures of Blacks in Orangeburg were dynamically diverse due to having varied socioeconomic statures, they were in some senses very similar. They all shared the same charge of protecting and keeping their families together, supporting them financially while raising and preparing their children for a better future amid a racially segregated, sometimes hostile, city.26

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Having both South Carolina State A&M College and Claflin University in Orangeburg was an advantage to the community’s Black families since the colleges produced a cadre of educated community leaders who volunteered to improve, lead, and uplift Black Orangeburg through their civic work, economically, socially, and educationally. However, just as these colleges produced community activists who readily gave back to Black Orangeburg by forming youth clubs or collecting clothing for the poor through their sororities, fraternities, or other local civic organizations, they also inadvertently played a negative role in further enhancing existing social divisions. Those affiliated with the colleges earned higher salaries, widening the economic discrepancy that allowed them to live in nicer houses and neighborhoods where they consciously socialized and intermarried with one another. Snobbish attitudes certainly prevailed in Orangeburg, where some parents displayed class discrimination as they taught their own “children to eschew the ways of lower-class [Blacks].” Yet simultaneously, according to Frazier, they managed to “conceal . . . from the[ir] child his racial identity; by avoiding places and situations where the child would suffer [race] discrimination” from Whites, forcing the parent to “rationaliz[e] concerning his race and status.”27 The activities of the civil rights movement in the 1960s played a major role in uniting Blacks in Orangeburg from all social classes in their fight against racial segregation, discrimination, and injustices. African American families and their churches contributed either directly or indirectly by breaking down de facto segregation by the early 1970s, almost twenty years after the Brown v. Board of Education court ruling. As in the larger South, Orangeburg’s Black families survived slavery, Jim Crow segregation, violence, and poverty. The Tatnall-Pierce-Zimmerman family also survived and thrived through these same eras, emerging as one of the most respected and socially productive families in both the city of Orangeburg and state of South Carolina. This book is an attempt to show how their traditions—in the family and in the community—have persisted over past generations until the present by highlighting the life of Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman.

Prologue

Chapter 1

Ancestors: The Pierces and Tatnalls, 1860s–1910 Introducing Grandfather Pierce Franklin Pierce was born on July 18, 1845, in the small town of Cassatt, South Carolina, the free biracial son of a slave woman and her White plantation owner. At some point, he inherited about three to four hundred acres of farmland from his White father and became a successful farmer in Cassatt. In 1865 Pierce married Charlotte Davis, a Cherokee Indian also born in Cassatt in 1845. It is not known how they met, but this young couple eventually had twelve children, including baby James in 1875, who were all more “mestizo” than they were “mulatto.”1 Franklin and Charlotte Pierce were strict disciplinarians and believed in using the rod for whippings. Together they built a strong family unit that had close ties and was based on strong religious values. Hence it was not surprising when Franklin built a long table with benches so that their entire family could sit at the table together for meals and prayer.2 Franklin Pierce, a true patriarch, took care of his family and made decisions in the best interest of them. He worked extremely hard alongside his hired farmhands to sustain his productive farm. The family’s matriarch, Charlotte, also worked very hard cooking, cleaning, and tending to the children and other domestic matters. As the children grew older, each was instilled with the Pierce’s ethic of “hard work.” The Pierce boys eventually joined the hired help in working in the fields, while their sisters assisted their mother with the domestic duties. Young James Pierce, with his brothers, would get up early in the morning to work in the field all day, plowing the rows, planting

2

corn and peas, and picking cotton. Very hungry, they would often pick and eat the raw peas to quench their appetites.3 Franklin Pierce, a very fair-skinned mulatto, benefited from his White ancestral heritage, both financially and socially. He inherited mass acres of land from his White father and was well respected in both the Black and White communities. Because of this respect, he had an unofficial political role serving as the liaison between the two communities during Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction South Carolina. To date, no data has been found to show that Franklin Pierce served formally in the state legislature, senate, or any other elected or appointed role in South Carolina politics.4 It is not known whether Franklin Pierce and his wife went to school anywhere. However, before the early 1900s, half of their twelve children had finished the nearby two-year school in Camden called Mather Academy. Northern White philanthropists and humanitarians who wanted to educate local African Americans founded the school in 1887. After finishing Mather Academy, the youngest daughter, Sarah, went on to attend South Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical College (later called South Carolina State A&M College) in Orangeburg, South Carolina.5 Orangeburg was home to South Carolina’s first African American higher education institution, Claflin College. Founded in 1869 by northern Methodist missionaries, Claflin was a private college that “emphasized the arts and intellectualism.” A few years later in 1872, the South Carolina General Assembly passed an act to grant money to further expand the school by adding an agricultural and mechanical component. The new component was called the South Carolina State Agricultural and Mechanical Institute and was now a part of Claflin; however, twenty-four years later the South Carolina General Assembly passed another act to separate the institute from Claflin. In 1896, the new, state-funded public college was called the South Carolina State Agricultural and Mechanical College, and its first two presidents, Thomas E. Miller of Beaufort and Robert Shaw Wilkinson of Charleston, were both welleducated African Americans from prominent Reconstruction families of free antebellum background. In the early 1900s, when Sarah entered South Carolina State Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly called “State A&M,” both Claflin and State A&M were highly regarded institutions in the Black higher education community and their strongest support system came from Orangeburg’s Black elites, who played integral roles in the daily operations of the colleges.6 Sarah enrolled at State A&M at the same time another student, Benjamin Mays, attended. In fact, she became Mays’s first love, and while they were an exclusive couple in college, their amorous relationship did not flourish into

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marriage. Sarah graduated from State A&M Normal Training School in 1916, with the L.I. (licentiate instructione) teaching degree. During this time, it was the L.I. degree, not the bachelor’s degree, that qualified a person to teach school. However, by the late twentieth century, the normal school degree program was reduced to being equivalent to having two years beyond the regular high school diploma; by this time, all teachers were required to earn a bachelor’s degree to teach in lieu of the L.I. degree.7 The Pierce family, like some other southern, light-skinned African American families, had a history of some of its members relocating up North in order to “pass” for a White person in certain instances. Since slavery, an “intra-racial segregation based on skin color” from White heritage existed within the larger African American community; those more educated, skilled, and financially secured with light skin color and/or straight-textured hair were commonly perceived as superior to the Black majority and enjoyed certain advantages. For example, in South Carolina, Edmund L. Drago described how children of mixed ancestry, who were “blue-eyed, fair-skinned” and attended Charleston’s Black school, the Avery Normal Institute, were given privileges that were not available to the other, darker-skinned children in the school. Orangeburg’s African Americans who had some form of White, Indian, or mixed ancestral heritage usually were “honey” brown, light brown, or even “White-looking” in skin color. A minority, usually those from the upper classes, held snobbish attitudes toward others with darker hue. For the few with lighter skin, they were able to pass for White if they chose to relocate to a new city. E. Franklin Frazier’s study during this era revealed that youth who were able to pass for White to attend movies or get a job commonly did so willingly. Similarly, if the opportunity arose in Orangeburg where a “White-looking” Black was mistaken for being White, they might take advantage of crossing the Jim Crow segregation line by, perhaps, trying on a hat or shoes in a White-owned store that prohibited Blacks from doing so or choosing to ride in the “Whites only” car of the train rather than the Jim Crow car reserved for Blacks.8 Many of the Pierce children were of a reddish brown complexion with curly or straight hair; however, two of the girls, Charlotte and Sarah, were extremely fair skinned with very straight hair. African Americans with this sort of complexion and European phenotypic characteristics were usually referred to as “White Negroes.” When Charlotte Pierce finished Mather Academy, she went to Philadelphia to continue her schooling. She eventually married Bennie Walker and made her home in Philadelphia. After graduation, her younger sister, Sarah, initially taught in a public school in Orangeburg but then left to also settle in Philadelphia, where she later married Walter Rece. Both Charlotte and Sarah, with their light skin and straight hair, opted to

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take advantage of opportunities that stemmed from their “White” appearance. Most likely, when out in public, the Whites of Philadelphia just assumed that the two sisters were White, and apparently Charlotte and Sarah did not volunteer information to the contrary. Neither sister ever changed her name to deny the family linkage, however, and proudly retained the “Pierce” last name until they married.9 Whenever Charlotte or Sarah traveled from Philadelphia to South Carolina to visit their siblings or family members, they purposely rode in the “Whites only” section of the train. Upon their arrival, to prevent spoiling their “passing” charade, the southern family members who met them would purposely wait until the train had pulled off to greet their incoming “White Negro” relatives. Dorothy Rece, Sarah’s only daughter, born in 1924, was also very light skinned and had a brown-skinned husband. Following in her mother’s footsteps, she also used her light complexion to her advantage by getting jobs in Philadelphia reserved for Whites only or by traveling in the White section of the train when visiting her African American relatives in South Carolina.10 Interestingly enough, whenever one of the Pierce siblings or other relatives from South Carolina visited either Sarah or Charlotte in Philadelphia, they openly stayed at their homes and not in hotels. In public, they went shopping and did other things together freely. The family remained close and did not view those who “passed” as being disloyal to the family or to the larger African American race.11 There is no known evidence of a backlash to these social interactions; in accordance with the behavior of polite, genteel culture, Charlotte and Sarah’s White friends or neighbors “never asked” about these African American visitors, and in turn the sisters never volunteered to offer any explanation. On the other hand, however, if they were asked, it would not be unreasonable to assume that the Pierce sisters probably explained this Black company as simply being kinfolks of their devoted African American servants employed for years with their alleged southern “White” families.12 Charlotte and Sarah chose to leave home and relocate to another state while still young, but they were not the first Pierce offspring to move away from home. The tall, handsome William Pierce, the oldest child, moved to Savannah, Georgia, where his maternal relatives lived. Later, the very fair-skinned fifth child, Frank, left home early, eventually moving to Hot Springs, Virginia, where he settled and married. There he engaged in horse racing and worked as a waiter at the Homestead Hotel, which, by 1914, was one of the largest hotels in the South. However, by 1941–42 when the hotel was used as an internment to hold Japanese diplomats during World War II, Frank had already retired.13 The strikingly handsome sixth child, James Arthur Pierce, was born August 1, 1875. After finishing Mather Academy, he was the first Pierce off-

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spring to attend State A&M College in Orangeburg when it first opened its doors in 1896 and was thus in the first group of students to enroll at the new land-grant public college. Unlike his older siblings, James wanted to teach school. Six years later, he graduated in 1902 from the Normal Training School with 303 other classmates, earning an L.I. teaching degree in industrial arts.14 Pierce took a job in 1902 at Mayesville Institute in Mayesville, South Carolina, near the Camden area where he grew up. There he was the superintendent of grounds and buildings, supervising the students who worked on the campus farm and building constructions. In addition Pierce oversaw matters pertaining to the school’s crops and animals. An expert in woodwork, he also taught students how to build things. Pierce continued to supervise all building construction on campus, whether it was a barn or an office building. It was at the Mayesville Institute that James Pierce met his future wife, Hazel Tatnall, the pretty girl from Brunswick, Georgia, who wore her long hair pulled back conservatively in a ponytail with a bow.15

Introducing Grandmother Tatnall Harry Tatnall, the son of a slave, was a very dark-skinned man born on March 15, 1848. He was raised on a plantation in the Brunswick area of Georgia. After the Civil War, he worked as a stevedore along the Georgia coast supervising his own crew of workers. Tatnall, along with competing stevedores, would bid on a job at hand, and the lowest bidder would win the job to load and unload sugar or other items to and from the ships docked at the Savannah port. Working as a stevedore in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was considered a respectable job and sometimes proved to be a relatively lucrative one.16 In the case of Harry Tatnall, his success as a stevedore made him one of the more financially secured Blacks in his community; he eventually acquired a great deal of property. Aside from his personal earnings, he had special ships that he always unloaded, and on many occasions, sailors would give him personal gifts they themselves purchased from different parts of the world they visited, including some fine chinaware from China. In some instances, sailors would craft items during their leisure time aboard the ships while on long voyages. For example, one gift to Tatnall was a beautiful castle used as a card case to store greeting cards. It was constructed out of small, wooden cigar boxes painted dark brown with a detachable roof that served as its top.17 Harry Tatnall married Matilda Buggs in January 1882; he was fourteen years her senior. Matilda, a woman of mixed ancestral background, was born on December 18, 1862. It is believed that she descended from a mulatto family

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who was possibly from the Boston, Massachusetts, area. Her family must have eventually relocated to Georgia, where, at some point, young Matilda and her siblings, their mother Victoria Buggs, and their grandmother all resided together in the same household.18 Matilda had white, very fair skin, long, straight hair, and light-colored eyes like her mother. Out of all the children, she resembled her maternal fairskinned relatives, the Buggs, the most. Matilda was believed to have had at least an eighth-grade education, which, during her time, was considered rather extensive for a Black person. One of her brothers, John Buggs, became a physician and practiced medicine in the Georgia area. Another brother opted to relocate to Mauldin, Ohio.19 Little else is known about Matilda Buggs’s background or her courtship with Harry Tatnall. But the couple did marry in January 1882 and had their first child, Harold Tatnall Jr., on October 4, 1882. To their misfortune, however, baby Harold Jr. did not survive. On September 17, 1883, Matilda successfully gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Georgette Day Tatnall (called Georgia), but the following year, she lost her third infant, daughter Matilda Ethelia Tattnall (called Tillie), born January 12, 1887.20 On July 30, 1888, the Tatnalls had their fourth child, Hazel Fredrena. Two years later a fifth child, Harold Everette, was born on December 9, 1890, followed by a sixth child, Charles, born on March 9, 1893. Now Matilda Buggs Tatnall had her hands full as a housewife with the major responsibility of caring for four offspring, Georgia, Hazel, Harold, and Charles, after experiencing six pregnancies.21 The Tatnall children’s skin color and hair texture varied due to their having a mixture of the Tatnall family’s very black skin and kinky hair and the Buggs family’s very light skin and curly hair. For example, two of the children, Hazel and Harold, were brown skinned with curly hair—referred to as “a good grade of hair”—while the third child, Georgia, was brown skinned with “kinkier” hair like her father’s. Out of the four children, Charles was the only child who inherited his father’s dark black skin and his mother’s hair, though more curly. None of the children looked exactly like their mother, who had fair skin, straight hair, and light-colored eyes.22 The Buggs’s mixed ancestry confused Whites, who often assumed they also were White. For example, before 1900 Matilda would travel by train to Boston to visit relatives and sit in the designated “colored only” Jim Crow car. Because her skin was so light, the conductor would mistakenly assume her to be a White person sitting in the wrong train section. Hence, it was not unusual for the train conductor to go back to the Jim Crow car to inform Matilda that she was sitting in the wrong place. In reply, Matilda Tatnall would ask if

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she could take her four children along with her to the right section. Once the conductor saw her “colored” children, he realized that she was one of those White Negroes.23 Matilda and Harry Tatnall made certain that their four children were educated. Most likely, the children were either taught at home or attended the one-room rural Brookman School, which opened in their area around the late 1800s to educate surrounding African American children. Since this school went to the eighth grade, most children who continued with their schooling probably went on to attend the Risley School in Brunswick, a Freedmen’s Bureau school founded in 1870 and named after Capt. Douglass Gilbert Risley.24 The Tatnall children, on the other hand, did not attend the Risley School with their peers. The boys, Harold and Charles, attended the St. Emma Military Academy in Rock Castle, Virginia. St. Emma was a Catholic school founded by a nun, Katherine Drexel, and her sister, Elizabeth Drexel, who were both committed to using the income from their inheritance to educate Native American and African American children in the West and the South. In 1895 they opened up a girls’ academy called St. Francis, named after their Uncle Francis Drexel, who founded Drexel University, and for the boys, they founded a military academy, St. Emma, named after their stepmother, Emma.25 St. Emma’s “curriculum consisted of cannery, farming, equipment repair, engineering, accounting and management. As an in-state agricultural school, this academy was second only to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, known today as “VA Tech,” in Blacksburg, Virginia. Even though there is no information on the exact course of study Harold and Charles followed, they probably took the same general curriculum of courses.26 Upon completion of St. Emma Military Academy, Harold went on to become a successful blacksmith. Charles, on the other hand, enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in World War I. At the end of his military duty, he returned to the Savannah area to work as a chauffeur for a wealthy millionaire White family who owned a successful shipping company. In the early 1900s, if African Americans worked in service jobs for very wealthy employers who, inadvertently, paid quite well compared to other service jobs, these positions were held in high esteem and considered prestigious ones in the larger African American community. Thus it was not surprising that Charles, an educated, well-traveled veteran, accepted the position of chauffeur.27 The girls, Georgia and Hazel, both attended the Selden Normal and Industrial Institute to complete their high school curriculum. Selden “opened in 1903, pioneering in the intermediate education of Blacks throughout the

Introducing Grandmother Tattnall

8

coastal area” and eventually emerged to be “considered one of the finest black educational facilities of its time.” Selden was named after “Dr. Charles Selden, a missionary noted for his work in China, who purchased the land for the facility.” After graduating from Selden Institute, Georgia attended Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia, where she earned her secretarial certificate in the Business Department. Her first job was an administrative assistant who ran the office of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. She later became one of the insurance agents for the company.28 Like Georgia, Hazel also went away to college once she graduated from Selden Institute. She attended Alabama A&M Normal Training School in Normal, Alabama, and earned the L.I. degree in business and typewriting. While it is not known how she learned of the job opening at the Mayesville Institute in South Carolina, she would eventually go there in 1908 to teach handwriting and hat making. It was at the institute that she met her future husband, James Pierce, who had been there since 1902 as the superintendent of grounds and buildings.29

The Pierce-Tatnall Union In 1908, at about age twenty, Hazel Tatnall arrived at Mayesville Institute to teach. Like his father, who married a woman fourteen years his junior, James Pierce was romantically drawn to the young Georgian beauty who was thirteen years his junior. It was rather common in the early twentieth century for older men to marry younger women, with new wives being as young as fourteen and fifteen, though the median age was about twenty for both rural and nonrural southern Black females. During this era, if women did not marry by age twenty-five, they were mockingly referred to as “old maids.” In that this was a stigma women did not want, it led to many young females marrying older males to achieve this social expectation.30 Even though marriage was the desire of the average girl and her family, it was a process that also involved the family. According to historian Beth Bailey, at the turn of the twentieth century, young men interested in courting or “calling on” a certain girl had to first seek permission from both the girl and her parents. Once granted, the young suitor spent certain evenings, for example, on Wednesdays and Sundays, sitting on the front porch, in the yard, or in the her family’s parlor, all under the watchful eyes of her parents. However, the actuality of this process depended largely on the socioeconomic level of the family.31 The majority of females lived in homes that had little or no space set aside for entertaining due to crowded conditions from large families sharing limited living space.

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It was during this era, in the early 1900s, according to Bailey, when the “in home only” type courtship begin to shape to the “out home” system of dating. While middle- and upper-class females maintained the system of courting at home, the poorer, working-class girls had no choice but to sometimes “court . . . on the streets . . . cheap dance halls, . . . and eventually at the movies.” For those upper- and middle-class girls who did engage in the “public courtship” of dating, they supposedly did so under the supervision of chaperones.32 Similar public courtship also was practiced in the African American community and also varied according to social class. While working-class females lived in homes void of “the parlor and the piano,” their parents permitted courtship visits, during which the youth sat on the porch, in the yard, or in the same room with the parents in their cramp quarters. While the upper-middleand upper-class African American girls generally lived in homes suited for courtship, their parents still remained close by, usually in the next room, to monitor their activities. When daughters ventured out on a date to a church social or private party, parents also made certain the events were properly supervised or chaperoned.33 In Charleston, South Carolina, the courtship of the young teacher, Mamie Garvin, and her bricklayer boyfriend, Bob Fields, included going on dates to private parties and social functions before it ended in marriage in April 1914. Her beau sought permission first from Mamie’s father, who would decide whether or not “that was the kind of place for [them] to go to,” as her family believed that the “pay-and-go-in places were for the ‘rough’ young people to go at night.” Mamie’s father restricted her dates to those that occurred in the afternoon and to “places where [she] was invited.” Their parties were chaperoned, and these young adults enjoyed games like musical chairs and “spinthe-plate” and dances such as the waltz, the “shots,” the two step, and even square dance, all to live music since no one had “stereos . . . or Victrolas.”34 Like Mamie Garvin, educated, single Black women usually worked once they finished school, and the unmarried Hazel Tatnall was no different. She joined the staff at Mayesville Institute immediately after graduating from Alabama A&M. What started off as a platonic friendship between James and Hazel resulted in a courtship by October 1908 that, after several months, culminated in the two falling in love. The young couple would take horse and buggy rides from Mayesville to surrounding nearby towns, double dating with their closest friends, a young married couple, Jed Paris, who also worked at the school, and his wife.35 Following the proper etiquette of courtship in the early twentieth century, James formally asked Hazel’s parents for their daughter’s hand in marriage. On the school’s formal stationery, James typed a letter on March 12,

The Pierce-Tattnall Union

10

1909, addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Tatnall [of] Brunswick, Georgia,” introducing himself for the first time to her parents. He awkwardly explained his “miscellaneous” social acquaintance with their daughter over the past year and the “fondness” they held for each other. He ended the letter by requesting their “mutual consent” to wed their daughter, Hazel, who also signed her name in approval of the request.36 The Tatnalls answered James Pierce’s request to marry their daughter by giving the two lovebirds their consent. During the planning of the wedding, Pierce was offered a higher paying, more prestigious job at his alma mater, South Carolina State A&M College. To avoid a scheduling conflict between the start date of the job and the wedding date, the couple decided to marry within a few months. The family’s Baptist preacher married them in a small wedding held at the Tatnall family home in Brunswick, Georgia, on August 20, 1909.37 The newlyweds spent their first few months of marriage in separate cities once James returned to Orangeburg to begin his tenure at State A&M. They initially maintained their home in Mayesville, and James would make long trips back and forth between there and Orangeburg by horse and buggy to see his young bride. During these times when Hazel was alone, James entrusted her with his shotgun for protection. Often, as she peered through her window late at night, she would witness unknown Black men stealing the school’s cotton; however, she never fired the rifle, perhaps out of fear or because she never really learned how to use it properly. The newlyweds were permanently reunited under one roof when they later decided to move to Orangeburg in 1909. They lived on Treadwell Street in a community of other educated or professional African Americans and later joined Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church.38 Orangeburg was a familiar setting to James since he had lived there when he attended State A&M. Now, as an instructor at the college, he taught woodwork where his students learned carpentry and received firsthand experience in the actual construction and repairing of campus buildings.39 On the other hand, this was Hazel’s first experience living in Orangeburg. More significantly, it was also going to be her first experience living as a married woman staying at home to begin a new life of motherhood, child rearing, and taking care of the home. Like most women of her era, Hazel looked forward to the challenges of being a successful homemaker and mother.40 However, it was James who generally did the grocery shopping and Hazel who made the meals. At times Hazel attempted to grow a garden, for example, of string beans and okra to compliment the family’s grocery but was never successful. Outside of maintaining a milking cow named Bessie in their backyard and a few potted plants, she had no horticultural skills. James, who grew up on his family’s farm, where hard work was undisputedly mandated, had

Ancestors: The Pierces and Tatnalls, 1860s–1910

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apparently lost all interest in—and, in fact, had alienated himself from—any form of gardening, farm animal maintenance, or farm-related tasks.41 Just as marriage was a “rite of passage” for young females in the early twentieth century, so was child bearing and motherhood. Bearing and rearing children successfully was expected of all women, and it was something usually desired by most women. But from the Tatnall household, Hazel ended up being the only child to ever give birth. Although her sister Georgia did not bear children, she and her husband decided to embrace, love, and raise his niece as their own child after she lost both parents. For Georgia, having this child to rear completed both her womanhood and her family unit. Such informal adoptions within the southern African American community were neither unusual nor illegal in the early twentieth century.42 When Black women in the early 1900s successfully conceived a child, it was not unusual for these “expecting” southern women to become discreet during the entire pregnancy. For example, in 1923, one woman, Celia Perry Mack Tilley from rural Calhoun County in South Carolina, remembered the shame she felt whenever she went out in public while she was pregnant with her first child. She was extremely embarrassed for others to see her enlarged, pregnant belly and dreaded going into town to shop or to attend church to worship. To her, her swollen stomach inadvertently informed everyone watching her of the fact that she had “done that thing with a man,” something considered very private if you were married and unacceptable if you were single. Even though she was a married pregnant woman, she was more comfortable staying indoors and going out in the public only when necessary.43 Hazel Pierce felt the same way as Celia Tilley. Before her pregnancy, Hazel and her friends founded a women’s civic club in 1909, the Sunlight Club. She was one of its most visible members, always busy with the various club activities. In 1910, however, when charter members gathered for their first group photograph, Hazel was barely visible in the picture. Pregnant with Geraldine, Hazel attempted to hide her pregnant body behind the other members. Understanding that the proper social etiquette for pregnant women at that time was not to venture out in public, she successfully managed to show only her face, not her body, in the photo.44 In spite of these early-twentieth-century social inhibitions, which were deemed appropriate for pregnant women, the young Mrs. Pierce had now formally entered a new life-cycle of womanhood. Her new life was intertwined with being a wife, becoming a mother, and discovering the true meaning of womanhood. This newlywed couple was getting ready to face one of their most challenging jobs in life: the inevitable tasks of child rearing.

The Pierce-Tattnall Union

Chapter 2

Jello: The Girl, 1910–1929 Child Rearing Hazel Tatnall Pierce was filled with excitement and anticipation as she neared the delivery of her first baby. In fact, although she did not know it at the time, Hazel was to be her mother’s only child to bear grandchildren for her. But just like her mother, Hazel experienced the death of an infant. In 1910, during the home birth, Hazel and James’s first child died when the neck was broken in the delivery.1 On March 5, 1911, Hazel successfully delivered her next infant, a daughter named Geraldine Inez Pierce, whom her father affectionately called “Jello” throughout his life, followed by a second daughter in 1912, named Viessa. A few years later, on December 21, 1915, her son James was born and nicknamed “Bubba,” a name that stayed with him until he reached his teen years. Like most families of this era, important dates such as weddings, births, and deaths were all recorded in the family Bible.2 The Pierces proved to be loving parents who often traveled out of town with the children to visit with relatives, especially their maternal grandparents in Brunswick. Aside from traveling with their parents or their mother, many times their Grandmother Tatnall would come to Orangeburg to take her grandchildren back to Brunswick for visits. At first she had no choice but to leave Brunswick early in the morning in order to arrive in Orangeburg by night. She made the three-hundred-mile trip by horse and buggy via the dirt roads since there were no throughways at that time. Other times, she took the train to Orangeburg to pick up her grandchildren. Either way, she had to take

14

a barge down the Savannah River toward the Beaufort, South Carolina, area to cross over from Georgia into the South Carolina border. Eventually, the Tatnalls purchased their first car, a Dodge, and one of the sons would drive Matilda Tatnall to Orangeburg.3 During their many trips to Brunswick, the children enjoyed spending time visiting with three generations of maternal family members, including a grandmother, a great grandmother, and a great, great grandmother. These visits proved rewarding, as the “old folks” would share stories with their “grands.” Jello’s elderly great-great grandmother Buggs would tell her many stories of how she was reared by a Boston family who proved to be very “tough on her.” She shared stories with her regarding how, as a girl, she had to wash vegetables, cook, and do other chores. What Jello remembered most from these talks was how her great-great grandmother Buggs always “emphasized their toughness and how particularly picky the Boston family was about her performing her tasks.” Whether these Bostonians were actually relatives was unclear, but evidently they played a major role in raising Jello’s great-great grandmother.4 The other grandparents, the Tatnalls, lived in Thalman, a small community west of Brunswick and deeper into the interior of Georgia. To get there, they traveled by train and did so in the most unusual manner. Since there was only one set of railway tracks that entered Thalman, the train had “only one way to get in and one way to get out.” Once the train entered the town, there were no means for it to turn around; hence, when it was time for the train to leave, it literally had to travel backward to Brunswick, Georgia, for the entire return trip, which at that time might have been thirty or more miles. Their grandfather, Harry Tatnall, had accumulated substantial land during the marriage; unfortunately, after the Tatnall children were grown, the couple separated and eventually their grandmother Matilda took control over the property, collecting rent monthly from the tenants. When she had her visiting grandchildren, she always took them along with her to collect the rents. By this time, their grandfather Harry had retired from his stevedore work and spent his time at a friend’s small neighborhood store. In his old age, he looked forward to the occasional visits from his three grandchildren—Jello, Bubba, and Viessa, to whom he enjoyed giving candy treats. When their elderly grandfather Tatnall moved to Savannah to live with other Tatnall relatives when he was too old to work, the family would travel there to see him.5 Unfortunately, in 1918, little six-year-old Viessa contracted diphtheria during a summer visit at her grandmother Matilda’s in Brunswick, Georgia. Once diagnosed, she was immediately quarantined from others in the family in a separate room in the house. The doctor was the only outside visitor

Jello: The Girl, 1910–1929

15

allowed at the home and he would always change into different clothing before seeing Viessa. Even though young Jello, Bubba, and their cousins romped around in and out of the house having their summer fun, none of them were allowed to visit little Viessa in her room. Up “until the mid-1920s diphtheria, often called the strangler, was the scourge of childhood, ranking first as a cause of death for children under 14.” However, the vaccine found to successfully defeat diphtheria toxoid was not discovered until years later in 1924. In the meantime, from 1913 to the mid-1920s, there were several experimental serums designed to combat diphtheria and build immunity to the disease “but with varying degrees of success.”6 Little Viessa remained in Brunswick to receive government-sponsored experimental serums being flown into Brunswick on military planes from a nearby base. Even though these injections were extremely risky on a young child, they were the only treatment for combating diphtheria available for Blacks at that time. Unfortunately, after one injection of the serum, young Viessa suffered a heart attack and stroke. Once she recuperated and was well enough to travel, the doctor lifted the quarantine and allowed the children’s father to take them all back to Orangeburg.7 Back at home, Viessa now walked with a limp and talked with a lisp, and within a few months, her condition worsened. Her family believed that the experimental serum might have been too strong for her. She died in 1918 in Orangeburg at age six. Devastated, the Pierces contacted Alton Elvin Bythewood Sr., the only African American undertaker in town. A. E. Bythewood was the biracial son of a Black mother and her employer, a local White undertaker. Bythewood attended Claflin College Normal Training School, and upon his graduation in 1905, he was secretly trained in the “undertaking business” at night by his White biological father. In 1907, he established his own business, Bythewood Funeral Home, the first and longest-operating Black funeral home in Orangeburg.8 In the early twentieth century, according to Loretta M. Alirangues, it was the custom for the undertakers to come to the home of the bereaved “to direct the funeral and carry out the embalming.” He would first place some type of funeral wreath on the family’s door and bring the equipment required for embalming. The undertaker used the parlor room to prepare the body, and upon completion of the embalming, hair styling, and dressing, the body remained in the home parlor for viewing by all. As embalming techniques improved and more room was needed for the required equipment, undertakers moved from “home parlors” to separate shops with larger rooms in cities “while barns and the back room of the undertakers’ stores were used in rural areas,” which all became known as “funeral parlors.”9

Child Rearing

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After Bythewood completed the embalming of little Viessa, others proceeded to dress her and prepare her hair for viewing in the Pierce’s parlor room. Viessa was buried in a dress decorated with rows of lace and pink ribbon. According to Zimmerman, somebody had made that dress for Viessa, and a similar one for her; each had a row of lace and a row of ribbon. Viessa’s had a row of lace and pink ribbon and Geraldine’s had a row of lace with blue ribbon. After the funeral, a distraught Hazel realized that the wrong dress was on Viessa, saying out aloud that “they buried her in the blue dress instead of the pink dress.” After the viewing, the body was taken to their church for the funeral service and then to the graveyard for burial. As for young Jello and Bubba, they were scared for many months to enter the parlor room during the day or night, knowing that was where their deceased sister’s body had been.10 Now, at age twenty-nine, Hazel Tatnall Pierce had lost two of her four children in childbirth and in sickness, leaving her with seven-year-old Jello and three-years-old Bubba. After Viessa’s passing, for the longest time Jello was the only little girl on her block and had all boy playmates, including her own brother Bubba. This anomaly led to her learning how to climb trees, play ball, and even shoot marbles with her friends. When they shot marbles, she mostly lost and was left with sore fingers from the marbles hitting her knuckles.11 At times, Jello would cry when the boys did not want to play ball with her or be bothered with her. They would tell her that she was a “girl” and that “they didn’t want to play with a girl.” On these few occasions, Jello would successfully bribe them by paying them in pennies and nickels so that she could join them. Of course, whenever her younger brother Bubba would personally demand for Jello to play elsewhere, this request would cause problems later between the two bickering siblings.12 E. Franklin Frazier argued that the southern African American upper classes unduly relegated bad behavior, unruliness, ignorance, and “being common” as characteristics of the lower classes in both the Black and White races. It was a sentiment apparently shared by northern African Americans as seen in comments made by W. E .B. Du Bois, who, commenting on his childhood days, said, “I cordially despised the poor Irish and South Germans, who slaved in the mills ad annexed the rich and well-to-do as my natural companions.” Whether or not this sentiment was expressed by the Pierces, their child-rearing practices made certain that their children were not to be ignorant ones lacking good culture and respectful behavior, both in the home and away from it. They proved to be firm and, at times, very strict parents. They were generous with their love and time spent with their children, but when it came to discipline, both were no-nonsense parents and demanded respectful behavior. The Pierces did not believe in sparing the rod when it came to pun-

Jello: The Girl, 1910–1929

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ishment. On the other hand, like most youth, both Jello and Bubba saw their parents as being too strict and too old-fashioned.13 An example of the Pierces’ strict discipline occurred one Monday when Hazel Pierce was in the midst of completing one of her most laborious household chores: washing clothes in the backyard tin tubs. When little Viessa was still alive and living in Brunswick under the watchful care of her grandmother, her two siblings, Jello and Bubba, returned to Orangeburg at the end of the summer to attend school at Claflin, a Methodist private school. This religious school prohibited its students from studying on Sundays; therefore, to prevent students from working on the Sabbath, Claflin did not hold classes on Mondays but instead was open from Tuesday to Saturday.14 On this particular Monday, Hazel was washing clothes when little Jello and Bubba began bickering and eventually arguing, as siblings often do. In response, their mother quickly grabbed an item of wet clothing from her washtub and commenced to whip them with all her might. It was the first and last time these two young Pierces experienced the rod from their mother. Apparently, that one-time lashing not only demonstrated a rare action from their mother but it also convinced them to behave properly to avoid future lashings. Succumbing to the tradition that men were head of the house and the disciplinarians in the home, after the wet-cloth spankings Hazel now deferred all future punishments to her husband. The anticipation of their mother’s words—“When your daddy comes home . . .” or “I’m going to tell your daddy . . .”—now brought shivers to both Jello and Bubba.15 Their father James was indeed the strict disciplinarian and definitely believed in corporal punishment via intense spankings when younger and whippings when older. While the children never forgot the infamous wet-cloth spanking from their mother, they most remembered the countless thrashings from their father, usually done with his hands or his belt. Jello recalled that he’d slap us all up against the walls and, I mean, he never asked or gave us any chance of defending ourselves. If we did something that he knew that we shouldn’t have done, he never discussed anything with us. He whipped us and would say that you did so and so, and as he was whipping us, he would continue to say, you did so and so and so and so; you did so and so and so, and don’t you ever do it again; don’t you ever do it again. But we had no chance of escaping the whipping. He was very strict.16

Even when Jello felt that she was not in the wrong, it was still futile for her to declare her innocence. As far as early-twentieth-century Black southern

Child Rearing

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parents were concerned, including Hazel and James, there was never an occasion where there was an exception or a justifiable excuse for children disrespecting adults. For example, an elderly female neighbor named Miss Rosa McDuffie, who always sat on her front porch, made a complaint to Jello’s parents about the child’s manners. Apparently, Jello had broken one of the rules of etiquette when it came to Ms. McDuffie. In the Pierce household, practicing good manners was mandatory all the time, and especially so in the presence of adults. Even if a person “passed [a neighbor’s] house twenty times a day, that person had to say good morning or good evening.” Jello had apparently passed McDuffie’s house earlier and spoken to her, but the next time she passed, she did so without saying anything. Unknown to Jello, McDuffie, in turn, immediately told her father of Jello not speaking. When Jello returned home and walked through the front door, her father “met [her] with a slap.” He scolded her saying, “What do you mean by passing Ms. Rose and not speaking to her?” She quickly told him that she had spoken to her earlier that day, but to her father, that did not matter since her not speaking when she passed again was unacceptable. His angry reaction was due to Jello failing to speak, but most likely his anger was intensified over the embarrassment of having someone outside the family complain about his offspring’s behavior. Good manners were imperative, but the Pierce family’s image and reputation were of greater magnitude.17 Jello’s parents were among the few Blacks in Orangeburg to have their own buggy and, later, a car in the early 1900s. Early in Hazel and James’s marriage, the Tatnalls, Hazel’s parents, had given the couple a horse named Dolly and a buggy for their transportation. Later on, the Tatnalls gave them their first “motor car,” a Model-T Ford, which came with a lever to crank it up. The average Black and White family in South Carolina during the early twentieth century could not afford to own a horse and buggy and generally rode on a makeshift wagon drawn by a mule. Just as the Pierces stood out in Orangeburg, so did the Black Garvin family in Charleston. Mamie Garvin Fields recalled as a girl how she and her cousin, Marie Garvins, drove their Aunt Carrie’s “fancy [buggy] . . . with horses, fancy and new,” from Charleston into “Ehrhardt’s general store in search of a crochet needle. She remembered how “the crackers looked at [them] and got kinda mad since they stood out riding in a fancy carriage that the average White person could not afford to own. She realized later that they had broken Jim Crow laws by coming into town on a weekday to shop as opposed to Saturdays, when Blacks came together in their wagons. They appeared as uppity, well-dressed, “high falutin’” Blacks driving a fancy buggy, something unheard of in Ehrhardt.18

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As strict parents, however, Hazel and James had restrictions when it came to how or when the children would accompany them in travel. For example, when the Pierces rode in their horse and buggy carriage with the children, the young ones were always relegated to riding in the back. Also, whenever the Pierces went into town to shop or rode to the grocery store, the children were never permitted to go. Like most Black southern parents in the early twentieth century, the Pierces maintained a strict line of divide when it came to social interaction between children and adults.19 Jello’s father was a church deacon who firmly believed in the church’s teachings for rearing children, particularly one of the cardinal rules that children were to be “seen and not heard.” Hence, when a child entered the room, that child was not to speak until an adult acknowledged him or her. This rule was strictly enforced, especially whenever their church pastor had Sunday dinners with the Pierce family. While the adults held conversations at the table, the children were expected to sit quietly and eat. They were never part of the conversation unless one of the adults included them, and Jello and her brother knew not to ever talk out of turn. And if they ate improperly or asked for food when they should not, their mother, unbeknown to their guest, would respond to their request with a swift and stern kick to their leg under the table. Knowing what that kick meant, they would immediately stop whatever they were doing.20 Even though Jello and Bubba were to be seen and not heard in the Pierce household until recognized, this, did not mean that the children tuned out the adult conversations or ignored totally what they discussed. Often times as adults talked among themselves, they were assuming that the children were not listening, but this was not always the case. Very little information passed by precocious Jello when she was near adult conversation.21 Jello overheard one of the “hush-hush” conversations taking place when she was little girl. On this occasion, some Whites had lynched one of their neighbors, Luke, who lived two to three houses away from theirs, after he had been accused of insulting a White girl. He was captured and hung from a tree, and his sister later woke up the neighborhood when she ran down the street, crying and screaming after learning of his fate. Jello remembered the awful fear she felt that morning and wanted to know what was going on. She could hear the older people talking about it in low voices, but she did not dare to ask them anything or to let them know that she was listening for fear of getting slapped or whipped.22 In the Pierce household, there were two main meals served daily: breakfast and dinner. Breakfast was served very early each morning and dinner was

Child Rearing

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served midday, usually at noon. Following their parents’ tradition, the Pierces always sat around the table to dine as a family, a practice that continued until Jello’s and Bubba’s daily schedules changed once they entered high school. On Sundays, the children were expected to recite Bible verses and say the prayer for Sunday breakfast. The Pierces loved their children, but like most parents during this era, they seldom expressed their love via physical affection. Mother Hazel, in particular, showered and displayed her love by constantly doing little extra things to keep them happy. However, as for father James, while he adored his two daughters, he nakedly doted over his only male child, young Bubba, and constantly revealed how proud he was of him. Many men took great pride in having a son, and James Pierce was no different. He often displayed physical affection for his young son by openly kissing him on the cheek or head after every meal. As Bubba grew older, James would playfully refer to him as “my boy, my boy” and kiss him by making exaggerated, loud noises to purposely irritate his son and draw laughter from the family. In turn, young Bubba responded playfully by warding off his father’s facetious kisses. In the meantime, feeling somewhat disgruntled, little Jello, left out of this affectionate playfulness, often said, “You love your boy better than you [do] me.”23 In a display of his love and affection for Jello, father James built her a big playhouse in their backyard. It had two rooms, one the kitchen and the other the bedroom. Grandmother Tatnall in Brunswick had a friend in Jekyll Island, Georgia, who worked for a wealthy White family who also had a big playhouse for their children with a real “cook stove” in it. Perhaps, after these White children had grown up, the cook stove was offered to Grandmother Tatnall, who, in turn, accepted it for her granddaughter in Orangeburg. Now Jello’s own playhouse was complete with a “little stove where you could put a little fire in, . . . a little cast iron cook pot and fry pan,” along with a few other “cook pots.” Hazel and James would give her five cents to buy grocery items from the neighborhood’s Black grocery store, Maxwell, and with her purchased items, Jello would “bring them and actually cook in that little playhouse.” During the Christmas season, the children placed a tree in front of the house and decorated it. Unfortunately, their cow Bessie ate the tree, became ill, and died the next day.24 As for their amorous relationship, Hazel and James chose to follow the traditional norm of most early-twentieth-century parents. They presented themselves platonically and consciously never displayed open affection toward each other in public or in front of the children. In addition, they always called each other “Mama” and “Daddy,” as opposed to saying “Hazel” and “James,”

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most likely for the purpose of training their children to call them mama and daddy.25 A typical weekday after breakfast in the Pierce household was followed with James Pierce going to work at State A&M, the children walking to school, and Hazel Pierce beginning her chores at home. When the family convened again midday for dinner, the children assisted in cleaning up the kitchen and bringing in more firewood for the wood-burning stove. At first, when mother Hazel would wash the dishes, she would allow her very young children to assist by drying them. Once the children were older, they took over the complete task of washing and drying the dishes. On occasion, when dishes were broken during one of their arguments or playful moods, the spankings would follow once their father returned home from work. On Sunday nights, in preparation for Mondays or any weekdays, the children helped to “lay the fire with paper and lightening wood” for their wood stove. Then Hazel would wash the grits the night before breakfast, mix the grits with water in a pot, and then place it on the stove. The next morning, her husband, who always arose first, would proceed to light the fire on the stove to cook the grits. Rising shortly afterward, Hazel prepared breakfast, supplementing the grits with “salmon, sardines, or eggs.” Interestingly enough, the traditional southern breakfast with bacon or a meal of bacon and eggs was never served at the family’s breakfast table.26 As in most small southern towns in the early 1900s, the people of Orangeburg commonly used the daily commercial trains passing through town as a means for determining the time of day. Others relied on the loud chimes coming from either State A&M or Claflin to measure the time of day. Both schools had large, oversized bells that select students were assigned to ring when it was time to change classes, go to the dining hall, or retreat to their dorms. Since electricity was not a commodity available in most households before 1950, most African Americans had to rely on their wind up clocks, watches, or the sounds emanating from the ringing bells or passing trains. In that the majority of poor people in Orangeburg could not afford watches, clocks, or electricity, they had little or no choice but to rely on the train or bells for telling time. However, some Black families who were not poor also used these sounds as means for measuring their daily schedules, including the Pierce family.27 In the Pierce household, some activities were governed by the ringing of those two school bells and the coming of the trains. For example, their children’s bed and rising times were normally dictated by two trains that passed through Orangeburg: the Southern and the Coastline. The Southern traveled through town about 7:00 a.m. each day, whereupon the children would rise

Child Rearing

22

and wash, using a basin or tin tub before they had their indoor bathroom installed. After washing up, the children dressed and then proceeded to the breakfast table to say grace before eating. Once James Pierce and the children left for work and school, Hazel relied on a second morning train that passed through Orangeburg at 11:00 a.m., using this train as her signal to begin preparing her returning family’s midday dinner. At night, the Coastline train, which passed through Orangeburg at 10:00 p.m., signaled bedtime for the Pierce children. Even though the Pierces owned a clock, their family’s schedule was seldom guided by it.28 Hazel and James Pierce definitely believed the adage of “a family who prays together, stays together.” Before they had electricity in their home, the family sat together every night and read the Bible by kerosene light. Once the children were old enough to read, each would take a turn to read a chapter. On Sunday mornings, there was always prayer time and the reading of a Bible verse. Jello and Bubba were responsible for finding their own Bible verses to read, though every Sunday morning, Bubba’s verse was always the same one: “Jesus wept.” So one Sunday morning, his father sternly warned him that there were other verses in the bible. He told his favorite boy child not to come back any more on Sundays with his “Jesus wept” line or else he was going to have to whip him, making it “Bubba wept” instead. On Saturday nights, sometimes the family would gather to go over the Sunday school lesson for the next day since they had their Sunday school books at home. After breakfast and their morning prayer on Sunday mornings, the family left for church at Mt. Pisgah Baptist, where their father was a church deacon and Jello was baptized as a child. In fact, the one time the entire family usually shared a ride in the buggy was on Sundays when they went to church. Attending church was a natural part of their weekly routine since the church was the center of their spiritual household that reinforced the religious morals Hazel and James instilled in their offspring. Church was an all-day Sunday event for the Pierces, as they went to church three times. They were there in the morning for the regular church sermon; then, later, they attended the youth-related activities in the afternoon; and at nightfall, they were there for the last prayer meeting. It was customary for children to attend church with their parents; hence, on Wednesday nights, the children also went with their parents to the midweek prayer meeting. On occasion there were the “church socials,” such as family picnics held on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, for the older teen children to enjoy.29 Hazel and James made certain that their children not only attended church every Sunday but also were involved in the various church-related

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activities. Jello and Bubba were active in the church’s youth club, the Sunbeam Club. One year when Jello served as president of Sunbeam, she and the members proudly raised enough money to build Mt. Pisgah its first concretepaved walkway extending from the public sidewalk to their church’s front door. Upon completion, Jello’s father neatly carved the words Sunbeam Club into the damp concrete with a nail in recognition of the youths’ contributions to the church.30 Once Jello reached high school age, she joined the older church youth club, the Young Baptists, which met every Sunday afternoon to review their study guide and discuss the Bible. Years later when some internal church conflicts emerged, it resulted in the Pierces and some other members leaving the congregation to form a new church. They were able to purchase their own church building, the Mount Zion Church, located on Maxcy Street, when it was on the verge of closing due to major financial problems. Renaming the church New Mount Zion, the Pierce family now became permanent members of this church.31 Building a close-knit family and surrounding their lives with prayer and church were major ingredients in shaping the Pierce children for a successful future. They also were necessary ingredients for effectively raising wellbehaved, emotionally healthy children. But both Hazel and James Pierce knew that their successful child-rearing recipe would not be complete without adding another important ingredient: education.32

Education Informal Lessons

Education in the Pierce household was both “formal,” what they learned at school, and “informal,” what they learned at home. In their household, informal education was when their children learned life lessons at home through discussions, discipline, doing chores, and practicing their religious teachings. Informal education prepared both Jello and Bubba for healthy, respectful social relationships with others outside of their family. A child’s informal education is largely acquired inadvertently from watching their first role models, their parents. Children learn how to behave, communicate, and resolve conflict from observing how this is done within their own family.33 Jello grew up in the 1920s in racially segregated Jim Crow Orangeburg, but Hazel and James never purposely sat their children down to explain segregation. They chose to shy away from discussing this subject in front of their children in order to protect them. For the Pierces, they believed that children learned from what they observed; thus there were countless occasions when

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the children witnessed their parents, particularly their mother, standing up to various levels of disrespect coming from Whites. At the same time, they saw their father moving between both the Black and White communities, carrying out his business duties and earning respect from both races.34 The Pierces’ social position in Orangeburg played a major role in how Whites largely interacted with them. James Pierce not only taught at State A&M but also was responsible for supervising any repairs made by the students in his woodwork classes. In addition, whenever the homes of the two White members on State A&M’s board of trustees needed repairs, Pierce would take his students there to do the work. Over time, he established a very friendly relationship with these two trustees. As with the trustees, Pierce also established friendly working relationships with local White merchants, as a result of him going into town to purchase hardware, lumber, or any other building materials necessary for completing a job. These White trustees and merchants had considerable respect for James Pierce, a respect for him that they did not have for his entire race. James was extremely busy with work and was often away from home on a repair job. Since his work took him everywhere, he basically learned to overlook ignorant, racist-driven behavior from local Whites and seldom was fazed by events stemming from racial segregation. In contrast, Jello saw her mother as being a fearless fighter and one who did not overlook prejudices. It was her mother’s feisty behavior and independent actions that proved to have a major impact on shaping the actions of their young future maverick, Jello. Hazel relished in her husband’s esteemed social position in the larger White business community. Hence, in Jim Crow Orangeburg, where some establishments purposely did not serve African American customers, Hazel courageously would enter such White-owned stores and let it be known that her husband was James Pierce from State A&M College. In doing so, generally she was treated courteously, received appropriate service, and even was extended credit, if needed.35 In Orangeburg, White insurance agents commonly traveled from house to house to collect insurance premiums. Regardless of how old the Black woman was in the early twentieth century, seldom did Whites address them by their last names. Instead, younger Black women were called by their first names and normally the older women were addressed as “auntie.” One time, when their insurance agent knocked on the door and was invited in, the agent called Hazel Pierce “auntie” as he walked through the door. At that moment, Hazel looked him in his eyes and stated, “Oh, I didn’t know that I was related to you.” In her curious tone of voice, she went on to sarcastically ask the agent

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which parent of his was kin to her mother or father. Was it his mother or was it his father?36 On another occasion, Hazel became inflamed when called “auntie” over the telephone. In the 1920s, very few people in Orangeburg had telephones in their homes, and at that time the Pierces were among those who did not have one. During these times, whenever Hazel or James needed to make a phone call, they would use the phone of their neighbor, a physician named Dr. Rowe. By 1929, the Pierces had their own telephone installed, and like all phones during this era, it was connected as a “party line” shared with three or four other families. When making a phone call, the caller would give the White operator the number to call and then hang up to wait for the special ring so that they would be connected to their party.37 On one of these occasions, the operator called Hazel “auntie.” Hazel became so irate with her that she demanded the operator reveal her name. After affording the operator a good tongue-lashing, Hazel was vexed to the point of threatening to report the operator to her superiors.38 In the early twentieth century, when in the presence of women, men would remove their hats in deference to them. But this was not usual behavior for White males when they were in the presence of Black females, including when they were inside a Black home, since Black women were generally not seen as being the equals of a “White lady.” Therefore, when one White insurance agent entered Hazel’s home without removing his hat, Hazel informed him that he was not to come into her house while his hat was still on his head. She added that if he could not take his hat off his head, he would have to get out of her house.39 The business and personal White community that the Pierces came in contact with viewed this African American family with a subtle respect not bestowed on the Black majority. Whites recognized the Pierce family as one of Orangeburg’s few respectable Black families. In the eyes of White Orangeburg, such recognition enhanced the Pierce’s social standing in the larger community, an accolade of respect from Whites not enjoyed by the larger Black community. In turn, the Pierces’ reputation served as an invisible, though not invincible, shield from the usual racial discrimination that most African Americans experienced in Orangeburg.40 Yet even with this subtle level of respect in the White community, they were still not immune to mistreatment or discrimination. However, when Hazel Pierce was confronted with such racial ills, her spunkiness “nipped it in the bud.” For example, Black people were not supposed to try on clothing or shoes in Orangeburg’s White-operated stores. When Jello was still in high

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school in 1926, a new hat store opened in downtown Orangeburg. Ignoring this rule of Jim Crow etiquette, Hazel took Jello into the new store to purchase a hat. Keeping in line with proper Jim Crow etiquette behavior, the store clerk fetched a piece of newspaper to put on Jello’s head before trying on the hat. Insulted over this gesture, Hazel loudly said to her daughter, “No, you don’t need that hat” and then proudly walked out of the store. Upper-class parents, as E. Franklin Frazier explained, sometimes went to “fantastic extremes” to protect their children from “acquir[ing] the idea” that their “racial identity” was that of an “inferior status.” Hence when Hazel left the store, as some others did during this era, it was her way of keeping Jello from “feel[ing] that [she] could not go” and try on the hat; instead, she was showing her “that it was always a matter of choice.”41 Hazel’s spunky attitude had its roots in Brunswick, Georgia, where she grew up. Her father, Harry Tatnall, was a well-respected, financially secured African American who had established a respectable reputation and business relationship with the larger Black and White community. Apparently, the entire family reaped social benefits from the earnest reputation of being a Tatnall. They were all treated with a certain level of respect that most Brunswick Blacks did not experience. Hazel, a confident and intelligent child, realized at a young age that she, too, was to be treated with respect and not denied her inalienable rights. It was this type thinking that followed her throughout her life.42 Much later, in 1932, the Pierces were among the few chosen African Americans permitted to vote in Orangeburg. The Black majority was denied this right since Whites had deemed them ineligible due to illiteracy. White leaders had decided to only offer the vote to African American teachers and ministers, since they usually filled the role as the early leaders in the Black community. In order for these African Americans to vote, however, they still had to pass a literacy test. Each person was required to read a section of the Constitution, and then they were sent from one place to another. In the end, most ended up not voting at all due to the confusion.43 Hazel Pierce, who no longer taught and was now a housewife, also showed up to vote. The White pollsters refused her, stating that she was not a teacher or minister, concluding that she was illiterate and thus not eligible to vote. To quickly eliminate her, they gave her a section of the Constitution to read, knowing that she would fail. Instead, a feisty Hazel “rattled off the words fast and clear” then handed the book back to the White clerk, saying, “Now, you read it.”44 While Jello and Bubba, on occasion, had witnessed their mother’s subtle or overt rejection of racial injustices, the children largely saw their parents living within the realms of Jim Crow. They resided on Treadwell Street in an

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upper-middle-class Black neighborhood, the children played with their Black playmates and attended Black schools, the family attended Black churches, and they socialized only with their Black peers. In addition, they, like other African Americans, also frequented the Black-owned stores found along Railway Avenue, later renamed Boulevard Street by this time. Hence, Hazel had the option of shopping on Boulevard Street at the Black Maxwell Grocery store; however, if she needed something from the White grocery store, she would then make an order by telephone and a Black delivery boy would bring the items to the house.45 Since both Hazel and James grew up in financially secure two-parent Black households, they both entered the public sphere with high esteem and ambitious educational plans. Their high level of self-assurance and accomplishments inadvertently taught their children to have a certain level of confidence. The privilege of having well-educated, self-assured, financially secure parents with high religious morals evoked an informal education that was incomparable to the informal education received in most Orangeburg households, Black or White.46 The Pierces’ home was one of the nicer houses on Treadwell Street, originally purchased as a little one-story house. By the 1930s, their house had undergone major renovations turning it into a large, stately two-story home replete with electricity, plumbing, and a telephone. While this further set them apart economically from most African Americans, Hazel and James made it a point to teach their children humility and not to look down on others who were economically disadvantaged. This lesson of humility would prove to be invaluable in Jello’s later life through her consistent demonstration of charity and uplift work for the needy.47 As Jello and other high school girls pursued studies to prepare them for college or future careers, they were simultaneously being exposed to teachings based on White middle-class cultural standards of behavior to further complete their education. For some, this cultural training commenced in the homes of the more privileged southern Blacks whose libraries were adorned with literature on etiquette and proper social behavior. Using these books, these Black families taught their children lessons of etiquette that were latter continued in their formal schooling. For most southern Black girls, the sole book in their home was the Bible, and it was not until their formal schooling that they were introduced to such literature geared at reshaping their social behaviors into middle-class ones.48 It is important to note that Jello’s formative years occurred during the 1920s, the Roaring Twenties, when families worried or complained about the new generation. Seen by some as a disillusioned, lost generation, both male

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and female youths were criticized. The emergence of a group of females known as “flappers,” women who chose to live more unconventional lifestyles compared to the female majority and were seen as being tempestuous, wayward women, further upset the older generation. However, it was the flappers who introduced a radical social culture that eventually lead to some major renovations in early-twentieth-century women’s culture.49 Flappers’ indifference toward conventional female behavior and dress codes disrupted female child-rearing norms in the family and challenged society’s perception of women’s roles and images in public. Flappers protested and abandoned their traditional dress by refusing to wear corsets, rejecting the high-collared long dresses, and not pulling their hair back into conservative buns. Instead, they adopted the glamorized Hollywood fashions of short, brightly colored dresses that showed their legs, adorned themselves with heavy jewelry, feathers, and makeup, cropped their hair into short, boylike “bobs,” and engaged in nonladylike, indecent behaviors, including sexual promiscuity, smoking and drinking, and dancing the unrefined “Charleston” or “shimmy” to a new, degenerative music, jazz.50 Women’s dress styles also changed. Now young females preferred wearing the new-styled dresses of the 1920s. These new dresses had a long waist, a shorter length, and pleated bottoms that fell just below the knee, revealing more leg than these women’s mothers or grandmothers had ever shown in public.51 Flappers publicly flaunted their independence from conventional norms by defying the Victorian ideal of proper behavior befitting to womanhood. However, these shenanigans did not represent the typical behavior of teenage girls or women living in the 1920s. The female majority, instead, chose to adhere to the prevailing gender conventions. In actuality, there existed a conscious minority of middle- and upper-class women, including those from the African American community, who often consulted and relied upon literary sources that further advised them on the correct protocol proper ladies were to follow. In the early 1900s there existed a significant genre of literature prescribing proper feminine manners, appearance, etiquette, and proper behavior.52 African Americans also produced similar sources in the forms of books, newspapers, magazines, and lectures that specifically provided advice on proper etiquette befitting to the African American community and culture. One woman, Emma Azalia Hackley, was an accomplished singer and music teacher who later gained notoriety for training the young girl Marian Anderson before her renowned opera career began. When Hackley performed before Black audiences, after her performances she commonly met with small, invited groups of young African American females to talk with them privately

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on topics including beauty, manners, womanhood, and love. At these talks, attentive female listeners would ask in-depth and sometimes very personal questions on female-related life matters. As Hackley’s candid advice and talks grew more popular, she decided to publish her views in a book called The Colored Girl Beautiful in order to reach a wider Black female audience. Her book emerged as one of the early twentieth century’s important reads regarding raising Black girls.53 Jello’s family, like most educated, financially comfortable Black households in the early-twentieth-century South, also defined proper etiquette and behavior from a model based on that set by White, middle-class standards. Typical of middle- and upper-class southern Black households, her parents also kept a copy of Godey’s Lady’s Book and Emily Post’s Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home on their bookshelf for easy consultation. Young Jello also learned from these White advice columns and articles on manners and etiquette in her family’s library.54 Azalia Hackley’s book offered complete advice on subjects ranging from the proper way to laugh, speak, walk, or hold facial expressions to rules for dressing, grooming, dining, or dating. According to her, a “woman’s dress soon [told] the character of the wearer and betray[ed] immorality,” where even the color of the dress talked. She pointed out that “clothes show[ed] silliness, conceit and selfishness more than any other thing, and often they shame[d] a home, so a colored girl should study her individuality and her life position and dress accordingly.” Hackley argued that Black women must “cling to what is becoming rather than follow exaggerated fashions.”55

Formal Lessons

There were no public schools for African American or White children in early-twentieth-century Orangeburg. Those families with financial means sent their children out of town to private schools or enrolled them in local racially segregated private schools. Claflin in 1869 and State A&M in 1896 both had grammar school programs for which Black parents had to paid a fee if they wished their children to attend.56 Jello, Viessa, and Bubba were first exposed to formal education when their mother Hazel established a private kindergarten in their own house. Children had to be a certain age to attend grammar school at the colleges, and Hazel’s precocious children would not be able to attend school for several more years; therefore, to circumvent this school delay, she decided to start her own preschool to prepare the younger children for first grade.57 Her early students were from Orangeburg’s elite African American families, including Helen and Lula, the children of Robert Shaw Wilkinson, the

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president of State A&M. While at first Jello, Viessa, and Bubba were too young to enroll in their mother’s preschool, they observed her teaching the older children in the classroom set up in their home. While baby brother Bubba remained in Orangeburg with his parents, Jello and Viessa’s first formal schooling began in Brunswick, Georgia. They both stayed with their grandmother Matilda and attended the St. Athanasius Industrial School, the private school of St. Athanasius Episcopal Church. It was during this time that young Viessa fell seriously ill with diphtheria.58 After the children returned to Orangeburg from Brunswick, Jello and Bubba were enrolled in Claflin University’s grammar school. The schools they attended both in Brunswick and Orangeburg had coed student enrollments and male and female instructors who were both Black and White. These White instructors were normally females from Boston who worked at these southern early Black schools with a sincere commitment equal to that of their African American peers.59 At Claflin, children typically took their lunch to school to eat with their small group of friends during lunchtime. Not all children were from well off or financially comfortable families like the Pierces. Some children who came from the rural countryside were often from poor families who wanted at least one of their offspring to further their education in order to have a better life than that of doing farm work. For these students, attending school represented a grave financial sacrifice for their families since everyone’s income was needed for the family to subsist, including the offspring.60 At times, a classroom could have children of different ages due to the enrollment of poorer rural children whose financial circumstances interfered with their starting school at younger ages. One such boy, Hampton Smith, was one of Jello’s classmates. When he attended Claflin Grammar School, he was much taller and obviously older than the other pupils in their class. Jello and the others would often tease him, but “Ham,” as he was called, persevered as a student. In fact, he eventually earned a master’s degree in chemistry and later returned to teach as one of Claflin’s most outstanding instructors.61 In grammar school, Jello and Bubba took courses in English, spelling, math, history, and geography. The songs they sang were generally patriotic tunes and religious hymns. Those students who could afford to continue their schooling through adulthood normally did so at the same school. For example, most students who attended Claflin’s grammar school normally remained there to complete its high school and possibly its college programs.62 In the early 1920s, when Jello entered school, State A&M had a high school program but no grammar school program. Thus her parents enrolled her in

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Claflin’s grammar school program, but once she completed the eighth grade in 1925, she transferred over to State A&M’s high school, South Carolina State Academy. In the late 1920s, when State A&M decided to open a practice school for its future teachers or “student teachers” called Felton Training School, the Pierces then transferred their young son, Bubba, to this new grammar school. Now both Pierce children were enrolled at the school where their father was employed, allowing them to attend school free of charge.63 Most students attending the academy, however, were not as privileged as Jello since they had to work to support themselves and pay their fees during the regular school year. Also, most students were not from Orangeburg but came from towns throughout South Carolina and thus did not have the family support system that Jello and her friends shared. The out-of-town students moved to Orangeburg since South Carolina’s African American public schools in the 1920s seldom went beyond the sixth- or eighth-grade level of learning. The majority who attended these segregated, Jim Crow schools usually had to drop out after the first or second grade to work and earn money to help sustain their families.64 For the minority of students who completed the highest grade level offered at their nearby schools, their choices beyond this point were limited. There was no public high school in South Carolina for Black students until 1937 when Wilkinson High School opened in Orangeburg. Unless they attended a public high school out of state, their education stopped there. The other alternative was to relocate to Orangeburg and attend either the fee-paying high school at Claflin or State A&M.65 Determined to finish his education, one of Jello’s high school friends, Dudley Malone Zimmerman, nicknamed “Zin” by his classmates, left his home in Hartsville after finishing the local school. He enrolled in State A&M Academy and lived on campus. His father died when he was young and with four younger siblings, Zin had no choice but to work to pay his own way through college. While a full-time student, he worked for the college’s president, Miller F. Whittaker, driving and doing errands around his house.66 At South Carolina State Academy, the students attended classes in the same buildings as the college students. While Jello had Black and White teachers at Claflin, her instructional experiences at the academy were quite different, as all of her teachers were African American. Students at South Carolina State Academy had different teachers for different subjects and their high school curriculum was a set one. Unlike high school students in the late twentieth century, early-twentieth-century students did not have the luxury of choosing which courses to take or not take. The only exception was in the

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sciences, where they had to decide whether to take chemistry, physics, or biology. In addition, the students had to take four years of Latin.67 When Jello entered the academy in 1925, it adhered to the ideals of industrial education in which females focused on a domestic education—cooking, sewing, child rearing, and proper etiquette—while males selected a specific trade to learn during their four-year tenure. However, by the time she graduated in 1928, the curriculum was changing and some female students now enrolled in more traditional male courses, such as architectural drawing or manual training.68 It was standard procedure for all students to wear uniforms in both lower and higher education. At State A&M Academy, young Jello wore a pleated blue skirt, white cotton blouse, and white cotton socks or black or white cotton stockings. While none of the girls were ever allowed to wear silk blouses, once they became seniors they were permitted to wear silk stockings.69 Jello, the young lady with an independent mind, decided to take a different path from the mandated wardrobe prescribed for girls. For example, one school morning she passed her mother’s routine dress inspection, but on her walk to school, she changed into the forbidden silk stockings. After arriving at school, as usual there stood the high school principal, Mr. Whittaker, whom students secretly called “old man Whittaker.” He stood on one side of the hallway as the school’s dean stood on the other side. As Jello passed old man Whittaker wearing her beige silk stockings with the line down the back of her legs, he turned around and said, “Young lady, what’s wrong with your legs?” Without waiting for her response, he quickly told her to turn around and “go right back home” to change. Caught in the act, Jello was able to change back into her socks without returning home and was thus spared punishment from her father.70 Jello was not a tempestuous teenager dancing the Charleston and shimmy and drinking hard liquor to mimic the flappers of her era. However, she and her peers were influenced by the sometimes controversial fashions of the Roaring Twenties. Jello and her friends started wearing bobby socks and the long-waisted, slender-styled dresses that fell just below their knees, showing more legs than her mother ever did at that same age.71 Jello’s mother always wore her straight hair back in a ponytail or bun enclosed in a hair bow, a style loved by her husband. Knowing that her parents would never approve of her cutting her long, straight hair into the desired bobbed haircut, Jello was still determined to wear one of those trendy 1920s short hairstyles. Conspiring with her close girlfriends during her senior year of high school, she had them cut her hair into a shorter style with bangs, called the “buster brown,” in spite of the consequences. She knew that once her hair was cut, her parents would be angry but could do nothing. But her father was

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so furious that she had cut her hair that he banned her from eating meals with the family at the table; eventually her mother Hazel persuaded him to let their daughter rejoin them for meals.72 While Jello may have showed contempt for both school and family rules as shown in her failed attempt to wear silk stockings or her success in cutting her hair, at times larger numbers of students joined in protesting school rules designed to ensure standards of proper behavior. One such mass protest at the State A&M high school revealed a conflict of interest for Jello due to her father’s college faculty position. Since the tuition remission program for the children of State A&M employees was a major financial advantage, Jello’s eventual transfer from Claflin’s high school to the newly built State A&M Academy saved a significant amount of money for the Pierce family. And later, when her younger brother, Bubba, enrolled into the new Felton Training School, this gave them further financial relief. However, for Jello personally, she found that attending the same school where her father was employed also had its disadvantages.73 For example, in 1926, during her second year at the Academy, disgruntled high school students demanded certain privileges denied them since these privileges were deemed as not being proper or appropriate behavior for high school students. They wanted, for example, to be able to have dances and dance like the older college students as opposed to “marching” around the room in a circle. And they demanded that they be allowed to frequent select parties on the campus reserved only for the college students. Hence the students decided to hold a strike by not attending classes until their demands were addressed. Ignoring their class time, the students gathered at an agreed-upon location on the campus to strike.74 In the end, the strike lasted only one day and the students failed to win any of their demands. However, the strike was successful in having the full participation of the high school student body except for two pupils: Jello Pierce and her lone accomplice, Robert Burgess. Since Jello and Robert’s parents worked at the college, their parents dared them to participate in the strike. The two frustrated students sat alone in the classroom while some of their protesting peers threatened to “beat them up” for not joining them. Both Jello and Robert opted to endure this social ridicule as opposed to receiving the promised whippings at home had they joined the protest. In the spring of 1928, Jello graduated from State A&M Academy, and in the fall of 1928, Bubba, who now insisted on being called by his proper birth name, James, entered the academy, where he was now under the unending watchful eyes of their father and his co-workers. As for Jello, she was looking forward to finally having her freedom as a college student.75

Education

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Deciding whether or not to attend college was not an option for the Pierce children but a sine qua non for completing their education. As she was deciding which college she wanted to attend, Jello recalled her frustration at not being able to join her classmates in the high school strike; in addition, she remembered how she was always under the watchful eyes of her father and his colleagues. Hence, as Jello’s parents discussed plans of her attending the tuition-free State A&M College, little did they realize that Jello was secretly deciding her own college fate, one that was much different from what her parents had in mind for her.76 While her parents undeniably assumed that their daughter’s intention was to attend State A&M, Jello had already made up her mind that she was going to have and enjoy her full college privileges, whether it was dating or striking. Similar to her own mother’s feisty boldness and assertiveness, evidence of Jello’s audacious personality was beginning to gel and take shape. Her mother, an independent thinker who spoke up without fear and was full of confidence, had made a bigger impact on her daughter than she had realized. Unknown to her parents, Jello already had requested several out-of-state college catalogs and applications from schools, including Howard University in Washington, D.C., Talladega University in Alabama, and Fisk University in Tennessee. Still operating without her folks’ knowledge, she carefully examined the literature and decided that she wanted to attend Fisk University, a private, historically Black college in Nashville, Tennessee. “John Ogden, the Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath, and the Reverend Edward P. Smith—established the Fisk [Free Colored] School in Nashville, named in honor of General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen’s Bureau, who provided the new institution with facilities in former Union army barracks near the present site of Nashville’s Union Station.” The school opened its doors in January 1866. Sponsored and financed by the American Missionary Association, the United Church of Christ, philanthropic donations, and its own student choir, the Jubilee Singers, who traveled internationally during summer vacations raising money by singing Negro spirituals, “was incorporated into Fisk University on August 22, 1867.” It was through the famous Jubilee Singers that many young African Americans, including Jello, became aware of Fisk University and wanted to attend.77 At this point, Jello filled out the application but was hesitant to tell her parents of her decision to attend Fisk. She needed their signatures and financial support to complete the process and realized that she no longer had a choice but to tell them. Flabbergasted, her father’s immediate response was negative while her mother’s was one of reserve. After the initial shock dissi-

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pated, her mother grew more supportive of Jello attending Fisk and gradually was successful at persuading her husband to at least consider the same.78 Jello was an all-around very good student who particularly excelled in math and history; her father had always hoped that she would study music and become a musician. So when Jello announced to her father that she wanted to be a music major and Fisk had a very good music department and State A&M did not have one at all, the feisty seventeen year old succeeded in selling him on the idea. Her father agreed that she should attend Fisk.79

Education

Chapter 3

Gerry: The Young Adult, 1929–1933 College Days Since Fisk accepted only five hundred students annually, they were very selective of who was permitted to enroll. On the application, the parents’ section was filled with delicate questions such as “How many rooms are in your home? Do you own your home? Do you have electricity? How many bathrooms? Do you own an automobile?” and so forth. The reason for these questions was not clear, but perhaps it was to ensure that the parents could afford the school fees, travel costs, and needed items. On the other hand, maybe some of the early African American private schools were just blatantly snobbish and consciously sought and accepted students from “preferred social backgrounds.” Whatever the reasons were, Geraldine Pierce met the university’s criteria and was accepted.1 When Jello left for college at the end of the summer, she was looking forward to enjoying her future months of independence from her parents. She became totally immersed into the Fisk social culture by transforming her identity from that of a “high school kid” to that of a young college woman. First, she changed the spelling of her birth name from “Geraldine” to “Geraldyne” in order to distinguish herself from the other Geraldines on campus, and then she introduced herself as “Gerry.” Her childhood name Jello would now be used only by family and her closest friends back in Orangeburg. Her next independent action in her newfound freedom was to cut her long hair completely short. She finally had the stylish, short “boy bob [hair]cut” that she wanted, a hairstyle she knew would shock her parents once she returned home for the

38

first college break. For Gerry, cutting her hair was her first major mark of independent decision making without parental input.2 Fisk University was based on the “quarter” system as opposed to the usual “semester” calendar system. Gerry undertook a study of music during her first quarter but soon realized she had chosen a major that she had absolutely no interest in. She was not really a singer, and taking the various classes to learn to play musical notes was not appealing to her. After taking a freshman math class, she liked the course and the professor so much that she decided to change her major to mathematics, a field of study traditionally pursued by boys. Gerry’s decision to deviate from the female norm of majoring in music, domestic economy, or dressmaking was a mere continuation of her being an independent thinker and carving her own path.3 Aside from her busy schedule of classes at Fisk, Gerry was actively involved with extracurricular activities, including attendance at various campus political and social events. Sometimes campus clubs would invite celebrity intellectuals or performers, including literary writers Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and James Weldon Johnson and opera singer Marian Anderson. While Gerry certainly attended these events, meeting celebrities was not a novelty for her.4 Because her father taught at State A&M, Gerry frequently attended performances and lectures with her family held at the college. Since Jim Crow Orangeburg prohibited Blacks from staying in the White-owned hotels and State A&M’s president’s home was filled with his children, arrangements often were made for these celebrated guests to stay in homes in the Black community, including those of Mattie Stewart on Russell Street and Hazel Pierce on Treadwell Street. Hence, as a girl Gerry had the opportunity to see and personally meet the famous but controversial comedic character actor “Stepin Fetchit” (Lincoln Perry), who stayed in her home for a week, and opera singer Marian Anderson, who stayed with the family for two days.5 At Fisk, like other Black colleges in the Jim Crow South, guests also stayed for a few days if not the entire week on campus after their presentations or performances. At this time, they held further discussions or poetry sessions with interested students. They usually resided on campus since there were no hotel accommodations available for Black visitors in Jim Crow Nashville. At Fisk, Gerry had a chance to again see Marian Anderson perform. On this occasion, after her performance Anderson stayed in Gerry’s dormitory, and “every night after supper, [she and others] had a chance to talk with her.”6 Besides attending the intellectual and cultural functions, Gerry also joined campus clubs. When she initially enrolled at Fisk, she had every intention of joining the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated (DST). While

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growing up in Orangeburg, she attended various Delta events and these college sorority girls had a major influence on her. During this time, DST was the only active sorority at State A&M College, and when Gerry was in high school at State A&M Academy, DST sorority members pinpointed her to be groomed as a future member of DST.7 Upon her arrival at Fisk University, however, Gerry discovered that one of her female childhood friends from Georgia was a student there. She was an upperclassman and a very active member in Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated (AKA), a sorority Gerry had never heard of before. Unfamiliar with AKA, she saw that it had a very active chapter at Fisk, and by her sophomore year she was invited to join a select female club affiliated with the campus sororities. The club served as a precursor for those girls who were either pinpointed for or interested in joining one of the sororities. By her junior year, some of the club members chose to pledge DST, but Gerry reneged on her earlier interests and pledged AKA, shocking her Orangeburg family and friends who were either members or affiliates of DST. Gerry, an occasional nonconformist, surprisingly pledged AKA and again defied the norm by choosing her own path.8 Gerry’s pledging process included two weeks of harmless, non-lifethreatening, “concentrated hazing,” unlike the “alleged” branding that Delta pledges received on their legs or backs. After dinner, the AKAs held meetings in the dormitory basement and had its pledges “doing all kinds of stupid things . . . on poles, . . . exercising, and they’d have towels and . . . have [the pledges] stooping, . . . to actually paddle [them]” if [they] failed a task or disobeyed a directive. For instance, pledges were made to carry with them daily a little box full of goodies. If one of the AKAs requested a certain goody not in the box, then the pledge knew she was going to be paddled that night. Or if the blindfolded pledge refused to eat a worm, which was actually cooked spaghetti, then she was going to get smacked with a towel for not doing so. The paddlings were not ferocious but were more like “smacks” or “spankings.” Not surprisingly, the rebellious Gerry was one of the pledges paddled several times for infractions during her journey to becoming a member of the AKA sorority.9 Gerry’s upbringing, her native intelligence, and her independent thinking played a major role in shaping her future decisions and attitudes about life, particularly those related to female life choices. The experiences of being raised by an assertive, educated, feisty mother along with Gerry socializing with playmates in an all-male environment when growing up certainly aided in shaping her attitude of confidence. She truly believed that there were no limitations to what she could do. A young female rebel at heart, Gerry just naturally assumed that she was capable of doing anything she set her heart on.

College Days

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Love and Sex The Victorian ideal of true womanhood promoted women as morally pure, and thus they had to be confined to the home or always chaperoned to better preserve this high morality, purity, chastity, and innocence of life’s impurities, including promiscuity and unchaste behavior. This ideology permeated American families regardless of race and ethnicity, dictating how girls should be reared to be virginal young ladies groomed for marriage and domesticity. Though parents postponed these uncomfortable, awkward “birds and bees” conversations with their daughters for as long as possible, it was not uncommon for females to eventually learn about sex either accidentally or on purpose from someone in their environment. Eleanor Alexander discusses the aftermath of the relationship between the betrothed couple Alice Ruth Moore and Paul Laurence Dunbar after he raped her one night while drunk, pointing out that besides her physical pain and suffering from the rape, she was further devastated emotionally over no longer being chaste and “a valuable commodity in the marriage market.” Patricia L. N. Donar and John D’Emilio further argue that deflowered women, whether voluntarily engaged in sex or raped, were no longer in “a higher point of perfection” and were now in a “profounder depth of misery.” Even E. Azalia Hackley in her self-help book discussed the forbidden topic of sex in a candid language of euphemisms that, in essence, warned and advised girls to preserve their purity and not engage in sexual activity or any type of promiscuous relationship with males.10 In the early twentieth century, religious morality dictated and shaped the culture and behavior of African Americans. For females, in particular, to sway the least bit from living morally, whether it was by stealing, lying, being flirtatious, or being promiscuous, could bring public shame upon one’s family and tarnish the reputation of the daughter forever. African American parents found it necessary to shield their daughters from learning certain topics or lifestyles, thus excluding them from adult conversations or from being in the presence of adult discussions. Deborah Gray White argues that even during the antebellum era, southern slave parents purposely avoided such conversations with their daughters so as to prolong their innocence and further destroy the Jezebel stereotypical image of Black females; yet while they taught them chastity, they simultaneously had to teach them how to guard themselves from the sexual advances of males.11 It also was not customary for southern African American parents to hold sex-related discussions directly or indirectly with their children. During this era, knowing about “the birds and the bees” or “the facts of life” was deemed inappropriate for children, both in the home and school setting. Preserving

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the innocence of their children was of primary concern to these early African American parents, as it was for their antebellum ancestors. To expose children to such “hush-hush” information gravely subtracted from this innocence and thus forced the child to “grow up too fast.” In the Pierce household, these oldfashioned values also persisted, and certain topics were not discussed with or in front of children. Hazel and James even consciously refrained from displaying any type of physical affection toward each other in front of the children. At most, when their father left and return from work, he would give his wife and two children a quick peck of a kiss on their cheeks. They did not discuss love, sex, or any other related topics with Jello and Bubba because they were seen as being inappropriate for children. The Pierces were extremely old-fashioned when it came to discussing personal matters like this.12 Even when it came to pregnancies, Jello, like most children in the early twentieth century, was not aware of the act of conception or intercourse, the nine-month period of expectancy, or the actual birth process. Even as the baby grew in the mother’s womb, causing her belly to protrude, young children were not cognizant of this growth. In the case of Hazel, when she was pregnant with Bubba, she sent four-year-old Jello to stay with her grandmother in Georgia minus any explanation of a baby coming. When Jello returned home, there was baby Bubba.13 While in elementary school at Claflin, Jello was completely innocent of sex and related topics. Her innocence prevailed to the point where she and Bubba undressed in front of each other while neither child fazed the other. For Gerry, she “didn’t think anything about anything.” When at home, Jello would play with only the boys on her street, but when at school, she played only with her girlfriends. It was in this all-female setting that she gradually was exposed to the forbidden topic of sex.14 Like most girls in the early twentieth century, Jello learned about the “birds and the bees” from her school girlfriends, not her parents. While her girlfriends’ parents also did not discuss such topics at home either, somehow their children still managed to get bits and pieces of information from older siblings, by eavesdropping, and by other means to compile their information or, more likely, “misinformation.” On one occasion, one of Jello’s girlfriends sneaked a magazine containing sex and nude pictures to school that she probably found hidden in her home. Jello and her friends secretly passed the magazine around in their small clique, giggling as they viewed the explicit photos that would have even shocked most parents.15 By the time she was in seventh and eighth grade, she was beginning to learn more about the forbidden topics of menstruation and sexual intercourse in their girly conversations. As Jello learned more about the menses

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from her friends who had theirs since ages twelve and thirteen, she grew more concerned knowing she was the only one in her group who had not experienced menstruation. Beginning to think that something was wrong, Jello was relieved when her menses finally began around age fifteen.16 Hazel had never discussed the topic of menstruation with Jello until her actual menses began. She now conferred with Jello about what menstruation was and how she now had to protect herself. She explained the proper way to dress during her period and showed Jello how to fold and use the white cloth pad. Furthermore, Hazel showed Jello how to wash the soiled cloths with lye soap and water to bleach them white; afterward she instructed her where to hang them out to dry so that they will be out of the view of her brother and father. After Hazel gave Jello these instructions, the two never had another conversation even remotely related to sex or childbirth. As for Jello’s father, he was never a part of her “facts of life” conversations, but most likely he held a similarly brief discussion with Bubba. For both Jello and Bubba, those oncein-a-lifetime conversations marked the extent of their “birds and bees” education from their parents.17 Stewart E. Tolnay’s study on southern Black farmers reveals the important role that the labor of their offspring played not only in their economic survival but also in their survival of old age since it was the grown children who eventually took care of aged parents and relatives. Between 1900 and 1940, the majority of African Americans continue to live in small southern towns and rural areas, despite the massive migrations northward during World War I and World War II. Children growing up in small towns, particularly in rural areas, had less exposure to education and modernity. In both settings, poor children’s lives remained intertwined with employment since their earning power was essential to their family’s survival. The overall earnings of these small-town and rural Black families were seldom spent on leisure activities such as going to the movies or dancing at social spots. Outside of their attending church on Sundays, contributing their meager tithes and offerings to the church, and visiting neighbors on Saturday or Sunday evenings, their exposure to urbane culture, promiscuity, and worldliness was minute if not nil. Southern Black girls largely remained innocent of sexual activity and ignorant of the topic since it was a subject discussed neither in their homes nor in social surroundings. The Pierces certainly did not discuss such topics with their offspring, nor did they openly display any type of physical affection toward each other in front of the children. There was no radio or television in the home when Jello was a girl, and even if there had been, early-twentiethcentury media, including radio, television, films, newspapers, and magazines, excluded sexual themes and visuals.18

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Furthermore, small southern towns and cities lacked the aggressive cultural diversity and rambunctious social nature found in large, urban cities that innately bred a much faster pace of life. Large populations, dense living conditions, accessibility to diverse information, and increasing advancements in communicative systems lead to urban residents being armed with more information on life experiences including sexuality. Sometimes, youth being exposed to too much information often lead to a significant loss of their social innocence, especially if the information was related to sexuality. On the other hand, the slow-paced living of southern small towns such as Orangeburg promoted a social conservatism that retarded open discussions on sexual themes in both private and public spheres. The successful art of not discussing sexual topics created such a void until it seemed as if sexuality was nonexistent, thus making it easier for parents to tell their children that their baby siblings were delivered by storks or “laid by the buzzard, hatched by the sun, and raised by the moon.”19 For these early Black parents, withholding sexual information in the early-twentieth-century South was a continuum from the antebellum era. This inadvertently promoted a sexual ignorance that maintained a level of innocence that effectively demoted promiscuity among Black southern children, particularly among its females. In her book, Emma Azalia Hackley addressed topics not generally discussed openly with girls pertinent to social behaviors such as maturity, love, self-control, and relationships. When she discussed intimacy, she was careful to use terms like “life forces” or “vital forces.” Hackley advised girls to refrain from permitting “boys and men from kiss[ing] and fond[ling]” them or, as one woman stated it, from “paw[ing] and claw[ing] them” or “selling their bodies.” Hackley argued that “colored girls” must present themselves as proud “hands off girls,” seeing themselves as rare flowers that are never handled or touched.20 Hackley stated that “impure novels often lead girls astray or [gave] them impure thoughts which [were] printed or published in their faces.” She added that bold facial expressions would set “muscles in the face and neck,” affecting one’s “modesty and purity,” two key characteristics needed for enhancing one’s looks, beauty. Reading inappropriate literature, according to Hackley, lead to “rough uncouth actions and gestures [that] cause[d] ugly lines in the face.”21 Hackley’s views represented those held by most southern Black parents who carefully guarded their daughters’ virtues. Thus it was not surprising that when it came to normal social interaction between boys and girls, there were set restrictions. Early African American parents were careful as to whom their daughters socialized with and where they socialized. They wanted to protect their daughters’ reputations and frowned upon any associates or actions that

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might taint their images. Whether their daughters were courting or hosting a social event or party in their homes, their parents remained in the same room with the youth or at least within view of it. Having chaperones at parties and when courting or being accompanied by escorts when venturing out into public were all measures to preserve and protect a female’s chastity and social reputation. However, according to Beth Bailey, in “1923, chaperone rules did not apply to girls with their fiancés, but the engagement had to have been publicly announced.” Even with such measures in place, Black parents knew the power of temptation and deviant behavior. An example of a female’s chastity and safety being compromised in spite of all the measures being in place was an incident between Paul Laurence Dunbar and his fiancée Alice Ruth Moore. According to Alexander, Dunbar still raped her in spite of the fact that they were both guests in the well-respected home of a mutual friend, Sally Brown, and had separate sleeping quarters and were never alone in the house as a couple. In the case of Jello, whether she was single or engaged, her parents never took their daughter’s safety or the politeness of her suitors for granted.22 Whenever there were parties with only girls in attendance, parents did not have to monitor their interactions or chaperone as closely. The many parties that Jello went to were usually only attended by girls and they would play games, including “musical chairs,” “ring around the rosy,” and “drop the handkerchief.” There were a few parties held with both boys and girls in which they were permitted to play the game “spin the bottle.” In this game, the boys and girls sat in a circle and, when the bottled was spun around and pointed at someone, that person had to choose a boy or girl to kiss on the cheek. However, if the adults were not looking, Jello and her friends would change the rules and steal a kiss on the lips.23 Once Jello became a teenager at State A&M Academy, the school made certain that social interactions between male and female students were restricted and carefully monitored. The academy held a few “socials” for the students each academic year, and at these socials, the girls would “march” on one side of the aisle of chairs and the boys would “march” on the other side. This was the only means of socializing between the students outside of the classroom.24 While Jello and her friends’ Orangeburg parties were closely monitored to prevent mischief and protect them from mishaps, there was a party Jello attended that was not free of mischief when she experienced her first “taste of alcohol.” On one of the many family trips taken to Georgia to visit her mother’s relatives, she was invited to attend a party hosted by a churchgoing, upstanding couple in Brunswick who never had children of their own. They enjoyed the company of young people and would frequently give parties for the com-

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munity children to socialize and have fun. Unknown to their parents, however, the hosts themselves were “bootleggers” and the punch they served had a peculiar taste to it. When Jello sipped her “awful, awful” tasting punch, she learned from someone that it was laced with homemade corn liquor called “white lightning” or “moonshine.” Later, when Jello’s aunt heard rumors of alleged moonshine-spiked punch being served at the parties, her skeptical aunt would always warn Jello not to “drink any of that punch” while at the party, a warning that mischievous Jello interpreted as “an invitation to drink the punch.”25 Youth parties Jello attended in Orangeburg were never sabotaged with alcohol-spiked punch and always closely chaperoned. Once a year during the Christmas season, when the college students were on break and the campus was vacant, some parents would sponsor a more formal-type holiday party with the fancy trimmings, holding the holiday gala in the Industrial Arts Building. The dressy high school students would march and even were allowed to dance the “two step” as long as the boys and girls did not dance too close to each other. It was during these socials and parties that the early stages of courtship and love often began to blossom.26

Courtship and Marriage Like most girls of this era, Jello was neither free to have boyfriends nor date as she pleased. Raising daughters with high morals remained a priority in African American culture from their childhood into adulthood, a practice that stemmed from the slave era. The Pierces wanted to make certain that their Jello was always known as a “good girl,” a “nice young lady” who knew the proper thing to do. To enforce this, they were very strict when it came to her interaction with the opposite sex. In spite of this regulation, Gerry, like many other girls, still had their secret boyfriends whom parents seldom learned about. At Claflin in the eighth grade, she liked a boy named Joseph Gregg who worked in a little store downtown that sold perfume. He once “snitched” a bottle of perfume and left it at her house as a gift, unknown to her parents. While her parents knew of this friendship, they acknowledged the friendly association as being innocent “puppy love.” Once she entered State A&M Academy, the rules regarding interacting with boys remained the same. James Pierce was very strict and prohibited Jello from talking to boys throughout her high school years, whether or not he liked the boy. He would commonly have a few of his male college students over to their house to help him with certain tasks. One student, Timothy Stewart, was from Charleston and had been raised in the Jenkins Orphanage; while

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there, he was a member of the orphanage’s band, which performed to raise money to support the home. His musical talents as a trumpeter landed him a band scholarship at State A&M College, where he had the responsibility of playing “Taps” nightly at 11:00 p.m. Jello had grown particularly fond of Timothy, who, in turn, felt the same and wanted to walk her home daily from high school. To circumvent her father’s rule of not socializing with boys, she would “sneak and let the fellow” walk her home, sometimes holding hands or even sneaking a little kiss “until [they] reached the corner” from her house. It was at the corner that their walk ended, which was an event only made possible if her father was nowhere in sight. Each night Jello would wait to hear Timothy’s trumpet playing “Taps” before drifting off to sleep only to await his usual question the next day during their secret, romantic walk: “Did you hear me play last night?” While her father never said anything, there was the possibility that he knew of their friendship since the campus community was quite small. Jello was not allowed to have boyfriends while in high school, even though several of her friends did. They would commonly tease her because her father prohibited boys from coming to her house. While neither Jello nor her friends were allowed to attend parties freely with boys, Jello’s girlfriends were permitted to “take company” from boys. She knew it was futile to ask and a “no-no” to complain to her parents about how her friends were able to have male company but she was not. Accepting her father’s strict rules, when Jello was finally allowed to attend coed parties she could only do so if brother Bubba, who was four years younger than her, went along with her.27 Unknown to Jello, their father would give Bubba instructions to report back to him any time Jello spent too much time talking with one boy. Once Jello realized Bubba was a spy for her father, she would “fuss and fight with him” whenever he would tell on her later. Of course, this was her father’s way of ensuring that his daughter’s reputation was protected and she behaved in an honorable manner. Jello’s parents never prescribed the type of young man they wanted her to date, but she knew whoever he would be would have to meet their overall approval.28 During her high school years, Jello had gradually befriended a few of the older college girls, including a girl named Emma Jane Stewart whose family had moved to Orangeburg when she was a young girl. It was through these friendships that Jello was exposed to her first female social club, the Red Ribbon, composed of college girls from the most respectable homes in Orangeburg. They would annually sponsor a big invitation-only dance held in the large room above the Black-owned Bythewood Funeral Home in the Bythewood Building. Jello always received an invitation to attend the college event,

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and each time her parents refused to let her, in spite of its sponsors being young college ladies from preferred backgrounds.29 When Jello graduated from the academy and was preparing to attend Fisk University, James Pierce had one major stipulation. He informed his wife Hazel, who would be taking Jello to Nashville to settle her into Fisk, that their daughter was not, under any conditions, to have visitations from males. Upon her arrival, Hazel told the dormitory matron that her daughter Geraldyne was not to have “male callers,” and the matron obliged. During this era, it was not unusual for parents to inquire about visitation between the sexes in college since they remained concerned about their daughters’ reputation and chastity. For example, at both Claflin and State A&M, the rules and regulations for their own protection included that females were to be escorted at all times by teachers to and from classes on campus or whenever they ventured off campus for shopping. Eventually these rules were seen as unfair to females and evolved into a national complaint from other educated African American women when one of their organizations, the National Association of Colored Women, charged that these were “archaic, degrading, and insulting” practices that prohibited their growth and development for leadership roles. They remained adamant in challenging these rules and regulations that restricted female movement and thus progress.30 Once her mother left for South Carolina, it did not take long for the excited high school graduate Jello to adapt to being the college girl Gerry in her new college environment since she had spent most of her younger years on the college campuses of Claflin and State A&M. Even though Gerry’s mother had told the matron that her daughter was not to have gentlemen callers, after one early initial warning to Gerry, the matron became too busy to pay particular attention to one family’s daughter when she had many others to supervise. Relieved at no longer being under the watchful eye of the matron, Gerry was now free to mingle with the opposite sex as her college peers did.31 Once a week during the day, students had to dress in proper attire to attend the mandatory weekly service held in the campus chapel. Even though their social life was largely restricted on campus, Fisk students were allowed liberal leaves from campus. They were free to go to town unescorted as long as they signed out of the dorm when they left and signed in when they returned at the front desk, where a female upperclassman served as a monitor. Since the streetcar passed on the street right in front of the dorms, Gerry and her friends “could catch a streetcar [and] go anytime” as long as they signed out and returned before the 11:00 p.m. dormitory curfew. They would go shopping, walk to the beauty parlor, or sometimes eat dinner at the house of one of her friend’s relative who lived in Nashville.32

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At Fisk, boys were allowed to visit their dormitory for one hour every evening after the dinner meal. “They would all flock into [the] foyer to talk to girls, and if they didn’t have special girlfriends, they would be in there” socializing. At the end of the hour, “somebody would blink the lights . . . for them to leave.” During that hour, they did not have to sign in to visit the girls in the foyer; however, Sundays were restricted for “special calling time,” and on this day gentlemen callers arrived in the afternoon around 4:00 p.m., signed in, and were permitted to visit their female guests until 10:00 p.m. if they wanted.33 On certain weekends, there would be a campus dance; on these nights, “the fellows would come to the dormitory and pick [their girls] up” to escort them to the dance hall. Girls who did not have special male friends would go to the dance together as a group. Once there, unlike in high school where Gerry marched around in gender-segmented lines under the strict watch of several adult chaperons, she was now able to fast or slow dance with boys if she wished, as the two assigned chaperones danced and enjoyed themselves as well. While Gerry and her friends did not outwardly voice their sentiments regarding chaperones one way or the other, there were other college females who gradually were becoming critical of being treated like children who needed always to be watched. Without complaint, the dances ended at 10:00 p.m. to complement the 11:00 p.m. dorm curfew, when all Fisk students were expected to be in their dorm beds with the lights out for the night.34 Even though male students were restricted to certain times and days for visiting the girls in the dorm, male and female students were not restricted in their socializing outside of the dorms. “Fellows could walk [female students] on the campus, . . . to class, [and] . . . from class anytime of the day and any day of the week.” Even though they were not permitted into the dormitory, after walking to the dorm they “could stand outside on the steps and . . . talk” as long as they liked. Students attending Fisk and Meharry College, a historically Black medical school across the street from Fisk, often socialized together. It was particularly fashionable for Meharry male students to seek out Fisk female students as their girlfriends. While some families’ dream of sending their daughters off to college included them meeting and marrying a professional man, a Fisk girl who dated and married a Meharry graduate fulfilled an even bigger dream of being a doctor’s wife. Aside from having many girlfriends, Gerry had a large number of male friends, largely due to her being socially comfortable around males since she grew up playing only with boys on her street. In her youth, Gerry had exhibited signs of being unconventional in her thinking and actions. There were significant factors in her environment that played a major role in shaping her feisty

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behavior and freethinking. During her grammar school years, she played freely and equally with her boy playmates, and even when they shunned her because of her gender, she devised ways to get them to include her again in their mix. Since a few of Gerry’s longtime male friends from Claflin College in Orangeburg now attended Meharry, it was not unusual for these boys, along with their new Meharry friends, to visit Gerry at Fisk on Sunday afternoons. While always platonic, these friendships led to Gerry’s popularity as many Fisk girls begged her to introduce them to her Meharry friends. In the end, however, her Meharry buddies ended up marrying other girls they met and not their Fisk girlfriends. Gerry did not have a boyfriend during most of her freshman year at Fisk, but she enjoyed her freedom of being away from home and on her own. Near the end of the school year, Gerry finally had a brief relationship with a “beau” which ended once she returned home to Orangeburg for the summer break. After her freshman year ended in the spring of 1929, her return home for the summer marked the first time Gerry was permitted to have a male caller visit her at her house. One of her high school friends, Jim Hicks, opted to attend State A&M College after graduation while Gerry left for Fisk. On summer break, he asked her if it was okay for him to come by to visit her. In turn, Gerry asked her parents for permission for him to visit. They approved of his coming over on the following Sunday at about 7:00 or 8:00 p.m., but he had to leave by 10:00 p.m.35 When Jim arrived that first Sunday, he and Gerry sat and talked about school, their classes, and their friends. While he may have liked her as a girlfriend, she only liked him as a platonic friend. Never sitting close together, they either sat on the porch swing or in the living room, talking and laughing about different things. Even if they wanted to sit close together, Gerry’s father made certain this was not going to occur, as both her parents either sat in the same room with them or in an area where they could watch them. Regardless of their social class and age, African American parents, particularly fathers, sitting in the next room or in the same room while their daughters courted was not an anomaly. For examples, in the early 1920s when Celia Perry Mack Tilley was twenty years old and lived with her family in the outskirts of town in rural Orangeburg County, she recalled her “papa” sitting in the next room while she courted, and when it was time for her suitor to leave, he would enter the room and literally sit on the same couch between them. Also, Lula Love Wilkinson, a daughter of one of Orangeburg’s Black elite families, whose father, Robert Shaw Wilkinson, was president of State A&M College, started “winding the several clocks throughout the home, especially when the boyfriends were at the house too long.”36

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Gerry’s first visit from her male caller, Jim, was guarded and under the watchful eyes of her parents. Once he left that evening, a very upset Gerry questioned her parents out of frustration, saying respectfully, “Now, who did he come to see? Did he come to see you all or me?” For the Pierces, this was a new experience for them, having their daughter courting; on the other hand, for Gerry, who had enjoyed both her freedom and lightly supervised social life at Fisk, she found it to be the most humiliating experience. While Gerry was accustomed to having male callers and even a boyfriend with minimal direct supervision at Fisk in her freshman year, her naïve parents had no idea of their daughter’s active collegiate social life.37 On another occasion when Jim was visiting, the Pierces apparently were scarcely present, assuming that the pair would adhere to the usual protocol of etiquette behavior and Jim would depart at 10:00 p.m. When her father realized that Gerry and Jim were still talking in the living room past the 10:00 p.m. curfew, he was livid. While some fathers resorted to loudly clearing their throats or winding the clocks, James Pierce had his own ploy.38 He went upstairs to the bedroom directly above the living room and loudly slammed first one shoe and then another on the floor. When that did not stir the young man to leave, he entered the living room area, purposely calling out loudly to his wife, “Momma, what time is it?” At this point, Gerry wisely advised the young man that it was time for him to leave. While a relationship did not develop from this friendship, in later years Jim told Gerry how his friends teased him mercilessly about him being the first boy to ever visit her home since that was a definite no-no with her father, Professor Pierce. When Gerry returned to Fisk for her sophomore year, she continued to date and have male friends and a few boyfriends. At Fisk, if a college girl wore her boyfriend’s fraternity pin or his sports letter sweater, this indicated they were in a committed relationship. While her parents were not aware of any of her relationships at Fisk, Gerry enjoyed the experiences of having college sweethearts, especially with an athlete who gave her his letter “F” to wear on her sweater. It was an exclusive relationship that included kissing, hand holding, and hugging, but there was no sexual intimacy. While Gerry was extremely fond of her beau, she still was not sure if she really loved him. In her senior year, she entered her first serious relationship with a boy, a piano music major from Kentucky, Hayes Strider, who was to be her last college boyfriend. Until their college years, Gerry and her clique of friends were largely innocent of sexual topics and activity to the point of never talking about it. It was not until after her first year of college that she became conscious of “that sort of thing” due to an incident involving one of her peers. The summer Gerry

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returned home to Orangeburg after her freshman year at Fisk University was her first introduction to premarital sex and pregnancy. When she returned home for the summer, Gerry was very excited to reunite with her high school girlfriend. When Gerry invited her friend to travel with her family to visit relatives in Georgia, her girlfriend’s mother quickly said, “No, you know you can’t go; you know what’s wrong with you. You know you got a problem.” Confused by the abrupt answer, Gerry learned later that her girlfriend was pregnant. During her freshman year, her friend had gotten pregnant by her college boyfriend. As a result, the parents of both teenagers were meeting to get them wedded before the baby came, which was “the thing to do during those days.” The couple stayed married for over sixty years.39 For those college girls at Fisk who chose to be sexually active, they remained very discreet in their actions. There were a few college girls who became pregnant but it was always kept secretive to avoid gossip, public shame for the girl, and embarrassment to the family. Once the semester ended, pregnant girls either did not return to school the following semester or they stayed out one year and returned after giving birth. One of Gerry’s friends from Kentucky, who was a class ahead of her, did not return to school from summer vacation the following year to complete her senior year. It was rumored that she was pregnant. She wrote Gerry frequently during her school-year absence about becoming roommates when she returned and other things but never mentioned her reasons for not returning to school that year. After her one-year hiatus, she returned to Fisk and graduated with Gerry’s class, where everyone assumed that her secret baby remained in her parents’ care. In later years, Gerry and her friends’ suspicions panned out correctly when they learned that their Kentucky girlfriend’s daughter was a freshman at Fisk while their own children were still in grammar school. As for Gerry, like most females of her era, she chose to remain chaste throughout college until marriage, as she continued to enjoy having her numerous boyfriends during her college years. Sexual promiscuity was one path the young maverick had no intention or interest in pursuing.40

Courtship and Marriage

Franklin Pierce (1845–1905) was born in Charlotte Davis (1845–1894), a Cherokee Cassatt, South Carolina, from the union of a Indian, was born in Cassatt, South Carolina. White plantation owner and a slave woman.

James Pierce (1876–1937) Jello’s father.

Mayesville Industrial Institute was founded in 1886 for African Americans and closed in 1913. From W. N. Hartshorn, An Era of Progress and Promise: Education and Religion in Post-Emancipation America.

A sailor built this castle made of small wooden cigar boxes during his leisure time on one of his long voyages in the late nineteenth century. He eventually gave it to stevedore Harry Tatnall as a gift.

Matilda Buggs Tatnall (1862–1927), the mother of Hazel Tatnall, was of mixed ancestry and lived in Brunswick, Georgia.

Hazel Frederica Tatnall (1888–1982), Jello’s mother.

Georgia Day Tatnall (1883–?), sister of Hazel Tatnall.

St. Emma’s Military Academy in Rock Castle, Virginia. Courtesy of St. Francis/St. Emma Military Academy.

Baby Jello at two months and three weeks.

Viessa, age ninth months, and Jello, age one and a half.

Baby boy “Bubba” sitting upright at around seven months.

Jello, age six or seven, shortly after the passing of her little sister, Viessa.

Hazel Pierce sits in the front seat while her husband James stands next to the Model-T Ford her parents gave the couple as a gift.

Jello, about age twelve, and Bubba, about age eight, swimming in Brunswick during the summer.

Gerry with her short “bob” haircut at Fisk University.

Fisk University in Nashville.

Fisk University 1932 commencement program featuring Gerry’s graduating class.

Gerry’s husband, Dudley Malone “Zin” Zimmerman (1910–2000), in his office at South Carolina State A&M College in 1940.

William Zimmerman (?–1923), the father of Dudley “Zin” Zimmerman.

Zin’s 1932 bachelor of science degree from South Carolina State A&M College.

Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman and Dudley Malone Zimmerman’s 1935 marriage license.

Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman early in her marriage.

Grave of Gerry’s father, James Pierce, at the Colored Cemetery in Orangeburg. The arrow to the far top left indicates sister Viessa’s headstone.

Proud mom Gerry and dad Zin with five-monthold Malone, January 1942.

Gerry and Zin’s second child, Rose Hayzel Zimmerman, born in 1943. Photo taken April 1944.

A very happy Malone, age five, and Rose Hayzel, age three.

Rose Hayzel at about age seven with Grandmother Hazel, affectionately called “Mother Dear.”

Gerry’s master of science degree from South Carolina State A&M College.

Professor Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, mathematics faculty.

Professor Zimmerman instructs students on using new, individualized technology for teaching mathematics in the early 1970s.

Professor Zimmerman receives a Gratitude for Service plaque from the president of the Mathematics Club.

Gerry (marked with an X) at the National Science Foundation’s Summer Institute at San Jose State University, 1960.

Gerry with tall college freshman Rose Hayzel in San Jose, California, at the National Science Foundation’s Summer Institute, 1960.

Young Rose Hayzel and Malone model their Christ the King band uniforms.

Ten-year-old Rose Hayzel shows off her bicycle in 1953.

Malone, about age sixteen, and Rose Hayzel, about age fourteen, with their escorts to one of the many semiformal dances they attended during their summer and holiday breaks.

Mom Gerry congratulates her son with a kiss upon his receiving the Boy Scouts of America’s highest honor, the Eagle Scout medal, as dad Zin watches with admiration.

The Zimmermans in their formal attire pose for a photograph while hosting a formal holiday gathering in their home in December 1958.

Mom Hazel with her two grown children, Jim (“Bubba”) and Gerry (“Jello”), in the late 1970s.

Family photo of four generations of Zimmermans in 1995. Zin and Gerry are sitting next to granddaughter Marlo, who is holding great granddaughter Michaela. Derek, Amber, Rose Hayzel, Malone, and Christopher are standing behind them.

Gerry and Mom Hazel dressed in period attire to celebrate South Carolina’s bicentennial in 1976.

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Mrs. Z (back row, far right) attending church with her Girl Scout Troop 242 in the 1970s.

Gerry (back row, center) and her Links, Incorporated members (in white) and newly inducted members (in black), 1974.

Gerry as the key speaker on Geraldyne Zimmerman Day, March 15, 1959, at Wilkinson High School. The historically black school honored her for her community and civic work with teenagers.

Program for Geraldyne Zimmerman Day.

Gerry, wearing a suit with stole and hat, observes Mayor Clyde S. Fair of Orangeburg as he officially opens the new Zimmerman Youth Center for black youths in 1963.

Gerry (center) is honored in 1976 by her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority as being the only charter member still with the chapter after forty-one years of active service.

Gerry’s honorary doctorate of humane letters from Claflin University, awarded in 1992.

Chapter 4

Gerry: The Mother, 1933–1960s Gerry and Zin By Gerry’s senior year in 1932, the majority of the female students at Fisk were making plans to teach school after graduation. As for Gerry, the mathematics major with absolutely no interest in teaching, she decided to pursue a career as an engineer. She knew that this was a male-dominated field strictly reserved for men, but she was passionate and highly motivated to pursue her dream. She made up her mind about this career choice and was self-driven “to go out and check to see if [she] could get work like that” after graduation.1 Starting with her first year at Fisk, Gerry was particularly fascinated by rumors of one student’s father “being a big oil man in Texas.” The rumor was that Molly Taylor’s father “owned seven big oil wells that he leased out to some big oil company,” making him a very wealthy man. It was said that Molly’s lackadaisical academic performance in her freshman year caused her to “flunk out” of Fisk; however, when students returned the following year from summer vacation, they found Molly still enrolled. Rumors abounded that the wealthy oil magnate had made a donation to Fisk by paving its rock-laden walkways with concrete, which led to his daughter being readmitted.2 Even though Molly deemed this anecdote a mere fairy tale, Gerry did witness Molly’s beautifully designed, large corner room, which her father had renovated for his incoming freshman daughter. Unlike the other dorm rooms, her room was carpeted, had new furniture, and was filled with other comforts to make Molly’s stay pleasant. During summer vacations, she traveled abroad with her family, enjoying a lifestyle uncommon to most Americans, Black or

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White. Whether or not the rumor was true, Gerry was convinced that Molly’s family wealth was from the oil industry, an industry that held Gerry’s attention and later influenced her career interest.3 During her last quarter in school, Gerry informed her parents of plans to move to Texas upon graduation and seek a job as an engineer with one of the oil well companies. While she did not mention her hidden hope of also meeting a nice suitor from an oil-rich family, she was determined to carry out her plans. However, when Gerry graduated from Fisk University in March 1932, her plan was thwarted once her father sent her travel fare for a one-way ticket back to Orangeburg. He figured that if “Miss Independent” had plans of going to Texas, then she also had plans to pay her own way there.4 Most upper- and upper-middle-class Black females graduating from colleges or normal training school programs normally went on to become teachers in primary and secondary schools or seamstresses, retiring once they married. Being one who constantly challenged or did not follow the usual norms, it was a disappointing for Gerry to have no other choice but to return home to Orangeburg, still with no interest in or plan for a teaching career. Once she arrived home, however, she learned that her father had already lined up a job and signed the contract for her to teach at Felton, State A&M’s grammar school. Gerry knew that once her family’s patriarch had made his decision, she had no choice but to submit. She had neither teacher training nor experience since she consciously had opted out of the teaching training program at Fisk with hopes of being an engineer. Subsequently, Gerry came to appreciate the advantages of her father’s affiliation with State A&M. Because of his influence, she did not have to compete with others when it came to searching, applying, and interviewing for teaching jobs.5 Felton was a teachers’ training school built on State A&M’s land during the Great Depression with funds from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. Students in the college’s teacher education program visited Felton to observe and get “hands-on” teaching experience. Before starting her appointment in the fall, Gerry decided to spend the remaining school months at Felton volunteering in its classrooms so that she could “find out what teaching was all about.” When she arrived at Felton in September, the staff consisted of a principal, four teachers, and a college faculty supervisor who taught and directed the students in the teaching education program.6 Serving mainly as a demonstration school for future teachers at first, groups of students would quietly observe classes being taught at Felton before they individually went into the “field” themselves to do assigned practice teaching one semester in a community school. At times, outstanding students were offered permanent teaching positions at Felton once they graduated from

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State A&M. Since Gerry graduated from Fisk and not from State A&M and had absolutely no teacher training, it was her father’s position and influence as a faculty member at State A&M that played a major role in his daughter securing one of the coveted teaching positions at Felton.7 Gerry’s teaching career began during the Great Depression when many people were unemployed and others were working for reduced wages. Teachers in the community schools earned between $27.50 and $50.00 a month while State A&M’s Felton paid its teachers $100 a month. There were a few months when Felton teachers were not paid by State A&M due to severe economic stress from the Depression, but because Gerry resided at home with her family, this did not adversely affect her.8 At home, Gerry enjoyed financially assisting her family, even though it was not necessary for her to do so. For instance, electric refrigerators were still rather new on the market. In 1918, the appliance company Kelvinator introduced the first refrigerator with any type of automatic control. One manufacturer’s 1922 model had a wooden cabinet, a water-cooled compressor, two icecube trays and nine cubic feet of storage space. It cost $714. In 1923 Frigidaire introduced the first self-contained unit. Steel and porcelain cabinets began appearing in the mid-1920s. Furthermore, “in the 1920s and ’30s, consumers were introduced to freezers when the first electric refrigerators with ice cube compartments came on the market. Mass production of modern refrigerators didn’t get started until after World War II.” Too expensive for her parents to purchase even in the early 1930s, Gerry decided to purchase one for them by making a down payment and a few monthly payments until her parents assumed the bill. On another occasion, when oak floors had become more fashionable than pine floors, Gerry purchased oak wood and her father, with the assistance of her brother, installed the new oak floors in the family’s front bathroom.9 Other than her personal acts of generosity, Gerry was not obligated to contribute monthly to household expenses but was encouraged to save her earnings. Her parents’ home was mortgage-free and they both had considerable monthly incomes. Gerry’s mother was a housewife but was financially resourceful. She not only received a small monthly check from rental property inherited from her family in Brunswick, Georgia, but also earned money from teaching kindergarten classes in her home, tutoring, researching, writing, typing, and editing papers and speeches. Gerry’s father, the industrial arts education professor, not only earned a comfortable salary from State A&M but also headed building projects that added to his income. Gerry had become content with teaching as a career, living back at home, and saving her personal earnings.10

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Besides working, Gerry also continued to attend the Baptist church with her parents but was becoming somewhat disenchanted with its services. In the meantime, her brother Bubba, now being called James, was in his junior year at State A&M College and had left the family’s church to join the small but growing St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. State A&M’s President Wilkinson and his wife were Episcopalians in Charleston, and once they relocated to Orangeburg to work at the college, they decided to establish its first Black Episcopal church. The early congregation was mostly college students and staff members. For a long time they met every Sunday in one of the buildings on State A&M’s campus since the young church did not yet have its own building yet.11 In fact, at this time, St. Paul did not even have its own minister and therefore depended on the service of the local White priest, Father Thomas. Father Thomas was from a White Episcopal church, the Church of the Redeemer. It “was founded in 1749 and was the first Anglican church of Orangeburg[h] Parish.” Each Sunday, Thomas officiated the early morning service at the Black college for the small congregation; afterward Thomas would return midday to the Church of the Redeemer so that he could officiate the service for his allWhite congregation. Gerry, becoming more displeased with the state of her family’s Baptist church, had begun to frequent the Episcopal services with her brother and eventually decided to join St. Paul’s Episcopal.12 Though Gerry worked, stayed at home, and saved her money, her social life was neither lacking nor dull. When she learned that there were three members of her AKA sorority at State A&M who wanted to start a chapter in Orangeburg, she joined them in their quest. Since five members were needed to start a chapter, Gerry and another AKA member from the Charleston area came together to form the first Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority chapter in the state of South Carolina. Once established, Gerry was busy organizing various community activities and attending sorority meetings.13 She also joined a members-only social club of sixteen women called the Four Fours, whose name reflected the number of members. It was an exclusive club for select, educated single women whose membership ended once they married. The Four Fours would have social gatherings, including house parties at their alternating homes where invited male and female guests would attend. Even though the parents of the house chaperoned these affairs, the sixteen club members still felt socially independent even though they had to refrain from dancing slow dances with their male guests. It was in this setting that Gerry became reacquainted with her former high school classmate, Zin, who was to become her future husband.14 Zin was from Hartsville, South Carolina, and his parents, William and Rosa Cooper Zimmerman, were a highly respected couple in both the Black

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and White community. William L. Zimmerman was a biracial man with very light skin who married a much younger woman of American Indian ancestry. His wife Rosa “was petite, spry but stately-looking woman with green eyes and long salt and pepper colored hair . . . she wore braided . . . pinned back in a bun.” Both had completed the eighth grade and were considered “learned people.” Zin’s father owned a successful neighborhood store and was seen as the liaison between the Black and White communities. Local White leaders or sometimes the sheriff himself approached Zimmerman to use his influence when racial problems arose. One example was when an angry White posse was on the way to lynch a Black man being held in jail as he waited for his trial. Unknown to the White mob, the sheriff immediately notified Zimmerman of the need to get the prisoner out of jail and out of town before the mob arrived, which he and others successfully did.15 Together Rosa and William Zimmerman had five children, with Zin being their first born on September 5, 1910. His mother stayed at home while his father worked in the store. At age thirteen, Zin’s father died and his mother took over running the store. She eventually married Adolph Richardson and had three more children, and after his death, she married a third time but bore no more offspring. As Zin grew older, he knew he wanted to further his education beyond his parents’ eighth-grade level. Furthermore, he wanted to assist his mother financially and educate his younger siblings and knew he could only do so if he pursued a professional career that paid well. He therefore worked, saved his money, and entered South Carolina State A&M’s new high school, the State A&M Academy in Orangeburg.16 It was at the academy that Gerry and Zin first met each other due to having mutual friends. After high school graduation, Gerry left her friends to attend Fisk University in Tennessee while most of them remained in Orangeburg to attend State A&M College. Her buddy Zin was one of those friends who continued at State, where he studied electrical engineering.17 When Gerry returned to Orangeburg in March 1932 after graduating from Fisk, she found her friends at State were still attending classes due to Fisk’s academic quarter year ending before State’s academic semester system. While her friends were busy completing their work to graduate in May 1932, college graduate Gerry often spent her leisure time sitting in on classes at the college, attending the various campus programs, spending time with friends she grew up with, and socializing in her women’s clubs.18 It was at one of these social events that Gerry and Zin rejuvenated their old high school friendship, as they continued to socialize in the same circle of friends at parties and other outings. At that time, Zin was not in an exclusive relationship with anyone, so he dated different girls, including a very good

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friend of Gerry’s, a girl from his hometown of Hartsville, and, eventually, Gerry. After he started dating Gerry, however, their relationship later evolved into an exclusive courtship.19 African American parents were involved with the courtship of their daughters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, formally or informally. The importance of the parents accepting their potential sons-in-law as being the best choice for their daughters was one reason, and the other was the preservation of the daughters’ chastity and reputation. Hence, following proper courtship protocol, Zin first asked if he could visit Gerry at her home; in turn, she responded by telling him that she had to seek permission first from her parents. Since her parents knew him from the college as both a student and the driver for President Whittaker, they approved. Zin visited Gerry’s home on Sundays after church hours or on Wednesday evenings after his job ended. Sometimes they would go to the movies or the young pair would sit on the front porch if the weather was nice and warm. Otherwise, they sat in the living room. Because Zin had to work to support himself, he often traveled with the president on trips; at other times, he was called upon to complete the electrical work for some local building project. Due to his busy work schedule, many times he would call Gerry on the telephone on Sundays in lieu of visiting her.20 Gerry’s family liked Zin very much and welcomed him to their home, sometimes inviting him for Sunday dinners. Seeing whether or not one’s beau was a “good fit” for the family sometimes took on greater importance than the couple themselves being romantically in love. While a young lady desired both, she knew that her beau’s compatibility with her family was mandatory for her relationship to blossom and not end in a disgraceful divorce. Like many young ladies of her era, Gerry also believed that “marriage was for life” and, once married, “the love part of it would . . . [grow] stronger through the years.”21 When Zin graduated, he accepted an industrial education position to teach woodwork in Allendale, South Carolina, where he rented a room in a boardinghouse. His life as an educated professional began in the 1930s during the worst economic slump in U.S. history, the Great Depression. Though his income was minuscule, he managed to support his family by financially helping his sister through college. During this era, for the first time salaries were low for both Blacks and Whites throughout the entire state. Eventually, the workers in South Carolina sometimes had to be paid in a “promissory note” referred to as “script” instead of actual money. Paying in script became a common practice throughout the United States. “Many teachers during this time had their salaries cut or were paid in script,” while others “received only

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room and board as compensation. Rural schoolteachers would live in the schoolhouse and cooked their food on a wood stove.” There were even times when local government jobs federally funded from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, such as Work Progress Administration jobs, had to pay “with script or warrants.” Impoverished southerners suffered even more when the monthly government “relief” checks stopped coming when the money dried up and banks closed. “Only a minority of farmers could pay their taxes, the banks had no money to lend and, even if a crop were grown, the prices of all agricultural commodities had collapsed in 1931. Many others lost their homes, . . . couldn’t pay their taxes, . . . and even some cities were forced to pay in script when banks holding their money closed down.” Because script was not real money, people were not able to spend it for basic needs; however, there were individuals or stores that would buy the script from desperate sellers for less than what it was worth. For example, a store might take a person’s ten-dollar script in exchange for nine dollars’ worth of food or other supplies from his store.22 Experiencing the same economic crisis as the rest of the country, South Carolina also promised to redeem all issued script for money once the economy improved. In the meantime, there were stores in the state willing to redeem script at a discounted amount, causing many teachers to redeem their script for much less than the actual value in order to pay their basic living expenses. Zin had worked the entire year at Allendale, receiving script instead of money. Because of his astuteness in handling money, he would redeem his script only if necessary and thus was able to save his script to cash in later. To earn extra income to take care of his living expenses, he worked on odd jobs at a tailor shop in Allendale. With the help of President Whittaker and assistance from his mother in Hartsville, Zin was able to purchase his first automobile, “an old second-hand Chevy.”23 During their first year of their courtship, Zin taught in Allendale and Gerry in Orangeburg at Felton. When the couple saw each other at the annual Teachers Association Convention held in Columbia, South Carolina, it was there that Zin brought up the subject of marriage. While he did not ask for her hand in marriage in the traditional formal manner—on one knee —they both agreed in “just a matter of conversation” that they would wed eventually. They also both agreed to table further discussion until after Zin had finished helping his sister through college.24 When Gerry and Zin were ready to become formally engaged, Zin knew that he would have to first ask Gerry’s father for her hand in marriage. On the Sunday they agreed for him to drive from Allendale to Orangeburg to meet with her father, Gerry was nervous and was unaware that her beau was

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developing a case of “cold feet.” Upon his arrival, his cold feet prevented him from having this important conversation with her father, so on his return trip to Allendale, Zin decided to write a letter to Gerry’s father to ask for her hand in marriage. It was quite usual for educated African American men from the upper and middle classes to write the females’ parents to ask for their daughters’ hand in marriage. When they resided and worked in other cities or states while involved in long-distance courtships, these professional men, including Paul Laurence Dunbar (who married Alice Ruth Moore), John Hope (who married Lugenia Burns), and Edwin Hackley (who married Emma Azalia), not only maintained their courtships through letter writing but also ended up proposing this way.25 When Gerry entered her house after work one day in December, she suspected that Zin’s letter had arrived based on her mother’s demeanor. Standing in the kitchen, she could see that her mother was not pleased with the proposal and was slow in accepting it. On the other hand, her father gave his blessings as he said, “Well, if this is what you want, then okay.” As for her mother, she had much more to say to the couple, telling them both at one point that “if I had known that was your intention you would have never been welcomed into my house.” Her mother’s initial disapproval was not because she disliked Zin; it was due to her not accepting the terms of her only daughter, Gerry, getting married at that point. Gerry had finished college, started a good teaching position, and was old enough for marriage, but to her mother, Gerry was still “her little girl.” Once the couple told the mother that the marriage would not occur for another three years after Zin’s sister finished college and he no longer had to pay her fees, a relieved Gerry’s mother gave her blessings. In the meantime, President Whittaker learned that the school superintendent in York, South Carolina, was looking for a new principal for its Black segregated Jefferson High School. Whittaker, who held his former student worker in high regards, immediately recommended Zin for the principal position, which was to begin immediately after his first teaching year ended in Allendale. During the interview process in York, the White superintendent told Zin that a major requirement was that the principal must be a married man. In response, Zin informed him that he was engaged and in the process of getting married. When Zin returned to Orangeburg, he quickly informed Gerry of his ordeal and stated that they must get married right away. Considering the negative reaction of her parents to the need to rush their wedding and her own personal desire to have a long engagement, Gerry stated that she was not yet ready to get married. Throughout their discussion, Zin restated the urgency

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of his need to be married in order to get the job, emphasizing that he would love to marry Gerry. He immediately followed his statement with “But now if you don’t marry me, I’ll have to find someone who will marry me because I have to get this job.” Gerry had no intention of losing her fiancé. Even though this “rushed” wedding would have to occur much sooner than planned, Gerry accepted the new proposal by saying, “Yes, let’s get married.” The couple realized that moving up their wedding plans meant that they would have to get married in the middle of the school year. However, the dilemma they were in left them little choice after getting engaged in December 1934, accepting a job offer in March 1935, and being pressured to either marry soon or lose the job. Before informing her parents of their dilemma, Gerry and Zin thought it would be wise to first set a date of April 27 before talking to them. Gerry and Zin also discussed the idea of going to the justice of the peace in lieu of having a wedding, but Gerry changed her mind; she really wanted to have a wedding. She knew that this sudden turn of events, of going from a planned long engagement to having a sudden marriage, was going to shock both her family and friends. Her mother, who still had not fully accepted the idea of her baby girl getting married and leaving home forever, was later traumatized when she heard the news of her Gerry now planning to marry within the next month.26 As other family members learned of the news, female relatives and friends arrived to help with the wedding plans, including her mother’s sister and Ms. Henderson, a teacher from State A&M. Gerry’s maid of honor was to be her Fisk girlfriend from Charleston and Zin’s best man was to be President Whittaker. They made plans for one of their college friends to play the piano as they searched for an African American priest to perform the nuptials. Even though Father Thomas, the White priest from the Church of the Redeemer, officiated services for her church, St. Paul’s, the outspoken Gerry insisted on being married by a Black minister. Thus arrangements were made for Father Samuel C. Usher, a fairly new African American priest at Voorhees College’s St. Philip’s Episcopal Chapel in Denmark, South Carolina, to perform the nuptials with Father Thomas assisting. Father Usher was a devout churchman who was hired in 1930 as a part-time instructor and Acting Chaplain of Voorhees College. He was ordained to the deaconate in 1932 and entered the priesthood in 1934, where he served as chaplain at St. Philip’s Chapel until 1947.27 The Pierces planned a house wedding for their daughter to be held downstairs in their home, followed immediately by a reception serving “punch and cake.” Invitations were sent out, and her father made an announcement in the Baptist church, inviting the entire congregation. The bride appropriately wore

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a beautiful white wedding gown adorned with her maternal grandmother’s broach, a gown to one day be designed into a lovely keepsake dress for her own daughter. On Saturday, April 27, 1935, Geraldyne Pierce and Dudley Zimmerman officially became Mr. and Mrs. Dudley Malone Zimmerman. The new bride, Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, was given a one-week leave from her job at Felton, but her husband Zin had to return to his principal job on Monday. After the wedding reception, the newlyweds traveled first to Hartsville, where they spent their first night as a married couple at Zin’s mother’s house. By this time, his widowed mother had remarried and had another son who was now five years old. The newlyweds stayed in the family’s guest bedroom while Zin’s little half-brother slept in his mother’s room. Before their marriage, Gerry and Zin did engage in premarital hugging and kissing that sometimes escalated into “heavy petting” during their courtship. Zin had wanted to have intercourse but always respected Gerry’s refusal to do so until she was married. While she never asked him if he was a virgin, she strongly assumed that he was not, based on both his actions and various conversations they had while dating. Like most mothers in 1935, mother Hazel did not have a private talk with her soon-to-be married daughter about what to expect on her wedding night. Thus, on her wedding night, the chaste and sexually ignorant Gerry found herself rather nervous and quite coy about undressing before her new husband. As he began undressing and then left for the bathroom, Gerry quickly undressed while he was out of the room and hopped into bed before he returned. The young couple consummated their marriage and began their new life.

Love, Work, and Marriage The next day, Sunday, Gerry and Zin left Hartsville for York. When Zin moved to York to begin his job as principal, he had rented a room in a boardinghouse owned by an elderly Black lady. It was here the newlyweds stayed during Gerry’s week from work. Unlike Gerry’s family home in Orangeburg, the house did not have a bathroom. Not having indoor plumbing in Black homes in the early twentieth century was the norm. Indoor plumbing was available first in upper- and middle-class White neighborhoods since their incomes and tax monies could afford this luxury expenditure. Once these services were being provided to the Black areas, the upper- and middle-class Black households received them before the poor households, both Black and White. Poor or working-class White homes, followed by the majority of African American homes, were usually the last areas to receive electricity and plumbing, though most did not have either until the latter 1960s. Thus, like everyone else who

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lived in homes without plumbing, Gerry also used a “slop jar” at night but did not mind since she was filled with marital bliss. For the remainder of the week, Gerry and her husband shared his single room as their first home together.28 During Gerry’s week in York, one of the families Zin had befriended, that of a local mortician, Fannie Wright, surprised them by hosting a wedding reception that further added to the many wedding gifts the couple had already received. The event enabled Zin to formally introduce his new wife to his community of friends and peers. In one instance, Gerry overheard a rather candid and shocking comment from an elderly lady after Zin had introduced them. The elderly woman looked at Gerry and then quickly turned to Zin and said in a surprising tone, “Professor, you married a Black girl. I thought you were going to marry a White gal.” Because Zin’s skin was very fair and light and his eyes were grey, the gentle lady had assumed that he would eventually marry someone equally as light, if not lighter. Intraracial segregation was a reality throughout early-twentieth-century South Carolina. The very light skinned Blacks who could pass for White, the so-called White Negroes, along with Blacks of lighter skin and “honey” brown skin, commonly sought to marry others who looked like themselves. This type of preference was particularly widespread among the Black elite and middle class, including those who were teachers, principals, and school administrators. In Zin and Gerry’s case, she had naturally straight black hair and a honey brown complexion; his complexion was very light, which is why the woman was expecting him to marry someone equally as light.29 At the end of the week, the newly wedded Gerry returned to Orangeburg to finish up the school year at Felton. Once school ended, she rejoined her husband in Hartsville and spent the summer of 1935 there, as he worked to complete renovations to his mother’s house. Occasionally on weekends, the couple left Hartsville to visit Gerry’s family in Orangeburg, staying with them in their home. However, in the summer of 1935, they spent most of their summer in Hartsville as Zin rushed to finish his remodeling before the new school year commenced. While in Hartsville, Zin learned that the house of the previous Black principal in York was for sale. The house had electricity and an indoor bathroom with a big bathtub, which was exactly what they wanted. Excited to own their first home complete with these amenities, the young couple quickly inquired about buying the home. When they arrived in York at the end of the summer, Gerry and Zin visited the house but learned that it was no longer for sale due to the owner’s sudden illness. The house had been rented out to a family with several children. While inside the house, Gerry unhappily observed a very messy bathroom with its bathtub being used as a bed. Disappointed,

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she and Zin remained at his rooming house for the next six months, waiting for repairs to be completed on another house they decided to buy where they eventually moved. In the fall semester of 1935, Gerry accepted a teaching position at Jefferson High School, where Zin was the principal. Her new job paid fifty dollars a month, much less than the one hundred dollars monthly she had earned the previous year at Felton in Orangeburg. Teaching math and, at times, other subjects, Gerry also busied herself at organizing piles of books she found in different rooms into the school’s first library. At the end of her second year in 1937 at Jefferson, the Zimmermans were offered and enthusiastically accepted positions at a newly built high school in nearby Gaffney for the upcoming fall term. Zin’s new principal position paid a higher salary of about $250 a month, and Gerry’s perspicacious negotiating skills successfully landed her the deeply missed Felton earnings of $100 a month. They moved to Gaffney during the summer of 1937 and decided to rent a house. Gerry’s parents, Hazel and James, visited them in Gaffney for a weekend before her father’s teaching post resumed at State A&M. Unfortunately, a few months after their visit, Gerry’s father became ill and died at the end of December 1937. He was buried early January 1938. When school ended months later, and during their third year of marriage, the couple made their usual sojourn to Orangeburg for the summer to stay at Gerry’s family home. While in Orangeburg, Zin was offered and graciously accepted his late fatherin-law James Pierce’s vacant teaching position in industrial arts at State A&M, beginning in September 1938. It was this offer that permanently brought Gerry and Zin back to Orangeburg, where they moved in to live with her mother.30 State A&M passed a new rule that prohibited the hiring of married couples, so Gerry was unable to return to her previous teaching position at Felton. She began to substitute teach in two nearby rural schools and one of the city schools. Because she was adept in music, she also taught piano lessons in her home for additional income. In addition, her husband Zin taught her “caning,” the process of weaving the bottom of chairs from cane. Now, whenever people needed their chairs “recaned” or repaired, Zin would bring them home for Gerry to fix.31 At State A&M, when the dean of the college resigned to accept another position, the deanship was offered to Zin. Zin accepted his new administrative position, and as dean, one of his first tasks was to create a buildings and grounds department. Until this time, State A&M, like most Black schools of this era, used its own industrial education students and teachers to perform the tasks for building repairs and maintaining the school grounds. On occasion, the college hired outside laborers to complete bigger projects. However,

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as State A&M grew in size, Zin realized the need to have a separate division to handle the increased tasks of maintaining the campus. When the college’s board of trustees approved the plan and asked him to recommend a director, Zin unhesitatingly recommended himself. Approved, Zin abdicated his deanship to become the college’s first superintendent of buildings and grounds. He remained in this position until he retired, and eventually the building that housed this division was named after him and another honoree.32 Gerry’s brother James was now a college student at State A&M, and after graduation, he attended Kansas State University to pursue a second bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering. When Gerry and her husband returned to her family’s home on Treadwell Street, living arrangements had to be restructured. In the early 1930s, after Gerry married and her brother left for college, their parents converted part of the upstairs of their stately two-story home into a small two-bedroom apartment. For extra income, they then rented the apartment to a State A&M faculty member and his wife. However, when Gerry and Zin returned after her father died, the tenants were asked to relocate so that they could move in. Because Gerry found their two-bedroom dwelling too small, her mother allowed Zin to renovate the entire upstairs for their living quarters. After a successful remodeling, they had more space, including a newly installed kitchen and bathroom. The young couple was finally settled into their new, yet very familiar and comfortable, home. Married three years, they were very anxious to complete their family by having children.33 Gerry busied herself by driving her mother on errands and to Sunlight Club meetings, a civic organization of select African American women devoted to uplifting and improving Orangeburg’s Black community. Now that she was permanently living in Orangeburg again, she resumed her civic work with her AKA sorority. She also rejoined her girlfriends in a new social club called the As You Like It Club. Their previous club, the Four Fours, was formed when Gerry and her girlfriends were all single, but now that they were all married, the Four Fours was no longer relevant. Hence they transformed the club into another “invited-members only” one, consisting of sixteen young married women. As in the Four Fours, they continued to have bridge card parties and host private social events.34 In the As You Like It Club, the conversation of these young wives usually centered on topics such as housekeeping, child bearing, children, and parenting. When Gerry first rejoined her friends in their new club, a few of its members did not have children. As the others became pregnant, Gerry eventually found herself to be the only member without children. Her friends playfully teased her about it, but Gerry badly wanted children and, unknown to her friends, she was beginning to worry that she would not be able to give birth. At

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one point, she and her husband seriously discussed the possibility of adopting a child.35 Legal or formal adoptions in both the United States and South Carolina were not very common in the 1930s, and for those who wanted to adopt, the process was long and tedious. First, only married couples could adopt and you had to provide proof that you would be able to provide for the child; second, even if the couple met that criterion, there were very few babies available for adoption. As for the adoption process, a social worker would be assigned to study the family, and if a positive recommendation was made, the final adoption was then handled through lengthy court proceedings. Formal adoptions occurred even less frequently in the African American community because of this tedious and rigorous process. On the other hand, a system of “informal adoption”—taking a child relative into your home when that child became orphaned or was neglected—was practiced within the Black community. For example, Celia Tilley had her first child via emergency cesarean birth in the mid-1920s and was told she could not have any more children. She was further traumatized when she lost her only child, a four-month-old son, to yellow jaundice infection. Though she had the money to get treatment from a doctor, she followed the advice of “the old people” and used their remedies to treat him instead. One day, while in the midst of breastfeeding him, “his little eyes rolled back in his head and his small head fell back, limped.” When her husband and first true love, Eddie Mack, died unexpectedly a few years later, she married a man named Julius Tilley. During this time, her relatives, Earnest and Lessie Mack, increasingly engaged in heavy drinking and fighting, oftentimes neglecting their three little boys, ages two, three, and four. Miss Celie intervened in 1934 and reached an agreement with the couple that allowed her to take the three little boys from the violence and neglect to raise them in her home. After Earnest and Lessie gave the boys to Celie, they visited the boys occasionally and, over time, the children grew to love and recognize their cousin Celie as their “mama” since they seldom saw their biological parents.36 Gerry and Zin occasionally discussed adopting but never had plans to initiate the procedure until it was definite that they could not have children of their own. Gerry still had not conceived by their fifth year of marriage, but was determined to become pregnant. Upset, she frequently sought advice from her White physician, Dr. Schiffley, who used various treatments to help her conceive, such as inserting a special “ring” into her womb. Still not pregnant, Gerry expressed her frustration to her parents’ guest, Henry Darius Malloy Sr., a close family friend visiting them from Georgia. Malloy was an African American physician who was born in North Carolina and apparently prac-

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ticed medicine briefly in early 1920s in Brunswick, Georgia, where he first met and became friends with Hazel and James Pierce. When he eventually relocated back to North Carolina, where he became a prominent physician in the East Winston area, he would still visit the Pierces occasionally in Orangeburg. It was on one of these visits that he prescribed the medication for Geraldyne to take to assist in her conception.37 In their conversation, she described the different but unsuccessful treatments used by Schiffley. At this point, Malloy wrote her a prescription of about one hundred pills. As he gave it to Gerry, he guaranteed her that she would conceive before finishing the prescription. He added that if the pills did not work, she was to let him know. After taking three of the pills, Gerry became pregnant in her sixth year of marriage. Extremely excited, Zin became very attentive to his pregnant wife, often bringing her little surprises and gifts. Gerry and Zin were ecstatic to finally be able to complete their family with a new baby.38

Child Bearing and Rearing Like other educated mothers-to-be, Gerry began reading books to answer questions on what to expect in pregnancy and childbirth. Her girlfriends happily shared their experiences with her as they played card games of bridge in their club. While the couple was not concerned about the gender of their baby, they were constantly hearing “old wives tales” that included “If a baby kicks hard, it is a boy” or “If you carried the baby in the higher part of your stomach it was a girl.”39 The one person, in particular, who did not openly discuss Gerry’s pregnancy or share her personal insight on the matter was her mother, Hazel, who saw the entire affair as being “private.” However, in one discussion Hazel did voice her opinion and that was on what the baby should call each of them. Gerry wanted to be called “Mother Dear,” but her mother objected. When Hazel said, “No, I want to be called Mother Dear,” Gerry happily agreed and settled with being called “Momma.” Oddly enough, in subsequent years, everyone began calling the elderly Hazel “Mother Dear,” including other people’s children and adults in the larger community.40 During the pregnancy, Gerry made her own maternity clothing. As her stomach began to grow and reveal her pregnancy, her mother explained the proper social protocol expectant mothers were expected to follow, including their staying indoors and venturing out in public only when necessary. Hazel Pierce wanted her only daughter to follow in her footsteps during the pregnancy by reminding Gerry that pregnancy was a private matter, emphasizing

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the need for her “to stay in, stay home, and don’t go anywhere.” Gerry’s mother often said to her daughter, “If you don’t stay at home, you’re going to have that baby in the street.” For Hazel, her major frustration with Gerry was that her daughter showed no shame in letting people know that she was pregnant.41 Pregnant Gerry, older and more “hard-headed,” broke social protocol according to her mother’s standards and those of the elite classes. Without any protest from her husband, Gerry inadvertently offended her mother throughout the pregnancy by frequenting bridge parties, visiting friends socially, and even driving herself to Georgia in the new Ford car that her father had purchased right before his death.42 Never seeing her pregnancy as a handicapped experience or one to be ashamed of, Gerry was determined to carry on her social life as usual. Zin’s acceptance of his wife’s public ventures, perhaps, reflected the existing generation gap between parents and children of their era. Like past generations, the youth of the late 1930s consciously dismantled their parents’ traditions as they simultaneously and gradually redesigned and introduced their own new social norms. Gerry was often sick throughout her pregnancy. She visited Schiffley monthly for her routine checkups and prepared herself mentally for the delivery. As with most Black women, Gerry was going to give birth in her home, a common practice during this era. African American midwives normally delivered the babies and a physician was notified to be on standby in the event of an emergency. In Gerry’s case, however, her family’s comfortable economic standing enabled her to afford to have both a physician and a registered nurse tend to her delivery, rather than the usual midwife. Mrs. Morgan, a close friend of the Pierces who lived across the street, agreed to oversee Gerry’s pregnancy. A widow once married to a lawyer and the mother of a married daughter who resided in Virginia, Nurse Morgan still lived across the street from the now-widowed Hazel Pierce and her married daughter, Gerry. Still a practical nurse, she was in private practice seeing patients at their homes as well as working in State A&M’s campus infirmary tending to sick students. On Sunday morning, as Gerry and Zin were getting ready to attend Trinity African Methodist Episcopal Church, Zin’s church, Gerry called out for her mother as she rushed off to the bathroom. Being familiar with topics on “the water breaking,” she assumed that it was happening to her and that maybe her labor was starting. Once she told her mother what had happened, her mother quickly summoned the nurse and the doctor, and as they waited for their arrival, Hazel began to give Gerry directions on what “to do or not do.” For Gerry this was the first time during her entire pregnancy that her mother had said anything specific about the actual pregnancy and birthing process.

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Assuming that Gerry was not going to give birth any time soon, Zin went on to church while Gerry stayed at home in early labor. Sitting on the porch with occasional but very mild labor pains, Gerry was eventually joined by an elderly lady, Mrs. Cleckley, who lived down the street. Cleckley was once Hazel’s midwife and had delivered Gerry in 1911. As she sat with Gerry, she, like Gerry’s mother had done earlier, was constantly telling her to be careful and “not to do this or not to do that.”43 As the pair sat on the porch, Cleckley shared information with Gerry about her mother’s first pregnancy. Gerry was shocked to discover that she had not been her parents’ first child. Cleckley told Gerry that her mother had pushed too soon and this led to her first child dying of a broken neck during delivery. Gerry now understood why her mother spoke so openly about the dos and don’ts at the onset of her labor while waiting for Morgan and Schiffley to come. She did not want her daughter to experience the same loss she had encountered in her youth. In fact, it was not until many years later that Gerry’s mother herself mentioned her baby’s death, as a passing note in a conversation with Gerry. Other than that, this was the extent of their pregnancy discussion. When Zin arrived from church, he found his wife was still having light to mild labor pains and that Morgan was checking on her occasionally to make sure things were going smoothly. Throughout Sunday night, Gerry’s labor pains were occurring more frequently and with a little more intensity. On Monday morning, Zin decided to go on to work at State A&M and return home midday to check on his wife and have his dinner.44 As Gerry’s pain progressed, Morgan summoned Schiffley. Upon his arrival, he found that the baby had already entered the birth canal but that the infant’s large size had retarded the birthing process. Some complications, including an infant turned the wrong way in the womb or too large to pass easily through the birth canal, usually prompted doctors to perform cesarean or “C-section” deliveries. By the early twentieth century, delivery by cesarean section had improved and was safer. By 1940, procedures had improved even more with the use of antibiotics. According to Jane Elliot Sewell, though “penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 . . . it was purified as a drug in 1940; became generally available; and [now] dramatically reduced maternal mortality for both normal and cesarean section births.” In Gerry’s case, however, this was not an option since her oversized baby had already moved into the birth canal. With the baby trapped in the birth canal, they had no choice but to assist the baby in exiting.45 When Zin returned home during the midday, he found Gerry in the midst of severe labor pains with both Morgan and Schiffley in the room attending to her. Even though husbands were generally not allowed in the room during

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birth, Zin remained there along with Gerry’s mother and her former midwife, Mrs. Cleckley. Now, with both family and medical attendants present, they all helplessly witnessed Gerry’s unending pain during her complicated labor. Finally, amid her painful suffering, the doctor knew he had to act quickly in order to get the oversized infant out; it was at this time that he used his medical forceps to successfully pull the large infant through the canal. According to Michael G Ross, forceps had been used in delivery as early as 1500 BC, according to “Sanskrit, . . . Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Persian writings and pictures.” He pointed out that by “1920, Joseph DeLee further modified the instrument and advocated the prophylactic forceps delivery. In an era in which many women labored and delivered under heavy sedation, forceps deliveries became common.” In the case of Gerry, there was no time for any type of sedation to accompany the forceps.46 After hours of excruciating pain, it all ended on August 25, 1941, when Gerry felt little or no pain as the baby was finally being born. Immediately following the birth, however, there was an eerie silence and awkward tension in the room, indicating that the baby might be stillborn; then, suddenly, a loud cry bellowed out of the once-quiet infant. For Gerry, “the big blast of crying” was “like electricity flowing through the room, a miracle.” As shouts of glee filled the room, Nurse Morgan immediately “shooed” everyone out of the room. In the meantime, Gerry successfully delivered the afterbirth while suffering severe back pain and received stitches to her vaginal area to repair the tear resulting from the delivery. Vaginal tears were common before the episiotomy process (in which the vaginal area was surgically cut to prevent tearing as the infant is born) was introduced, but that was not until years after Gerry gave birth.47 The proud new mother had birthed her firstborn, a healthy ten and a half pound baby boy, blemished with minor bumps and bruises on his head from the forceps. Gerry and Zin were overwhelmed with happiness to finally have a baby. On seeing him for the first time, Gerry was quite upset to see the “big knots on his head” but was actually not worried since the many conversations with her girlfriends had prepared her for such mishaps during delivery. In the case of a boy, they had already decided to name him Dudley Malone Zimmerman Jr. After the delivery, excited to have a son, Zin jumped in his car and rode through State A&M’s campus loudly yelling, “It’s a boy! It’s a boy!” Unfortunately, Gerry’s postpartum months were not free of problems. In 1941, new mothers were normally expected to stay indoors for two to three weeks. However, because some of Gerry’s stitches had broken and caused an infection, Schiffley ordered her to remain in bed for three months so that she could heal properly. She still breastfed baby Malone but was unable to sit up

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and hold him in the traditional manner. Until the infection was treated and the stitched area healed properly, it was difficult for Gerry to relieve her urine and bowels. As for sexual intercourse during the healing process, it was prohibited. Although weak and not feeling well, Gerry refused to lie in the bed for three months, but she did refrain from her usual activities of driving, visiting friends, and attending parties. Gerry nursed her hefty baby boy, but because of his sizable appetite, she supplemented his meals with a mixed formula of pasteurized or evaporated milk and baby cereal that contained vitamins. While using bottled formulas was frowned upon, Gerry had no choice since her breast milk was not enough for her infant’s insatiable appetite. Eventually, she had to stop nursing altogether and placed him solely on baby formula since her supply of breast milk was insufficient. Once that happened, unknown to Gerry, her mother would also sneak meals of grits and mashed potatoes to supplement her grandson’s formula. A proud grandmother and excellent caretaker, it was Gerry’s mom who spent most of the time with Malone since his mother was unable to get around easily and his father was at work. Grandmother Hazel took care of baby Malone, including bathing and dressing him as well as hand washing his diapers and clothing. When it was feeding time, she would lay her grandson next to her daughter, joyfully saying, “Okay now, go to your cow; go to your cow to get your food.” She often teased Gerry by saying that “this is my child. If you want a baby you better go ahead and have another one because this one belongs to me.” As for his beaming daddy Zin, he simply doted over his son, holding and enjoying him, yet when it was time to change the diapers, he immediately handed the baby back over to grandmother Hazel, succeeding in never once changing a diaper. Mother Hazel took both her roles seriously as a mother and grandmother and was not coy in showing it. For example, when Gerry was finally better and able to venture out again, there was an incident in which the feisty grandmother decided to draw the line and let Gerry know what she would or would not tolerate from her. On this particular day, Gerry was downtown shopping with baby Malone, who was in his stroller and crying constantly since it was his nap time. Frustrated with his continuous crying, Gerry slapped Malone but did not realize that one of her mother’s lady friends had observed her hitting him. The woman told Gerry that she was going to tell her mother what she had just seen. When Gerry returned home, her mother was waiting anxiously to confront her about slapping the baby. Before her grown daughter could reply, mother Hazel had “hauled off and slapped” her hard in the face, saying, “Don’t ever do it anymore; don’t ever do that again!”48

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Before Malone was born, Zin and Gerry were sexually active throughout her pregnancy. However, because of her infection after his birth, they had to refrain from intercourse until the infection cleared up. After three months of celibacy, Gerry and Zin happily resumed their sexual intimacy. When baby Malone was around eleven months old, Gerry visited Dr. Schiffley because she was constantly feeling ill each morning. When he informed her that she was pregnant again, she was both surprised and shocked. Because it had taken them almost seven years to have their precious gift, Malone, they assumed that he was going to be an only child and never suspected her illness was pregnancy related. During the same visit, however, Schiffley also informed Gerry that she would have to find another physician since he himself was ill and would not be able to deliver her second child. In her search for a new physician, Gerry selected a Black doctor, Dr. Monroe. Eighteen months after their first child was born, Gerry and Zin were happily expecting their second baby. Gerry was fortunate to have her mother in the house to care for baby Malone during her second pregnancy; mother Hazel’s presence and role in the home subtracted from the usual stress that tends to accompany pregnant mothers when dealing with their active toddlers or firstborn. Gerry’s second pregnancy was normal and uneventful compared to her first one. Wiser and experienced, she was at home when her water broke and automatically knew that she was in labor. Zin had just arrived home for his midday meal when Dr. Monroe stopped by to check on Gerry. After examining her, he informed them that he was going to notify his midwife, Mrs. Palmer, who lived on nearby Oak Street, that it was close to delivery time. With plans of immediately returning after he had his midday dinner, Monroe quickly left for home as Zin entered their kitchen to retrieve his midday dinner. Zin waited patiently in the kitchen with Gerry’s mother as she cooked and their student worker from State A&M, Lamar Dawkins, cleaned the kitchen. Like other faculty and staff at the college, including Gerry’s parents, Gerry and Zin had hired students to perform various odds and ends around their home in exchange for meals or wages. Soon after midwife Palmer arrived to await delivery, she joined the others in the kitchen while Gerry continued her labor. Shortly thereafter, Gerry called out to Palmer, saying that “something was happening” and that she felt something. Though it was her second pregnancy, Gerry had no idea that what she was feeling was her baby being born until Mrs. Palmer pulled back the covers and sighted the baby’s head. Because Gerry did not have a normal delivery the first time with Malone but was heavily laden with agonizing pain from complications, she did not realize she was already in the third stage of labor with the baby ready to exit. At that moment,

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Palmer threw up her hands, yelling, “The baby’s here” just as Monroe was approaching the front steps on return from his dinner. Without any problems, their baby girl was born on April 19, 1943. They named her Rose Hayzel Zimmerman after both grandmothers and called her Rose Hayzel. That same day of her birth, Gerry received news that her former physician, Dr. Schiffley, had past away. In the midst of all the excitement, Monroe quickly returned to his car for the scale to weigh baby Rose Hayzel but could not find it. In turn, a hurried Zin ran out in the backyard “to fetch the chicken scale” they had for weighing the chickens they raised. Without his permission, the student worker, Lamar, went on campus to inform the professor’s waiting class that he would not be in to teach since his wife just gave birth. As Lamar stood before his classmates, he excitedly narrated the unfolding of events and colorfully demonstrated everyone’s reactions to the unexpected birth, including the use of a chicken scale to weigh the newborn. With his back to the classroom door, he entertained the class with his observations until the animated storyteller turned to find Professor Zimmerman standing in the doorway. Totally embarrassed, Lamar retreated, incorrectly thinking that he was going to surely flunk that course.49 Gerry and Zin now had their two wonderfully unexpected miracles, an eighteen-month-old toddler son and a seven-pound healthy newborn daughter with a wonderful caretaker, grandmother Hazel. Gerry breastfed Rose Hayzel without any problems as toddler Malone still drank from the bottle. After a while, Malone was weaned from the bottle and drank from a cup. However, once Rose Hayzel was weaned from breastfeeding and placed on the bottle, Malone “would cry and whine” to the point where they had also “to fix a bottle for him.” His return to the bottle was brief, however, since both mother and grandmother decided to wean Rose Hayzel much earlier from the bottle so that both would be using a cup for drinking. To their dismay, young Rose Hayzel had taken to sucking her finger, an unfortunate idiosyncrasy she kept throughout her childhood years.50 In 1943, Gerry no longer did substitute teaching and was officially “a housewife” or a stay-at-home mother. Zin was able to avoid the draft and not serve in World War II since he now taught courses in the military training program offered at State A&M, including a course on shipbuilding. A person could be exempted from serving in World War II if their employment was somehow essential to the U.S. government; as in the case of Zin, his teaching military courses that trained personnel to build ships was definitely essential work for the military. Other teachers were not as fortunate and were drafted into the war, leaving teaching vacancies to be filled. At this point, State A&M had to rescind their rule of not hiring the spouses of faculty and staff. Gerry

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was offered a full-time teaching position but turned it down since Zin insisted she remain at home until the children were old enough to go to school. Agreeing to do so, Gerry opted to work only as an occasional substitute teacher as she and her mother cared for the almost three-year-old Malone and one-anda-half-year-old Rose Hayzel.51 In September 1946, State A&M began its first graduate program offering a master’s degree. Since most classes were taught in the evening, Gerry was one of the first to register for a class since it did not interfere with her parenting. In the meantime, because of the large number of illiterate veterans, the college created a program to teach them reading, writing, and mathematics. Gerry was invited to teach a one-hour course for the program, and the college, in turn, waived her fees toward her graduate degree. Now she was able to pursue her master’s at no extra cost to the family and attend class in the evening while her mother watched the children.52 Several full-time teachers from State A&M also registered to take a graduate course. Taught by the dean of the graduate school, Frank DeCosta, the classes proved to be more rigorous than the students had assumed. Eventually, all the students dropped out of the program except for Gerry and two others, Rosa Harris and Melvin Adams Jr. While Gerry also found Dean DeCosta to be “really tough,” she was determined to “stick it out.”53 During her last semester of graduate school in 1948, one of the teachers in the Math Department died unexpectedly in the middle of the semester. Gerry was asked to take over his classes for the remainder of the spring semester, and she agreed to do so. When school ended for the year, Gerry had also completed her master of science degree in mathematics. She accepted a full-time teaching position in the college’s Math Department, a position she remained in until her retirement almost thirty years later in 1976.54 As a college professor, Gerry proved to be a gifted instructor who was widely respected by her students. She taught two required freshman math courses composed of both male and female students and, later, the math education course, which was predominantly female. Teaching college students was different from her past experiences with youth and the illiterate veterans. She was pleased with how sincere and dedicated her college students were about learning the material and even more so with their integrity as a whole. She remained impressed throughout the 1950s as her future students continuously met with her during and after her normal office hours to discuss math concepts or their work.55 When Gerry first joined the college faculty, she clearly remembered the awkwardness she felt as a student in both high school and college when it was examination time. Whenever she took a test, she never liked how some teach-

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ers “hovered over you like [they] thought you were a criminal . . . looking on you and hanging over you.” Determined not to do the same to her students, Gerry incorporated her own honor code system, leaving the students unattended during testing so that they could more easily concentrate without her presence distracting them. In doing so, it won her even greater respect from the many students she eventually taught while serving on State A&M’s mathematics faculty. While teaching had not been Gerry’s first career choice when she graduated from Fisk University, her experiences as a teacher, particularly on the college level, proved to be far more gratifying and enriching than she would have ever imagined while attending college.56 In addition to teaching, Gerry made insightful contributions to State A&M’s teaching effectiveness through her writing and video demonstrations. She also successfully applied for and won four different National Science Foundation (NSF) awards between the 1950s and 1960s. Each award was a three-week summer session in the sciences to be spent at selected historically White colleges. Gerry spent her first NSF Summer Institute session at Pennsylvania State University while her husband and mother Hazel watched the elementary-age Malone and Rose Hayzel at home. Her second award was spent at San Jose State University in California, traveling with Rose Hayzel, who was now a freshman in high school. Her third NSF award was spent at Carleton College in Minnesota while her two high school offspring remained in Orangeburg. Lastly, when both children were college students, Gerry spent her last NSF award in New Jersey at Rutgers University. She was a “one of a kind” throughout her growing years as she chose to take paths quite different from those of her peers. Now this married mother of two had inadvertently paved her way to being a pioneer and scholar when she became the first female instructor to teach in the traditionally all-male Math Department at South Carolina State A&M, later called South Carolina State College and nicknamed “State College.”57

Child Rearing When it came to child rearing, Gerry and Zin instilled in both Malone and Rose Hayzel many of the same morals and values they were taught by their parents. Just as she decided not to repeat mistakes her teachers made in the classroom, Gerry was also determined not to repeat mistakes she felt her parents had made in raising her. She was resolute in raising her children differently. Throughout her youth, Gerry disliked her parents’ very strict rules applied to her as compared to the sometimes more lax rules applied to her younger brother; she was even more upset when she compared her family’s rules to the even more lenient ones practiced by her friends’ parents.

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Frustrated that Malone and her friends seemingly had much more freedom than she, in her quietude she promised herself that whenever she had children she was going to do things differently. She had planned to allow them a freedom that she herself had always desired but never came close to achieving, in spite of her own stealthy activities. Gerry and Zin taught their children ethics that promoted civility, respectfulness, honesty, and good behavior. Following in their parents’ footsteps, the Zimmermans believed in using corporal punishment to discipline Malone and Rose Hayzel. At home, father Zin had the role of being the strict disciplinarian over the children. As for the women in the house, on the other hand, grandmother Hazel faltered when it came to disciplining them and Gerry referred all matters to her husband. Zin was busy not only with working at the college but also with raising chickens and taking care of a backyard filled with chicken houses. In addition, he continued to work as a building contractor in the surrounding Orangeburg community, remained active in the church, and spent his leisure time with his family. Thus, from his perspective, if he had to take time away from his very busy schedule to discipline an offspring, he was certainly going to make it an event for the child to learn from and remember. When the children were very young, a good scolding or a light slap on the hand or leg sufficed for their mischief. However, as they grew older and their mischief changed, their punishments also changed, as Zin became even stricter with them. With the exception of one or two spankings, he seldom had to discipline Rose Hayzel; however, there were many times he had to give Malone “a good whipping.” In disciplining Malone, Zin had his own process of delivery. First, he would sit and have a discussion with Malone; then he would ask his son, “Now, what kind of punishment do you think you deserve?” In turn, Malone would answer, “I guess I ought to have a whipping,” which Zin would deliver to him. Unlike Gerry’s father, who would either pull “a thing off a tree” to whip them or “slap . . . [them] up against the wall,” Zin normally pulled off his belt to use for spankings. While Gerry and Zin consciously instilled their parents’ values in their children, they also consciously refused to mimic their sometimes too brash style of punishment. Just as the patriarchal Zin financially supported his family and was its chief disciplinarian, Gerry supervised and performed the domestic household affairs like most housewives of her era but with the assistance of another woman, her mother. As the children grew older, Gerry’s role also changed as she now oversaw their educational and social activities. In 1946, Claflin College had phased out both its private preschool and grammar school programs

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that Gerry was enrolled in as a child. When State A&M’s Felton Training School opened, parents who could afford the small fees and had some type of affiliation with the college had the privilege of enrolling their children in the small selective program. In early-twentieth-century Orangeburg, the Black professional and educated community viewed Felton as a welcome alternative to its town’s inferior, segregated public Black schools.58 When a new private Catholic school, Christ the King, opened in the 1940s, it further provided these parents with another alternative for their children. Operating out of a large white house on Boulevard Street across from Claflin and State A&M, the house served as both Christ the King Roman Catholic Church and Christ the King School. The private school’s tuition was quite expensive, even with the discounted fee for a second or third sibling. Fees had to be paid weekly and all students were required to wear uniforms. Eventually, Christ the King relocated around the corner from Boulevard to Amelia Street, establishing itself on property that had a large, two-story white house once occupied by a Methodist minister. The teachers, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, were from Baltimore, Maryland, and were the first Black Catholic religious order of nuns in the United States. The nuns lived in the house and successfully converted some of the rooms into classrooms to teach their pupils. Adjacent to the house stood their newly built church.59 Because Felton did not admit pupils until age six, Malone’s preschool education came from both his mother and grandmother, who taught him his name, the ABCs, numbers, and colors. When one of Malone’s six-year-old playmates bragged to the five-year-old Malone that he was starting Christ the King School soon, Malone was upset over the idea that his friend could go to school and he could not. This information prompted Gerry to inquire about the enrollment procedure at Christ the King. She learned that the school accepted children under age six for their kindergarten program. Elated to hear this, Gerry immediately registered Malone, and he entered Christ the King in 1946 at age five, followed by his younger sister, Rose Hayzel, a year later in 1947.60 Other State A&M employees also opted to pay the expensive fees to send their preschool-aged children to Christ the King rather than have them wait until they turned six years old to attend school. Once, however, their children turned six, they immediately transferred them to Felton, where the children of State A&M employees did not have to pay any tuition. On the other hand, Gerry and Zin kept Malone and Rose Hayzel in Christ the King after their sixth birthday, electing to pay the expensive monthly fees. The Zimmermans now preferred the Catholic teachings and education for their offspring to that of the secular, tuition-free program at Felton.61

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Now that both children were enrolled in school, Gerry was able to work on her master’s degree freely and teach full time at State A&M. Despite their busy schedules, both Gerry and her mother were always available to pick up the children from school and be home with them in the afternoons. During the school year, Gerry and other mothers would organize parties on the weekend so that their children could socialize together.62 Eventually, there emerged different social clubs for Malone and Rose Hayzel to join. There was a youth club formed specifically for Catholic children that held parties and other events at Christ the King. Gerry’s church, St. Paul’s Episcopal, also organized a youth club, the Episcopal Young Children (EYC), which held parties and other social events in a house they purchased on State A&M’s campus.63 As the children grew older, Gerry and her friends grew more creative in shaping their children’s social lives. Gerry organized several boys and girls into a new teenage social club called the Thirteen Twenty; its members’ ages ranged between thirteen and nineteen. The club held parties and activities on weekends during the summer vacation and for holidays. Rotating parents hosted these highly chaperoned parties held either in their homes or in a community center. Aside from parties, the Thirteen Twenty also held sessions on etiquette, where its members were trained on the proper way to act during a luncheon or dinner event.64 During their summer vacation, Gerry also enrolled Malone and Rose Hayzel in summer school or some type of summer activity that took place at Felton when they were younger or on the State A&M campus when they were older. Even up to their early high school years, Malone and Rose Hayzel attended different vacation Bible schools each week held at various local Black Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterian, and Pentecostal churches. As a result of having her own children, Gerry grew more and more interested in working with younger people. Eventually she helped to stimulate Orangeburg’s Black chapter of the nonfunctioning Boy Scouts of America, and her mother served as a den mother to the Cub Scouts. Gerry’s biggest accomplishment, however, came afterward when she was the paramount person for spearheading Orangeburg’s Black chapter of the Girl Scouts of America.65 Gerry managed to navigate a child-rearing route quite different from the one chosen by her parents. As Malone and Rose Hayzel became older schoolaged children, she, like her parents, also emphasized proper “home training” as being equally as important as “formal school training.” But unlike their parents, Gerry and Zin would openly engage in informal conversations with them to make certain they understood the dos and don’ts in life. While both children excelled in school and in their extracurricular activities, including

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being disciplined members on the school’s band, their parents wanted to ensure that they were also always well-behaved children when in public.66 Influenced by etiquette literature when she was a child, Gerry’s home library also included a very influential book in the collection, The Correct Thing to Do, to Say, to Wear, written by North Carolina’s Black school founder and club activist, Charlotte Hawkins Brown. Brown’s book was designed to set the high standards of etiquette necessary for rearing well-groomed and well-mannered Black youth. These standards were eventually incorporated into her school’s “liberal arts and college prep” curriculum as a finishing tool for graduating properly educated Black ladies and gentlemen from the Palmer Institute. Advice on etiquette focused not only on proper behavior for females but also on proper dress codes for all occasions, including school wear.67 Gerry and Zin would have family conferences or discussions pertaining to how to relate to adults, how to behave in school, or things that boys or girls should or should not do. Many times, they would hold open informal discussions around the dinner table or when the family was relaxing together. Such conversations between parents and children were not a part of Gerry and Zin’s childhood experiences growing up in the early twentieth century. For them, “children were to be seen and not heard” when in the presence of adults, and when adults spoke, children were not to be a part of the conversations. As modern parents in the early 1950s, Gerry and Zin were already breaking the child-rearing mold set by earlier generations of Black parents. The comfort level of one’s home life played a significant role in child rearing since having certain amenities affected the family’s overall social life. For example, Gerry and Zin grew up in homes with reasonable amenities that provided them both with a high level of comfort compared to the average African American. However, their level of comfort was still very different from that of their own children. While Gerry’s mother was among the first in Orangeburg to purchase a television set, it was long after Gerry’s childhood as she was already grown and married. Joined by a few friends on Sunday evenings, the only television program they watched together was a religious broadcast from Charlotte, North Carolina, amid the “white, snowy” unclear picture and the “static, cackling sounds.” As for Malone and Rose Hayzel, they grew up with a television in the home. Even though the television still had its “snowy picture, static sounds,” and only a few channels to watch, every Saturday morning they gathered around the television with their friends to watch the only children’s program, the circus. When Malone and Rose Hayzel were older, they were allowed to call their friends on the phone, in spite of the party lines shared with two or, sometimes, three or four other families.

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Unlike the childhoods of their parents, both Malone and Rose Hayzel were born and reared in a home with various modern amenities of their era, including electricity, television, electric appliances, indoor plumbing, indoor bathroom, and a telephone. These modern conveniences inadvertently altered their assigned chores, making them less rigorous as compared to those that Gerry and Zin once performed in their childhood. In spite of the children having much lighter chores, Gerry found that her modern child-rearing practices did not get the same result when it came to her children completing these tasks. For example, Malone and Rose Hayzel were given chores but seldom performed them. With grandmother Hazel living with them, she completed many of their chores. In fact, she would wash the clothing by hand since they still did not have a washing machine, and then she would unnecessarily iron everything, including the socks and the nylon stockings, which were often burnt as a result. Gerry knew when the children did the chores themselves because she found untidy made beds or clothes put away that were improperly hung or folded. When she found perfection, she knew that her mother had gone behind the children to correct their inadequacies.68 In the Zimmerman household the family sat down at the table for at least one meal together, either midday dinner or later supper. Zin normally left early for work in the mornings, so breakfast was not one of their family meals. Once Gerry returned to work full time, her mother Hazel made certain the midday dinner was ready so that the entire family could enjoy one meal together. Unlike Gerry’s or her mother’s childhood days, Malone and Rose Hayzel were not expected to read the Bible or memorize Bible passages to recite at the table. Instead, one person would say grace to bless the food and everyone would join in conversation as they ate. In the Zimmerman household, their children were to always be respectful as well as both seen and heard.69 On dining etiquette, Malone and Rose Hayzel had to eat all the food on their plates or it would be saved for their next meal. During these mealtimes, Gerry would use these occasions to train them in proper table manners. Following the traditional rules of dining etiquette, when it was time for Malone or Rose Hayzel to exit the table, they asked permission to do so. As in every young generation, they, too, complained of their parents being too “old fashioned” since their friends did not have to do certain things. On the other hand, Gerry and Zin heard their complaints but knew that they were much more liberal in raising their children compared with how their own parents had raised them.70 Even though Gerry and Zin were rearing their children during the era of Jim Crow segregation, racial segregation was never one of their conversation topics. They taught their children proper Jim Crown etiquette through both

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their own actions or by offering bogus explanations. For example, if they were in a downtown store and one of the young children wanted to drink from the “Whites only” water fountain, Gerry would tell them that the water was dirty and they should never use that one. As they became older, Malone and Rose Hayzel were rather observant and followed the social protocol without protests, including not entering the all-White waiting room at the train depot by remaining in the family’s car until the train arrive. Gerry’s children were among Black Orangeburg’s economically privileged youth who were afforded the best education, lived in a stately home with modern amenities, and socialized with others from similar preferred social backgrounds. But Gerry made certain that her children never felt superior to others who did not share their comforts, sometimes to the dismay of her own friends. For example, when Malone and Rose Hayzel were invited to a little boy’s birthday party, Gerry dropped them off with plans of picking them up after the party. Her friends reacted by stating their surprise at Gerry for letting the children go to “that party.” When Gerry questioned their concern, one woman mentioned the fact that “this party was in the alley,” an impoverished part of town. The friend then asked Gerry if she was afraid for her children. Gerry replied, “No, they’ll be alright.” On another occasion, Gerry faced criticism from her community of girlfriends because she allowed her children to play with certain children from poor backgrounds. Gerry’s mother, Hazel, owned two little houses that she rented out that were located next to their own home. One family had a daughter about four or five years older than Malone who was one of the children’s playmates and had even taught Malone how to ride a bicycle. Gerry’s friends criticized her for allowing such closeness between the children, but Gerry, still unconventional in her thinking, was determined to not let her children think they were better than anybody else. When it came to teaching Malone and Rose Hayzel about the “birds and the bees,” Gerry and Zin were similar to their own parents and also avoided having a verbal discussion on the taboo topic of sex. Since Gerry realized that it was going to be her responsibility to educate the children on the subject, she wisely used Malone and Rose Hayzel’s passion for reading to complete this task. “There were excellent books published at the time for young people to read . . . about the birds and the bees, and sexual activities . . . start[ing] off with [discussing] the birds and bees,” Gerry recalled. She would purchase these books and hand them to the children, saying, “Here’s a new book that I want you to read.” For her follow up, Gerry would ask them in a few days if they had read the book, and in a brief discussion, she would quiz them on what they read, what they thought about it, and what they learned from it. Outraged

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over Gerry’s entire unconventional process and the audacity to question the children on this taboo subject, grandmother Hazel immediately criticized her “greatly for making such books available for them” to read.71 A positive consequence to introducing Malone and Rose Hayzel to such literature and holding short discussions with each afterward was the emergence of a comfort level that enabled the children to approach their mother about personal issues arising in their lives. For example, when Rose Hayzel’s menstrual cycle started at age thirteen, she immediately told her mother. Because Rose Hayzel knew what was happening to her body from both her readings and conversations with girlfriends, she informed her mother that she did not need to explain what to do next. Sad because she knew that her baby girl was growing into a young woman, Gerry gathered and then gave Rose Hayzel the pads and other items that she was going to need.72 On another occasion, Gerry was in the kitchen completing a task when Malone volunteered to her that he had “kissed a girl.” Surprised at his admission, Gerry responded by saying, “Well, show me how you kissed her.” And he did. Expecting a clean peck on the cheek, Malone demonstrated with his mother by giving her a mouth-to-mouth kiss. Flabbergasted, the curious Gerry quickly asked her son how had he learned to kiss like that. Malone reported that Frazier, his best friend at the time, showed him how to kiss. Gerry’s mother was elsewhere in the home and had no idea of this conversation. Remembering her mother’s earlier reaction and how she had scolded Gerry about giving the children books on sexuality, this time Gerry had no intention of sharing this shocking news with Hazel.73 After learning of her curious seventh-grade son’s activities, Gerry decided that she was not going to follow her mother’s same pattern of child rearing when it came to discussing “taboo” topics like sex. Instead, she was going to be openly frank and tell her children about the dos and don’ts in life. Without using works like “sex,” “intercourse,” or “pregnancy,” she was effectively blunt when she spoke to them, making sure that they understood everything she explained and said. For instance, she told Malone, “You [are] messing with these girls now; if you mess up with these girls and you mess one of them up . . . you’re going to have to marry her.” Thus she would add, “So don’t mess around with a girl that you don’t want to think about being your wife.” In the end, Gerry added, “You got to learn how to keep that zipper up!” Malone understood very clearly that if “he fooled around and messed up a girl, [he] was going to marry her” whether he liked her or not; “she [was] coming [to live] in this house, and she’s going to have that baby, and that’s going to be [their] grand, and [he was] going to be the daddy.”74

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Gerry never had to have a discussion like that with Rose Hayzel. However, when she was preparing to enter the Catholic high school in Virginia, she sat down and talked with her daughter about pregnancy, making it very clear that she understood how important it was not to “fool with the boys.” In actuality, Gerry found herself coaxing her daughter most of the time to interact with boys. At dances and other social affairs, she noticed that Rose Hayzel would dance with some but not with others. Gerry would tell her that it was “impolite to refuse to dance with a boy” and would inquire about the refusal. On one occasion, her finicky daughter politely replied, “Oh momma, I don’t like the way he holds you” or she would offer some other excuse to explain her reason for refusal. According to Charlotte Hawkins Brown, a “girl may refuse to dance, but she should not refuse one boy’s invitation and then accept that of another for the same dance unless it was previously engaged.” Even if there was an attractive beau Rose Hayzel wanted to dance with or admired in high school, the very private youth never shared such with her mother or discussed any of her girlfriends’ relationships.75 By the time Malone and Rose Hayzel were teenagers, the intellectually bright pair had learned very little about responsibility through doing chores due to being tremendously spoiled by their grandmother Hazel. When Malone finished Christ the King in 1954 and was ready to enter high school, State A&M had already phased out its high school program, State A&M Academy. Even though Orangeburg had a Black high school, Wilkinson, Gerry and Zin had already decided that Malone was going away to school to learn responsibility and avoid further spoiling.76 After searching for a Catholic school that would fit their financial budget, they selected the Black Catholic school, St. Emma’s Military Academy, in Rock Castle, Virginia, the same school that Gerry’s maternal uncles, Charles and Harry Tatnall, had attended in their youth. The fees were very expensive and there were no loan programs to assist in the cost. Therefore Gerry and Zin subscribed to one of the insurance companies with a college tuition plan. Such insurance companies paid the tuition up front, while parents were able to pay the monthly insurance premiums with interest fees. With this arrangement, Malone was now able to attend the same school that his grandmother’s brothers had once attended in their youth.77 Gerry, like her own mother, never placed any restrictions on her daughter’s education, as they subsequently made similar plans for her to go away to high school and eventually attend college. When Rose Hayzel graduated from Christ the King, she also left for Virginia to enroll in St. Emma’s sister school, St. Francis, a Black female Catholic school located up on a hill from the boys’

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school. While all White Catholic priests or “brothers” taught at St. Emma, only Black Catholic nuns or “sisters” taught at St. Francis. Both schools were very strict and all students were assigned rotational duties to work in the kitchen, clean the kitchen, make their beds, and clean the sinks. To the cheer of Gerry and Zin, they knew that their two offspring were finally going to learn responsibility through doing chores.78 There were monthly school dances held so that the boys from St. Emma could socialize with the girls from St. Francis, allowing Malone and Rose Hayzel to visit with each other. On one occasion, Rose Hayzel wrote her mother complaining that Malone refused to dance with her; after Gerry wrote him a scolding letter, Malone made certain he sent a picture of him dancing with his sister to put the scolding to rest. Like their peers, they both returned home only twice a year for the short Christmas break and the longer summer break. Both children were enrolled in the college preparatory program and were honor roll students. Rose Hayzel, on the other hand, had shocked her parents in ninth grade when they received her first report card with a failing grade in physical education. Upon inquiry, Gerry learned the nun had decided to give Rose Hayzel a failing grade each grading period unless she stopped sucking her finger. By the end of the course, Rose Hayzel had finally abandoned her childhood habit of sucking her finger and passed the course. Other than that incident, Rose Hayzel was a model student compared to her rebellious brother Malone. On a few occasions, St. Emma had to discipline the newest maverick in the Zimmerman household, Malone, who had inherited both his mother and grandmother’s feisty personality and independent thinking. Because he was in a more strict school environment compared to that of his grandmother and mother, it was much more of a challenge for him to conform and adhere to the rules. It was not unusual for Malone to rebel against or circumvent some of the school’s rules and regulations. One example of his rebellious behavior occurred in his trade class when the instructor was teaching him one method to perform a task and Malone uncooperatively opted to use another method, asserting how his father taught him to use that method. On other occasions, he was caught with a flashlight reading under the covers after lights were out. For each event, he received a demerit, and on being threatened with permanent suspension if he received one more demerit, Gerry immediately stepped in to warn Malone of any further rebelliousness. In the end Malone did succumb to his mother’s threats. Gerry and Zin took time from their busy schedules to vacation as a family. Zin worked long hours on his several jobs to sustain his family’s comfortable

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life but would constantly take time off to take Malone fishing, to picnic with his family, or, on occasion, to drive down to Florida or Georgia to visit with family and friends. Once both children went off to school in Virginia, Gerry completed her master’s degree in math education in 1948 and taught full time at State A&M. She earned a comfortable salary of about $250 a month, which increased over the next several years to about $400 a month. She continued to assist her mother with Sunlight Club events but was not yet a member herself. The youthful Gerry chose to remain active in both her AKA sorority and the As You Like It social club.79 When the older Malone and Rose Hayzel came home for their summer school vacation from high school, they now pursued different social paths. Malone had a girlfriend in Orangeburg and would visit her under her parents’ supervision. At times his girlfriend would visit Malone at his house and they and Malone’s grandmother would spend hours playing bridge, a card game she taught them both to play. Originating in China, the game of bridge became very popular in the United States in the 1920s among both men and women. In Orangeburg, elite and upper-middle-class Black women, in particular, formed private card clubs that met weekly to socialize and play recreational bridge or pinochle cards. Staying true to the standards of the Pierce’s genteel social class in Orangeburg, teaching the children to play bridge was paving the way for their future genteel pastimes.80 Rose Hayzel, on the other hand, was not interested in dating, although there were numerous boys interested in her. Although she never encouraged them, they would telephone her to talk and ask to come visit, but she always refused them by saying that she was busy. On one occasion, when Gerry inquired about her being allegedly “busy,” Rose Hayzel bluntly told her mother that she was “busy looking at television” even though she was not. Remembering her repressed social life as a teenager, Gerry wanted her daughter to have the freedom she never enjoyed and often encouraged her to take advantage of her freedom. But being lackadaisical about boys or dating was not specific to any social class. Another teen girl in the late 1940s, Dorothy Scott Mack, was raised by her working-class, elderly great grandmother, Betty Jamison, who labored as a domestic in White homes. As a young girl and teenager, Mack was not interested in boys at all but more interested in spending time around her great grandmother; in fact, she even preferred socializing with her “granny” to playing with her friends. The shy and quiet Dorothy never dated, though there were several boys interested in doing so. Her first real boyfriend was one of her co-workers at Kirkland Cleaners when she was in her early twenties. The relationship eventually resulted in marriage.81

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As was the case with her mother’s peculiar girlhood, Rose Hayzel also started off having no girlfriends since there were no girls her age in the neighborhood. She played with her brother and his friends and formed close bonds with them. Once she began school in 1947 at Christ the King, she had one or two girlfriends whom she chatted with infrequently on the telephone. Gerry enrolled her in dance and swim classes at State A&M College and had her join the Girl Scouts. Described as a “Paula kind of girl” by her mother, Rose Hayzel enjoyed crocheting, needlework, reading, and attending church-sponsored handicrafts classes. When the Pan-Hellenic Council of the Black Greek organizations sponsored its first debutante ball, Rose Hayzel and the other young females were presented as being Orangeburg’s proper Black young ladies in this “coming out” event.82 Malone, described as being “all boy,” always found a way to challenge, if not break, the rules. Now that both children had learned to drive an automobile, they were allowed to have the car for two to three hours on alternating Sunday afternoons to go wherever they like. Rose Hayzel never used her privilege, however, and even if she intended to use the car, Malone, “Mr. Social Butterfly,” had already secretly planned to negotiate some bargain with her so that he would still have the car every Sunday. As a result, Malone had both his and her Sunday afternoons to drive the car.83 Several times the mischievous Malone and his friend drove the car out of town to Columbia or some other city, knowing that these trips were prohibited. On a few occasions when he was chastised for arriving home late, he would offer his parents the story of losing track of time to hide the fact they had gone out of town. When Gerry eventually learned of the excursions from one of his other friends, Malone admitted his wrongdoing and was prohibited from driving for a set period. On other occasions, neighbors would call Gerry to tell her that he was visiting a certain female and the parents were not at home. Whether he was caught going out of town or being at a prohibited place, Gerry often warned him that one day she was going to pick up her car and he would be forced to either walk home or find some other way home.84 Rose Hayzel graduated from high school in 1959 and attended the coed Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania, to study medical technology. In her first year, she and a senior female were the only two African American females in the school. When the senior graduated, Rose Hayzel was the only Black girl in the college. There were a few Black males on the basketball team but they were more interested in socializing with and dating White females. As the Black male athletes continued to ignore her at social functions and in general, Rose

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Hayzel found solace in her growing friendships with both White male and female peers.85 When she returned to Orangeburg for vacation breaks, she continued to be disinterested in dating anyone at home, even when her mother made attempts to introduce her to nice young males. In one conversation, Gerry asked her daughter why she was not interested in having visitors. Rose Hayzel responded, without hesitation, by telling her mother that these young men did not share her dreams, interests, or plans. In other words, like her mother during her senior year at Fisk, Rose Hayzel had also planned not to return to Orangeburg after graduating from college. To answer her mother’s questions about not dating, she told her mother that she plans to move to California after graduation, adding that it was no need for her to encourage the interest of any boys in Orangeburg when she knew that none were willing to relocate to California. She concluded that since they were not interested in living in California, she was not interested in any of them.86 Unlike Gerry’s parents’ reactions to her moving to Texas after graduation, Rose Hayzel had her parents’ full support when she accepted a one-year internship in 1962 to spend her fourth year at the Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California. Rose Hayzel adjusted rather well to living on the West Coast since her high school and college experiences had successfully prepared her for living away from home. In addition, because Rose Hayzel attended a predominantly White college and socialized with only White students, she was both confident and comfortable with working or socializing in an all-White setting. Upon completion of her internship and because of the hospital’s mission to hire more Blacks, Rose Hayzel was offered a permanent position at Providence St. Joseph’s, where she still worked in 2010.87 While in California, Rose Hayzel eventually met and became engaged to a White artist. Gerry objected strongly to this engagement because of his financial inability to support a family. Since race relations were gradually improving in the 1960s, Gerry was less concerned about Rose Hayzel being in an interracial relationship and more concerned about her only daughter being involved with a man she deemed financially unstable. She did not want her daughter to end up financially supporting a “struggling artists” husband. At some point, however, the engagement ended and Rose Hayzel later met her future husband on a blind date arranged by her White friends at an all-White party.88 Her friends knew that “this Black fellow was going to be there because he was a musician” and they wanted them to meet each other. The two met, became friends, and were eventually married. For a wedding gift, Gerry presented her daughter with a keepsake prayer book, creatively covered with a corsage that

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she had saved all those years from her own wedding in 1935. The couple later blessed Gerry and Zin with two grandsons, Christopher and Derek.89 Malone, who had graduated earlier from St. Emma in 1958, now attended Purdue University in Indiana to study civil engineering. He attended Purdue during an era when very few African Americans were enrolled in historically White colleges, and even then most of the Black students were athletes playing football or basketball. While the athletic program had an academic support system in place to ensure the success of its athletes’ eligibility, Black non-athletic students did not have the same support system. Based on conversations with her son, Gerry always believed “the school did everything they could to make [the Black students] fail their programs” and “flunk out.”90 A special highlight of Malone’s college years occurred one semester when Benjamin Mays spoke at the university. Malone was chosen to be his escort and show him around the campus. Once Mays realized that Malone was from Orangeburg, he quickly inquired about his knowledge of the James Pierce family. When Malone identified himself as the grandson of James Pierce, Mays, with delight, asked about Malone’s Aunt Sarah, who was Mays’s first love while at State A&M. This was one inquiry that Ben Mays always made when he came into contact with someone from the Pierce family.91 While at Purdue, Malone, like Rose Hayzel, also dated his White peers since there were few or no Black females. Malone dated a White nursing student, whom he planned to marry. Malone and his girlfriend corresponded back and forth by mail and telephone with her parents, who both really liked him. However, when her parents arrived at the airport for their daughter’s graduation and was introduced to Malone, her Black boyfriend, they did not accept the relationship. Refusing to give their daughter their blessing and pay for the wedding, Gerry and Zin reluctantly agreed to do so since her son really wanted to marry the girl. Later the couple broke up, and after Malone graduated from Purdue in 1962, he was offered a job in Indiana, where he resided for forty years.92 In due course, he dated and married a Black woman, later having two daughters, Marlo and Amber. While Rose Hayzel stayed in California, Malone returned to Orangeburg in the 1990s and worked at State A&M, then renamed South Carolina State College. Gerry’s beloved Zin died on August 9, 2000, leaving behind his legacy as superintendent of buildings and grounds. For Gerry, an additional honor was when Malone accepted his late father’s same administrative position, a position initially created by his father with an office located in a building also named after him. Malone remained in this position until he accepted another appointment in the Buildings and Grounds Department at the University of South Carolina, where he still worked in 2010.93

Gerry: The Mother, 1933–1960s

Conclusion “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” These lines from John Donne’s poem are certainly apropos in understanding Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman’s metamorphosis from girlhood to womanhood. Simply put, she is the product of early-twentiethcentury, traditional, southern child rearing. Young Jello was instilled with the limitations necessary for practicing civility and being a good citizen, but her parents did not place limitations on her that restricted her creativity and dreams. She was a product of “old-fashioned” child rearing, handed down through the various generations of the Pierces and Tatnalls. They raised her using discipline and tough love, supervision and extended family assistance, unconditional love, and set rules that were always enforced. Her family successfully shaped her morals and values through both their religious convictions and how they themselves behaved as role models. Her parents were true to “practicing what they preached,” as they themselves lived the model life for how they wanted their son and daughter to live and behave. Once married, Mrs. Zimmerman was determined to use different methods from her parents in raising her own children. In actuality, however, she was more like her parents than she realized. In raising their children, both Mrs. Z and her husband also emphasized the importance of religion in their lives, disciplined them with corporal punishment if they misbehaved, monitored their interaction with the opposite sex, set standard rules for them to follow, and supervised them closely. Even when Gerry purposely deviated from her parents’ child-rearing practices, there was still evidence of her parents’ child-rearing influence. For example, she wanted her children educated in a Catholic school setting, but it

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was a setting known for practicing strict rules, having less tolerance for misbehavior, and implementing stiff punishments. The instructors, like Gerry’s parents, ended up using some of the very same means that the girl Gerry promised not to ever use once she had children. Like her parents, Mrs. Z was also conscious of the changing times in her children’s era and wanted to make sure they stayed on the correct path of growth and not fall in harm’s way. This was particularly true as racial barriers were gradually disappearing, enabling children in the 1960s to have more choices and live with fewer restrictions. Yet unlike her parents, Mrs. Z wanted her children to go out and explore the world, to enjoy a freedom that she always wanted to have in her youth but felt it was stifled by too many rules and restrictions. While there was a continuum in the child-rearing practices between the older Pierces and the younger Zimmermans, Mrs. Z made sure that the choice to dream and think independently, to make their own choices, and to follow their own dreams was an option never taken away from her children. Unfortunately, by the 1970s most southern African American families, including those in Orangeburg, had practically abandoned the family and child-rearing culture of past generations, regardless of social class. In fairness, there remain a significant minority of African American parents whose childrearing culture reflects past eras, including having God-fearing households; attending church together; sitting for dinner at the table nightly as a family; using corporal punishment to discipline; emphasizing the importance of good behavior, manners, and reputation; and/or teaching youth to shun sexual relations until marriage. But the overall cultural departure from how earlier African American families functioned while child rearing accounts partly for the increase in dysfunctional early-twenty-first-century Black families, in addition to continued race discrimination, unequal opportunities, economic inequities, and poverty. Returning to some, if not many, of the “old school ways” of child rearing will certainly yield an improved future generation of African American parents—parents who could be trailblazers, restoring functionality in both the African American family and community.

Conclusion

Epilogue

Mrs. Z : Lady Maverick, 1960s—2010 Old Clubs, New Clubs From the mid-1960s and onward, after Malone and Rose Hayzel went to college, graduated, found jobs, and married, Zin and Gerry Zimmerman enjoyed their “empty nest.” These busy years were filled with Mrs. Geraldyne Zimmerman’s activities, which, ironically, had increased after the children left. She remained active in her As You Like It women’s bridge club and her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, becoming a lifetime member of the latter. In 1964, Zimmerman and her friends successfully established an Orangeburg chapter of Links, Incorporated, a national nonprofit organization for women of color committed to enhancing their communities culturally, socially, and benevolently.1 After years of assisting her mother in her youth, Geraldyne Zimmerman decided to join Orangeburg’s oldest Black women’s civic club, the Sunlight Club. It was a club of elite women founded by her mother, Hayzel, and a few other women on June 29, 1909, two years before Geraldyne’s birth. The youth club Zimmerman had founded earlier, the Thirteen Twenty, had slowly phased itself out as its members grew up and left for college. But this did not subtract from Geraldyne’s continued interest in working with young people. She remained steadfast in her interest to keep young females socially engaged.2 Based on the Sunlight Club model, Mrs. Zimmerman wanted to organize high school girls into an organization with the same mission as the old club. Hence, she founded a junior civic organization of the Sunlight Club. The new club’s first members were the remaining female members who were still active

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in the waning Thirteen Twenty. Geraldyne wanted to name the new club after the civic worker, Helen Wilkinson Sheffield, in honor of her ongoing work among youth. Sheffield was the daughter of State A&M’s former president, Robert S. Wilkinson, and Marian Birnie Wilkinson, one of the founders of the Sunlight Club and later president of the South Carolina Federation of Colored Women.3 At the time, Helen Sheffield, like both her mother Marian Wilkinson and Sarah B. Henderson, was an active Sunlight Club member who focused unselfishly on socially engaging Orangeburg’s less fortunate youth. Geraldyne had one of the high school members to seek permission from Sheffield to use her name for their new club. The gracious Helen Sheffield accepted the honor and the Helen Sheffield Girls Club was officially born in 1963. The club’s mission was to prepare high school girls for a life of community service work, and its members were from “preferred social backgrounds” only. A few years later, Gerry and some other women founded the Sarah B. Henderson Club at State A&M, a junior civic club of the Sunlight Club. Named after a woman who was very active in working with young females at State A&M, the Sara B. Henderson Club was by invitation only. Unlike the members of other female social clubs, Henderson clubwomen were groomed and committed to do civic work in the larger Black community. The idea was that once the Helen Sheffield girls entered college, they would go on to become members of the Sarah B. Henderson Club. Upon their graduation from college, they were eligible to become members of the Sunlight Club, Orangeburg’s elite Black women’s civic club. However, while some of these young female graduates remained in Orangeburg and became active with the Sunlight Club, many others chose to relocate and move to other cities and states. From working many years with both these high school and college girls, they affectionately started referring to Mrs. Zimmerman as “Mrs. Z,” a term of endearment still used today. A few years before the founding of the Helen Sheffield Girls Club, Helen Wilkinson Sheffield herself had attempted to organize Orangeburg’s young Black girls into its first Black chapter of the Girl Scouts of America but failed. This failure resulted from Sheffield’s recruitment efforts being narrowly focused on girls from Orangeburg’s Black elite and middle-class families. However, most of the scouts grew older and left Orangeburg to attend private high schools in other cities or states. As a result of Sheffield not recruiting girl scouts from the general Black population, her existing chapter was unable to sustain its weaning membership and eventually folded. After successfully igniting the Black chapter of the Boys Scouts in Orangeburg when Malone was very young, Mrs. Z decided to focus her efforts on

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doing the same for the Girl Scouts. Because Orangeburg had an active White chapter of the Girl Scouts, Mrs. Z wanted to contact them to find out what she needed to do to start a chapter. Once she learned that a Miss Pittman, a “White lady running [a] Singer sewing machine store downtown,” was connected to the Girls Scouts, she visited Pittman at the store to talk with her. During the meeting, Miss Pittman gave Geraldyne the Girl Scouts Manual and other related materials. In addition, Helen Sheffield gave Mrs. Z all the materials she had collected over the years, enabling her to finally learn the process of forming a new chapter. It was from reading these materials that Mrs. Z contacted the Girl Scouts office in Atlanta, Georgia, which, in turn, sent an agent to Orangeburg to meet with the interested parents. Due to Mrs. Z’s perseverance, a new Black chapter of the Girl Scouts was established in Orangeburg and girls could now join its troops as Brownies, Junior Scouts, Cadets, and Senior Cadets. Many of the scouts’ mothers volunteered, thus fulfilling the void for adult supervision and assistance over the various troops. Unfortunately, when many of the girls entered high school, they lost interest, were no longer active, and their parents stopped volunteering. For the many other girls who remained scouts into young adulthood, they were more paper members who paid their dues but were now inactive in the organization. On the other hand, Mrs. Z’s own daughter, Rose Hayzel, chose not to follow her peers. She refused to become a paper member when she left for high school in Virginia, instead continuing to be an active member. As for Mrs. Z, she remained an active member, leader, and worker for over fifty years, from the chapter’s inception in Orangeburg to present.4

Beloved St. Paul’s Episcopal Aside from her secular community work, Mrs. Z was also very active in the church, a continuum from her youthful involvement in the Mt. Pisgah and New Mount Zion churches. As seen with her parents in the early twentieth century, it was the norm for married couples to attend and eventually join the same church. As for Gerry and Zin, they joined and attended two different churches. Zin realized that he had married a feisty, unconventional free spirit whose independent ways continually surfaced throughout their relationship; understanding this, he never raised any objection to his wife attending a separate church, nor did he ever discuss the idea of her joining his church.5 Likewise, Mrs. Z never coaxed Zin into attending or joining her church, even though it was her Episcopal priest who had performed their wedding nuptials. Furthermore, the couple was rather liberal when it came to church membership, including their children’s membership. Hence, in their household,

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mother Hayzel attended Mt. Pisgah Baptist, Zin attended Trinity Methodist, where daughter Rose Hayzel was eventually joined, and Mrs. Z attended St. Paul’s Episcopal, where Malone was eventually confirmed. But the Zimmerman clan always attended the various events and special occasions hosted at one another’s church together as a family.6 Mrs. Z’s church, St. Paul’s Episcopal, continued to hold its Sunday services in one of the buildings on State College’s campus in the 1950s. Father Usher, the priest from Denmark’s St. Philip’s Chapel, still traveled to Orangeburg on early Sunday mornings to administer the 9:00 mass, along with his wife, a daughter who played the piano, and a son who served as an acolyte. The female members decided to establish a churchwomen’s club, the Episcopal Church Women (ECW). This small female group actively hosted meetings at each other’s houses for Bible studies, religious programs, church breakfasts, and to discuss ways to further enhance the church.7 Because there was no church altar in the campus building, each Saturday evening ECW members “had to set up the altar” for the early Sunday morning service. On occasion, the ECW had to change their plans and set the altar up very early Sunday morning before the 9:00 service started due to a campus event being scheduled to take place in their makeshift church room the previous Saturday evening. Members alternated taking care of the church’s altar and performed housekeeping tasks; purchased the wine, flowers, plants, or religious holiday decor; arranged items in preparation for services; and dismantled the altar after services.8 When the Wilkinson family generously donated land for a church site, the male members concerned themselves with the financial handling of the building project. At this time, the ECW busied itself with collecting donations from “in-house” contributors for the building fund. Once Father Usher learned of their intentions, he immediately instructed them on how to acquire funds for building new churches for the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. With this financial assistance, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was built in 1961 on land adjacent to the college. For the first time, the small but active congregation of St. Paul’s was finally able to open the doors of its own church building for Sunday worship.9 In later years, the Wilkinson family also donated their two-story house on Lovell Street on State College’s campus. St. Paul’s used the upstairs quarters for the priest’s residence and the downstairs for activities for its youth church organization called the Episcopal Youth Club, the EYC. In the latter part of the 1970s, the church built a parish to further complement the church.10

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Accolades for a Lady Maverick From the 1960s to the present, Mrs. Z’s list of activities has seemed endless. She has supported many humane causes, events, and organization, including Orangeburg’s Samaritan House homeless shelter and the United Way Foundation. She has served on several Orangeburg committees, including the Grants Committee for Orangeburg’s Art Council and the Downtown Orangeburg Revitalization Association (DORA), and on several advisory boards, including for the Girl Scouts of America, the Red Cross of America, the Albemarle Chemical Plant (assisting in their assimilation into Orangeburg’s community), the Salvation Army, and the Church Community Ministries Organization (CCMO), which provided “free clothes,” household items, and meals to those in need. Up to the twenty-first century, this nonagenarian remained active in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. She continued to be an active member in six organizations, including As You Like It, the AKA Sorority, Sunlight Club, the NAACP, Girl Scouts of America, and Links, Incorporated.11 Since the 1960s, Mrs. Z has received countless awards, recognitions, and honors for her many contributions and achievements, with accolades ranging from the 1963 building of the Zimmerman Community Center, named after her in recognition of her work with youth, to that of receiving a “Certificate of Appreciation” for seventy-five years of service to her beloved sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, on February 13, 2007. She received the Service to Mankind Award on January 16, 1990, and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Claflin University on May 9, 1992. In 1994, she received the coveted local Kiwanis Club award, the Orangeburg Citizen of the Year Award, and a few years later, on July 20, 1999, the Orangeburg City Council bestowed upon her the Edisto Award. On February 28, 2000, Governor Jim Hodges of South Carolina presented Mrs. Z with the highest civilian award, the Order of the Palmetto. In addition, she entered the South Carolina Black Hall of Fame on June 20, 2003, and for her “outstanding and invaluable service to the community” received the Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition on June 20, 2003. Her consistent, generous work in the Orangeburg community and the larger South Carolina community has ranged from humble projects such as cleaning and restoring a neglected, historically Black Orangeburg cemetery now listed in the National Register for Historic Places in South Carolina to collecting food and clothing to help the needy.12 Whether she was the spunky young girl Jello, the free college student Gerry, the charitable Mrs. Zimmerman, or the current, gracious nonagenarian Mrs. Z, both the person and name in South Carolina are equated with

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humbleness, kindness, generosity, caring, beauty, strength, intelligence, leadership, sensitivity, love, humor, and feistiness. She was a unique female growing up as a young girl in the early 1900s and remains a unique person today. Though now this nonagenarian no longer drives and needs assistance to walk or get around, at age ninety-nine (in 2010) Mrs. Z remains mentally astute and active in select organizations, including the Girl Scouts of America, the AKA Sorority, and the Helen Sheffield Club for high school girls. With the assistance of her son Malone, close friends, and club members, she still goes to church, participates in meetings, attends select social events, and continues to assist in completing club activities from her home via her telephone or cell phone. Mrs. Zimmerman continued to reside in her family’s large, stately home on Treadwell Street surrounded by wonderful caretakers who are indeed extended family members, including Katie Williams, Roquell Thomas, Gwendolyn Wright, Alfreda Ryan, Bryon Miller, and Fairey Bell Zeigler. Mrs. Z’s daily routine included watching her favorite daytime television soap opera, Days of Our Lives, while enjoying a healthy lunch prepared by one of her caretakers. In May 2010, after an accidental fall in her home that fractured her vertebrae, she now resides in the Jolly Acres nursing home in Orangeburg. In her recuperation, at age 99, she still waits excitedly for the publication of this book so that she can finally share the rich experiences of her ancestral background with her family and inspire others in generations to come.

Mrs. Z: Lady Maverick, 1960s–2010

Appendix

Population Statistics: South Carolina and Orangeburg South Carolina Population by Race, 1790–1970 Year Total Percentage Total Percentage White White Non-White Non-White 1790 140,178 56.3

108,895

43.7

1800 196,255 56.8

149,336

43.2

1810 214,196 51.6

200,919 48.4

1820 237,440 47.2

265,301

52.8

1830 257,863 44.4

323,322

55.6

1840 259,084 43.6

335,314

56.4

1850 274,563 41.1

393,944

58.9

1860 291,300 41.4

412,408

58.6

1870 289,667 41.1

415,939

58.9

1880 391,105 39.3

604,472

60.7

1890 462,008 40.1

689,141

59.9

1900 557,807 41.6

782,509

58.4

1910 679,161 44.8

836,239 55.2

1920 818,538 48.6

865,186

51.4

1930 944,049 54.3

794,716

45.7

122

1940 1,084,308

57.1

815,496

42.9

1950 1,293,405

61.1

823,622

38.9

1960 1,551,022

65.1

831,572

34.9

1970 1,794,430

69.3

796,086

30.7

Source: South Carolina Statistical Abstract. Julian J. Petty, Twentieth Century Changes in South Carolina Population (South Carolina Population by Race: 1790–1970).

Orangeburg Population, 1790–2000

Orangeburg County

Orangeburg City

1790 18,513 1900 59,663 1910 55,893 1920 64,907 1930 63,864 1940 63,707 1950 68,726 15,322 1960 68,559 13,852 1970 69,789 13,252 1980 82,276 14,933 1990 84,803 13,772 2000 91,582 12,765 Source: General Population Characteristics, South Carolina. Population of Counties by Deccenial Census: 1900–2000, compiled and edited by Richard L. Forstall. Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census. Note: Missing years due to the burning of the Orangeburg’s courthouse during Sherman’s march through Orangeburg during the Civil War.

Appendix

Ellen Pierce 1867–1939

Alfred Pierce 1869–??

Tatnall-Pierce-Zimmerman Family Tree

William Pierce 1865–1914

Jesse Pierce 1871–??

Frank Pierce 1870–1945 Harriet Pierce 1879–1954

Franklin Pierce 1845–1905

David Pierce 1881–1968

Married 1865

Charlotte Pierce 1882–1976

Charlotte Davis 1845–1894

Susan Pierce ??–??

Geraldyne “Jello” 1911–

Mary Jane Pierce 1886–1918

Viessa 1912–1918

Hazel Tatnall 1888–1982

Married 1909

James Pierce 1876–1937

James “Bubba” 1914–2000

Sarah Pierce 1894–1952

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Matilda Buggs 1862–1927

Harry Tatnall 1848–?? Married 1882

Harold Tatnall 1882–1882

Georgia Tatnall 1883–??

Matilda Tatnall 1887–1887

Hazel Tatnall 1888–1982

Harold Tatnall 1890–??

Married 1909 James Pierce 1876–1937

Geraldyne “Jello” 1911–

Viessa 1912–1918

James “Bubba” 1914–2000

Geraldyne Pierce 1911–

Dudley Zimmerman 1910–2000 Married 1935

Dudley Malone 1941–

Rose Hayzel 1943–

Tatnall-Pierce-Zimmerman Family Tree

Charles Tatnall 1893–??

Notes Prologue 1. Some of the information used in writing this prologue was taken, at times verbatim, from my doctoral dissertation completed at Binghamton University in 1991, “Hard Workin’ Women: Class Divisions and African American Women’s Work in Orangeburg, South Carolina, 1880–1940.” M. Eugene Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina: A Political History, 1663–1763 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1966), 24–25, 60; Edward McCrady, South Carolina Under the Royal Government: 1719–1776 (New York: Macmillan, 1901), 48; L. S. Wolfe, Agriculture Adorned: A Non-Technical Story about the Background and Evolution of Farming (Columbia, S.C.: Cary Printing, 1956), 121; Chapman J. Milling, ed., Colonial South Carolina: Two Contemporary Descriptions by Governor James Glen and Dr. George Milligen Johnson (1749; reprint, Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1951), 13–18, 81; George W. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America: 1619–1800 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Son, 1883), 1:289; Walter B. Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1998), 146–76. 2. Sirmans, 24–25, 60; Edgar, 146–76; In 1790, Virginia had 292,627 slaves; South Carolina, 107,094; Maryland, 103,034; and North Carolina, 100, 572; reported in Bureau of the Census, First Census of the United States, 1790, State of South Carolina, 8–9, 94–102. Unfortunately, very little information is available on Orangeburg’s antebellum African Americans. This information is an attempt to put together “bits and pieces” of history combined in hopes of creating a general picture of slavery in this area. Walter B. Edgar’s study also provides important information on Orangeburg antebellum economy and postbellum race relations; see Edgar, South Carolina, 191–425, 501–65. Williams, History of the Negro Race, 293–301. The “non-Whites” probably included Native American Indians, “mestizos,” who were half Indian and half White, and “mulattoes” who were half Black and half White or Indian; see “South Carolina Population by Race: 1790–1990,”

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South Carolina’s Information Highway, http://www.sciway.net/statistics/scsa95/ pop/pop10.html/. 3. See I. A. Newby, Black Carolinians: A History of Blacks in South Carolina from 1895 to 1968 (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1973); Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861–1877 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1965); Asa Gordon, Sketches of Negro Life and History in South Carolina (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1971); Edgar, South Carolina, 73–77, 383–85, 416–18, 448–562; Earl M. Middleton with Joy W. Barnes, Knowing Who I Am: A Black Entrepreneur’s Struggle and Success in the American South (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2008), 4–5. 4. Edgar, South Carolina, 398–449, 468–71. 5. See “South Carolina Population by Race: 1790–1990”; “South Carolina State and County Population: 1900–2000,” South Carolina Budget and Control Board, Office of Research and Statistics, Health and Demographics, http://www.ors2. state.sc.us/population/pop1900.asp/; Gordon, Sketches of Negro Life and History, 147–49; Edgar, South Carolina, 388. 6. See my first book, Kibibi Voloria C. Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1999), for an in-depth discussion on the role skin color and mixed ancestry played in creating the intraracial segregation particular to South Carolina black communities. 7. Gordon, Sketches of Negro Life and History, 147–49; Edgar, South Carolina, 498, 536–47. 8. Hugo Ackerman, A Brief History of Orangeburg, pamphlet written for Home Federal Savings and Loan Association in Columbia and Orangeburg, S.C., Orangeburg County Public Library, 1974, 3–4, 9. The spelling of “Orangeburgh” changed to “Orangeburg” after it became incorporated as a “town” in the nineteenth century. Orangeburg became a “city” in the twentieth century. Willie Llew Griffin, “Orangeburg’s Beginnings,” Times and Democrat (Orangeburg, S.C., 1970), reprint of a clipping found in the archives of the Orangeburg County Historical Society, Orangeburg, S.C.; Marion Salley, The Writings of Marion Salley, Orangeburg Papers Vol. 1 (Orangeburg, S.C.: Orangeburg County Historical and Genealogical Society, 1970), 48–49; Bureau of the Census, United States Census of 1850 on Orangeburg Slave Population, Microfilm Collection, Orangeburg County Public Library, Orangeburg, S.C.; Bureau of the Census, United States Census of 1850 on Orangeburg Free Population, Microfilm Collection, Orangeburg County Public Library, Orangeburg, S.C.; Edgar, South Carolina, 54–60. 9. Thomas Osmond Summers Dibble, History of Orangeburg: 1864 (Orangeburg, S.C.: Orangeburg County Free Library, 1884), 9–12; Ackerman, Brief History of Orangeburg, 8; Edgar, South Carolina, 372–73; Hugo Ackerman’s “1865–1867: Crisis on the Farm,” Times and Democrat, Aug. 27, 1982, and “1865–1868: Crisis on the Farm,” Times and Democrat, July 4, 1982; Bureau of the Census, United States Census of 1870 on Orangeburg Population, Microfilm Collection, Orangeburg County Public Library, Orangeburg, S.C.; Gordon, Sketches of Negro Life and HisNotes to Pages xxii–xxv

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tory, 54, 75; Sidney Andrews, The South Since the War as Shown by Fourteen Weeks of Travel and Observation in Georgia and the Carolinas (1866; reprint, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 12, 15–19, 20–23; W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (New York: Russell and Russell, 1935); Thomas Holt, Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1977); Alrutheus Ambush Taylor, The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction (1924; reprint, New York: Russell and Russell, 1969), 43–55. Also see Williamson, After Slavery; See also General Population Characteristics, South Carolina. Population of Counties by Decennial Census, 1900–2000, www. census.gov/population/cencounts/sc190090.txt. 10. Taylor, Negro in South Carolina, 40; Du Bois’s book Black Reconstruction is an excellent source for insight on the Black Codes passed in the various states; Ackerman, “1865–1868”; Hugo Ackerman, “1868–1869: Farming Under Difficulties,” Times and Democrat, May 1, 1983; Bureau of the Census, United States Census of 1870 on Orangeburg Population; Wolfe, Agriculture Adorned, 123; Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 56; Eugene Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Random House, 1974), 407; Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Pantheon, 1974), 255–56, 273; Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark, Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South (New York : W. W. Norton, 1984), 195, 234; Gordon, Sketches of Negro Life and History, 55, 72–76, 161. See Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, xxii–xxv, 6, 8, 3–33, for a more detailed discussion of the origins of class divisions and intraracial color prejudices within Orangeburg’s African American community between 1880 and 1940. For more information on Black early businesses, see “Orangeburg Cemetery,” City of Orangeburg, http://www. orangeburg.sc.us/pr/cemetery.php/. 11. Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 3–33. 12. Edgar, South Carolina, 398–449, 468–71, 536–88; Gordon, Sketches of Negro Life and History, 29. 13. Edgar, South Carolina, 536, 542, 553–54. For details of the complete incident known as the Orangeburg Massacre, see Cleveland Sellers, River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC (Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1990); Middleton with Barnes, Knowing Who I Am, 89–101. 14. Charles S. Johnson, Growing Up in the Black Belt: Negro Youth in the Rural South (New York: Schocken Books, 1941), 135; also see Andrew Billingsley, Black Families in White America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1968); Harold E. Cheatham and James B. Stewart, Black Families (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1993); W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro American Family (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1908); John Hope Franklin and Alfred H. Moss, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (New York: Random House, 2000); E. Franklin Frazier, Negro Youth at the Crossways (New York: Schocken,1967); E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1939); Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll; Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery

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and Freedom (New York: Pantheon, 1976); Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976); Harriet Pipes McAdoo, ed., Black Families, 4th ed. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2006); Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper & Row, 1944); H. Powdermaker, After Freedom (New York: Atheneum, 1969); Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Making of America (New York: Collier, 1964); Robert E. Staples, The Black Family: Essays and Studies (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1971). 15. See William Harrison Pipes, Say Amen, Brother! Old-Time Negro Preaching, a Study in American Frustration (New York: William-Frederick, 1951); see Carter G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1924); Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll; and Thomas G. Poole, “Black Families and the Black Church: A Sociohistorical Perspective,” in Cheatham and Stewart, Black Families, 33–48; Gordon, Sketches of Negro Life and History, 118–20. 16. Poole, “Black Families and the Black Church,” 35–37; Frazier, Negro Youth, 112, 133. 17. Gordon, Sketches of Negro Life and History, 113–34; W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro American Family, 41. 18. Gordon, Sketches of Negro Life and History, 125–28. 19. Ibid. 20. Middleton with Barnes, Knowing Who I Am, 3–5. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 5–8. 23. From Mack, “Hard Workin’ Women.” Information discussed here is taken from “Table I,” 42, adapted from Bureau of the Census, United States Census of 1850, Orangeburg in the County of Orangeburg and Orange Township, S.C., Microfilm Collection, Orangeburg County Public Library, Orangeburg, S.C.; and Bureau of the Census, United States Census of 1860, Orangeburg in the County of Orangeburg and Orange Township, S.C., Microfilm Collection, Orangeburg County Public Library, Orangeburg, S.C. See Genovese’s discussion on the slave family in Roll Jordon Roll. 24. See Mack, “Hard Workin’ Women,” “Table 13a,” 118, adapted from Bureau of the Census, United States Census on Orangeburg County 1880, Microfilm Collection, Orangeburg County Public Library, Orangeburg, S.C.; “Table 14,” 120, adapted from Bureau of the Census, United States Census of 1900 on Population. Orangeburg City, Microfilm Collection, Orangeburg County Public Library, Orangeburg, S.C.; “Table 15,” 122, adapted from Bureau of the Census, United States Census on Population for Orangeburg for Orangeburg Town, 1880, Microfilm Collection, Orangeburg County Public Library, Orangeburg, S.C.; and “Table 18,” 154, and “Table 35,” 207, both adapted from Bureau of the Census, United States Census of 1910 on Population. Orangeburg City, Microfilm Collection, Orangeburg County Public Library, Orangeburg, S.C.

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25. Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 49–51, 79–80, 170–73; Frazier, Negro Youth, 39–69, 112–33. 26. For a more detailed discussion of Black life and family in early Orangeburg, see Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges. 27. Ibid; Horace E. Fitchett, “The Influence of Claflin College on Negro Family Life,” Journal of Negro History 24, no. 4 (Oct. 1944): 189–92, 431–35; Lewis K. McMillan, Negro Higher Education in the State of South Carolina (Orangeburg, S.C.: selfpublished, 1952), 189–93; Frazier, Negro Youth, 68–69.

Chapter 1

Ancestors: The Pierces and Tatnalls, 1860s–1910 1. According to the unpublished family history research by Talmadge Carter Guy, a great grandson of James and Charlotte Pierce, the children were William, born 1865; Ellen, born 1867; Alfred, born 1869; Jesse, born 1871; Frank, born 1873; James, born 1875; Harriet, born 1879; David, born 1881; Charlotte, born 1882; Mary Jane, born 1886; Susan, birth unknown; and Sarah, born 1892. See Talmadge Carter Guy, unpublished genealogical history and photos of the Pierce family tree, private papers of Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, Orangeburg, S.C. Mestizos had Native American and white parentage as compared to mulattoes, who had black and white parentage. See my first book, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 12, 34, 40–41, 46, 68–69. I briefly discussed the experiences of Hazel Tatnall and James Pierce from information gathered from earlier interviews with Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman in 1987. 2. Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Aug. 1, 2003, Orangeburg, S.C. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. See Guy, unpublished family papers. 5. Ibid. Today the school is called the Boylen-Haven-Mather Academy. Mather Academy was founded in 1887 and closed in 1983 in Camden, a city in Kershaw County. For more information, see the University of South Carolina Libraries, particularly the USC’s School of Education files on “extinct” South Carolina schools, at “Extinct Schools,” http://web.archive.org/web/20040703093832/www. ed.sc.edu/musofed/extincti.htm/. 6. Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 8–9, 36–39; Middleton with Barnes, Knowing Who I Am, 4–6; also see “Welcome to Claflin University,” http://www. claflin.edu/AboutUs/ClaflinHistory.html/. See Fitchett, “Influence of Claflin College,” 189–92, 431–35; and McMillan, Negro Higher Education, 189–93. 7. Benjamin E. Mays, an influential educator and statesman, was born in the small town of Epworth, South Carolina, and later educated at South Carolina A&M College and the University of Chicago. He taught at South Carolina State A&M, served

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as a dean at Howard University, and was later active in the civil rights movement in Atlanta, Georgia, in the 1960s while serving as president of Morehouse College; see Benjamin E. Mays and Orville Vernon Burton, Born to Rebel: An Autobiography (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 2003), and “Benjamin E. Mays, Educator,” August 1990 honoree, South Carolina African American History Calendar, http:// www.SCAfricanAmericanHistory.com/; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003; see Catalogue of State Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina, 1918–19, class of 1916, 91–92, South Carolina State University Archives, Orangeburg, S.C. 8. Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 9, 15–24; Edmund L. Drago, Initiative, Paternalism, Race Relations: Charleston’s Avery Normal Institute (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1990), 4; Frazier, Negro Youth, 163–65. 9. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. 10. Ibid. Until her passing in 2002, Dorothy Rece often shared her stories of “passing” when reminiscing with her curious relatives. 11. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid; see Stan Cohen, Historic Springs of the Virginias—A Pictorial History (Charleston, W.Va.: Pictorial Histories, 1981); Jayson Loom and Marjorie Gersh, Hot Springs and Hot Pools of the Northwest and Eastern States (Santa Cruz, Calif.: Aqua Thermal Access, 2007); L. P. J. Muffler, ed., Assessment of Geothermal Resources of the United States—1978, USGS Circular 790 (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, 1979). 14. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. Before 1896, State A&M was a part of Claflin University and did not have a separate catalogue when the colleges first separated; however, South Carolina State A&M’s first catalogue did include a section of its early alumni, beginning with the graduates from the class of 1897, in Catalogue of Colored Normal Industrial Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina, 1911–1912, 83. 15. Mayesville Industrial Institute was founded in 1886 for African Americans and closed in 1913; see “Extinct Schools,” http://web.archive.org/web/20040703093832/ www.ed.sc.edu/musofed/extincti.htm/. 16. The eventual major impact of education on the Black community led to a surge of Black teachers, who consequently laid the foundation for the early modern Black middle class. However, until that time in the late nineteenth century, the skilled jobs of carpenters, building contractors, tanners, or tailors and semi-skilled workers such as stevedores or drayman were considered good-paying, respectable occupations. Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Feb. 27, 1987; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. 17. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. Today, the cigar-box castle is a valuable onehundred-year-old antique (see fig. 5, this volume). Little else is known about the Tatnall family due to the 1890 census records having been destroyed in a fire; however, an 1890 Brunswick, Georgia, directory showed two “colored” Tatnalls, Saul Tatnall, listed as a “laborer,” and J. H. Tatnall, listed as a “clerk” at 100 A Street. Notes to Pages 3–5

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Both Tatnalls lived at different home addresses. Most likely these Tatnalls were relatives of Harry Tatnall. See Brunswick, Georgia, 1890 directory, Glynn County genealogical Web site, http://www.glynngen.com/citydirectory. 18. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. The 1890 Brunswick, Georgia, directory listed two “colored” Buggs; one was Oliver M. Buggs, listed as a “laborer,” and the other was Wiley Buggs, listed as working as “cont,” perhaps a contractor. Both lived on South Amherst Street but at different house numbers, 223 and 219, respectively; see Brunswick, Georgia, 1890 directory, http://petersnn.org/petersnn/glynnco. html/. 19. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. 20. Ibid. Early southern Black families commonly kept their birth and marriage dates recorded in the family Bible; this information comes from the “Birth Record” and “Marriage Record” pages of the original Tatnall family Bible, private papers of Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, Orangeburg, S.C. 21. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003; see the “Birth Record” page, Tatnall family Bible. Some of the spellings may be misconstrued due to the faded pages in the Bible; the name “Hazel,” however, was clearly spelled incorrectly as “Hazle” on the “Birth Record” page but later spelled correctly as “Hazel” on the “Marriage Record” page. 22. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. See “History of Risley,” http://www.glynn.k12.ga.us/~jsmith2/History.html. See “Colored Memorial School and Risley High School” in Reflections: Georgia African American Historic Preservation Network 3, no. 4 (Sept. 2003): 1–3, (Atlanta: Historic Preservation Division, Georgia Department of Natural Resources); also see Amy Hedrick, ed., Coastal Georgia Genealogical Society News & Reviews Newsletter, July 2004, 1–4. 25. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. Emma Military Academy eventually closed in 1972; see Theophile L. Chenevert III, “History,” St. Francis/St. Emma Military Academy, http://www.belmead.com. 26. See Chenevert, “Curriculum.” 27. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. See William V. Harris, The Harder We Run: Black Workers since the Civil War (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1982) for an overview of jobs held by Blacks in the early twentieth century. 28. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003; According to the Brunswick–Golden Isles Visitors Bureau, the Seldon school closed in 1933 and eventually Glynn County purchased the thirty-five-acre site and turned it into a public park called Selden Park; click on the “Brunswick” link at the Brunswick–Golden Isles Visitors Bureau Web site, http://www.bgivb.com/. 29. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. 30. See Stewart E. Tolnay’s study, The Bottom Rung: African American Family Life on Southern Farms (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1999), 55. Tolnay explains that the

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average marriage age for black females on southern farms in 1910 was 20.5, with 2.5 percent of women between the ages of 45 and 54 being single. For nonfarming southern black women, the average age of marriage was 20.5, with 5.5 percent of that population between ages 45 and 54 being single. By 1940 the average southern black farming woman was marrying younger, at 19.7, with 3.4 percent of farming women between the ages of 45 and 54 being single. As for nonfarming southern black women, the average marriage age was higher, at 21.1, while now 4.8 percent of the nonfarming women between ages 45 and 54 were single. In the Tatnall household, only three of the four children married: the two daughters, Hazel in 1909 and Harriet in 1916. Harry, the only son to marry, did so later in life. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. Deborah J. Mustard’s article, “Spinster: An Evolving Stereotype Revealed Through Film,” Journal of Media Psychology 4 (Winter 2000): 1–9, provides insightful information on the origins of the “spinster” or “old maid.” Her additional references are also insightful, including S. Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1991); M. Haskell, “Paying Homage to the Spinster,” New York Times Magazine, May 8, 1988, 18–20; D. Kellner, “Madonna, Fashion, and Identity (excerpt),” in Women in Culture: A Women’s Studies Anthology, ed. L. J. Peach (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998); F. King, “Spinsterhood Is Powerful,” National Review 45, no. 14 (July 19, 1993): 72; P. O’Brien, The Woman Alone (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times, 1973); L. J. Peach, Women in Culture: A Women’s Studies Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998); E. M. Schur, Labeling Women Deviant: Gender, Stigma, and Social Control (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1983); R. W. Simon and K. Marcussen, “Marital Transitions, Marital Beliefs, and Mental Health,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 40 (June 1999): 111–25; and M. B. Tucker and C. M. Mitchell-Kernan, “Psychological Well-Being and Perceived Marital Opportunity Among Single African American, Latina and White Women,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 29, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 57–72. 31. Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1994), 17–18. See also Ellen K. Rothman, Hearts and Hands: A History of Courtship in America (New York: Basic Books, 1984). 32. Ibid. 33. Mamie Garvin Fields with Karen Fields, Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir (New York: Free Press, 1985), 145. 34. Ibid. 35. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. 36. Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Aug. 2, 2003. The family still has James Pierce’s original letter written to Hazel Tatnall’s parents seeking their permission to marry their daughter; Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Aug. 3, 2003. 37. Zimmerman interviews, Aug. 1, 2, and 3, 2003. 38. Zimmerman interviews, Aug. 1 and 2, 2003. Notes to Pages 8–10

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39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid; Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 68. 42. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. It was not known whether Hazel’s sister, Georgia, could not have children because of her inability or her husband’s; regardless of the cause, children were an important part of the family and to be able to raise a child was of paramount importance. Families who were unable to care properly for their children due to illness, alcoholism, death, or dire poverty willingly gave their children to be reared by childless kinfolks who could offer the children a more stable life. See Charles S. Johnson’s important study on black rural culture and informal adoptions in Shadow of the Plantation (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1934). In the case of Matilda and Harry Tatnall’s daughter, she adopted her husband’s sister’s young orphan child, whose last name remained listed as Benjamin, like his deceased parents. 43. Celia Perry Mack Tilley, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Nov. 24 and 26, 1986. 44. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003.

Chapter 2

Jello: The Girl, 1910–1929 1. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. 2. Zimmerman interviews, Aug. 1 and 2, 2003. The nicknames “Jello” and “Bubba” will be used instead of Geraldyne and James during the narration of their childhoods and teen years. Viessa’s birthday was recorded on the “Birth Record” page of the family’s Bible, but it was difficult to decipher her actual birth date due to the blurred handwriting on the aged document. Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Sept. 3, 2007. 3. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 2, 2003. 4. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. Though little information remains regarding the Tattnalls and Buggs, their family members were numerous in the Brunswick, Georgia, area from as early as the 1800s. Both the Tatnalls and the Buggs were buried in the “colored cemetery,” where some of the tombstones bore their names. Another avenue to explore in learning about this family is the Boston, Massachusetts, and Brunswick/Savannah, Georgia, connection. 5. Ibid.; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 3, 2003. 6. Ibid; see Christopher J. Rutty, “Connaught and the Defeat of Diphtheria,” Conntack 9, no. 1 (Feb. 1996): 11. See the photo of Zimmerman and her sister Viessa. 7. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 3, 2003. 8. To see a discussion of the origins of the term “undertaker,” see Loretta M. Alirangues, “Funerary Practices in Early and Modern America,” Morbid Outlook, http://www.morbidoutlook.com/nonfiction/articles/2003_06_america.html/; Notes to Pages 10–15

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T. K. Bythewood, interview by author, Apr. 8, 1987. Alton Elvin Bythewood was born in 1876 and died in 1937, whereupon his second son, T. K. Bythewood, took over the family business. Before his death, A. E. Bythewood was elected to serve as the president of the South Carolina Mortuary Association from 1930 to 1932, though he was not able to complete his second term. See the South Carolina Morticians Association Web site at http://www.scmainc.com/index2.html/ and the City of Orangeburg Web site at http://www.orangeburg.sc.us/pr/cemetery.php/. 9. See Alirangues “Funerary Practices.” 10. Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., May 15, 2009. 11. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 3, 2003; Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Aug. 6, 2003. 12. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 13. Frazier, Negro Youth, 58–69; W. E. B. Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, 1920), 8–9; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 2, 2003. While corporal punishment was openly accepted in child rearing in the early twentieth century, there is increased debate on the use and effectiveness of corporal punishment in child rearing today. See Irwin A. Hyman, The Case Against Spanking: How to Discipline Your Child Without Hitting (San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 1997); John Rosemond, To Spank or Not to Spank (Kansas City, Mo.: Andrew McMeel, 1994); Jerry L. Wyckoff, Discipline Without Shouting or Spanking: Practical Solutions to the Most Common Preschool Behavior Problems (Minnetonka, Minn.: Meadowbrook, 2002); Phillip J. Greven, Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse (New York: Vintage, 1992); Elizabeth Crary, Without Spanking or Spoiling: A Practical Approach to Toddler and Preschool Guidance (Seattle: Parenting Press, 1993); Michael J. Marshall, Why Spanking Doesn’t Work: Stopping This Bad Habit and Getting the Upper Hand on Effective Discipline (Springville, Utah: Bonneville, 2002); Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990); Roy Lessin, Spanking: Why, When, How (Bloomington, Minn.: Bethany House, 1979); Jamie Pritchett, Lots of Love and a Spanking! A Common Sense Discipline Plan for Children from Birth to Age Twelve—That Works! (Merritt Island, Fla.: Little Palm Press, 2005); Robert R. Surgenor, No Fear: A Police Officer’s Perspective (Franklin, Tenn.: Providence House, 1999); J. Richard Fugate, What the Bible Says About Child Training (Tempe, Ariz.: Foundation for Biblical Research, 1996); L. E. Tise, Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1988); Murray A. Straus and Denise A. Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families and Its Effect on Children (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2001). 14. Zimmerman interviews, Aug. 1 and 2, 2003. 15. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 2, 2003.

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16. Ibid. While the Pierces’ child-rearing culture may reflect commonalities with the overall American child-rearing culture in the early twentieth century, scholars today argue that there were fundamental cultural differences that shaped how Black youths were reared compared to how White youths were reared, including studies by James P. Comer and Alvin F. Poussaint, Raising Black Children: Two Leading Psychiatrists Confront the Educational, Social and Emotional Problems Facing Black Children (New York: Plume, 1992); Derek F. Hopson and Darlene Powell, Different and Wonderful: Raising Black Children in a Race-Conscious Society (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fireside, 1992); Marita Golden, Saving Our Sons: Raising Black Children in a Turbulent World (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1995); Harriet Pipes McAdoo, ed., Black Families, 4th ed. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2006); and Harriette Pipes McAdoo, ed., Black Children: Social, Educational, and Parental Environments (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2002); also see Salim Muwakkil, “Corporal Punishments [sic] Hidden Costs: Corporal Punishment of Children Linked to Later Interpersonal Violence,” Sept. 8, 2006, In These Times online, http:// www.inthesetimes.com/article/2812/. Muwakkil argues that slapping, spanking, and other corporal punishment teaches black youths violence that leads to their later violent social dysfunction in society. 17. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 2, 2003. 18. Ibid., Aug. 3, 2003. See Fields with Fields, Lemon Swamp and Other Places, 71– 73. For more information and a photo of this model car, see Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Fords (New York: Summit Books, 1987); Jeanine Head and William S. Pretzer, Henry Ford: A Pictorial Biography (Dearborn, Mich.: Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, 1990); Robert Ford Lacey, The Men and the Machine (New York: Ballantine, 1986); David Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1976); and Allen Ford Nevins, The Times, the Man, the Company (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1954). 19. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 2, 2003. 20. Ibid. This adage is an old fifteenth-century English proverb of unknown origin but was believed to refer “specifically to young women.” Today this expression has been criticized as thwarting the growth of youth by making them invisible, silent, and non-interactive in underdeveloped countries that still believe in this adage. See the Charles Bazerman, “Without Writing: Not Seen, Not Heard,” Jan. 15, 2007, Santa Barbara Independent, http://www.independent.com/news/2007/ jan/15/without-writing-not-seen-not-h/. For a list of other proverbs from this era, see “15th Century English Proverbs,” Famous-Proverbs.com, http://www.famousproverbs.com/15th_Century_Proverbs.htm/. 21. Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Aug. 4, 2003. 22. Ibid. Between 1880 and 1947, according to research by historian John Hammond Moore, 178 African Americans were lynched in South Carolina, with “Barnwell,

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Aiken, Greenwood, Laurens, Orangeburg, and York [counties] having the most lynchings.” See John Hammond Moore, Carnival of Blood: Dueling, Lynching, and Murder in South Carolina, 1880–1920 (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2006), and Roddie Burris, “Lynchings in South Carolina,” the State online, Dec. 16, 2005. http://www.thestateonline.com/civilrights/day4/civilrights05.php/. 23. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 2, 2003. 24. Zimmerman interviews, Aug. 2 and 3, 2003. The center of the Black shopping district was located across from the colleges of South Carolina State A&M and Claflin on Railroad Avenue. This street was perpendicular to the main road, Russell Street, which led to the White-owned stores in Orangeburg’s downtown shopping area. Railway Avenue also ran parallel to the town’s railroad tracks. Maxwell’s Staple and Fancy Groceries was one of the stores located on Russell Street off the Railway Avenue area. Its owner, John Moreau Maxwell, “was the son of South Carolina State Senator Henry Johnson Maxwell and Martha Louisa Dibble Maxwell.” He “operated” his store “from 1904 until his death in 1938,” when his family took over. “The Maxwell store employed eleven full-time and several part-time workers, and was considered among the finest in the state,” according to Asa H. Gordon in Sketches of Negro Life and History in South Carolina (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1989). See Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 6, 8. For more information, see Orangeburg’s Web site, http://www.orangeburg.sc.us/pr/ cemetery.php. 25. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 2, 2003. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. Electricity, according to the “Walking Tour” guide on Orangeburg, “came to the city in the 1890s, and before the end of the decade, Russell Street, the city’s main street, was lit with electric lights.” Once electricity was later available to the black community, the upper-class and upper-middle-class blacks, which included the Pierce household, were the first to be able to afford this luxury; see http://www. orangeburg.sc.us/history/walkingtour.pdf/. 28. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 2, 2003. 29. Ibid. 30. Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Aug. 9. 2003. 31. Ibid; Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Aug. 7, 2003. 32. Middle- and upper-class black women consulted E. Azalia Hackley’s book, The Colored Girl Beautiful (Kansas City, Mo.: Burton, 1916), to further enhance the informal lessons they taught their children regarding proper manners and polite social behavior. 33. Hackley described the important roles of mothers and fathers in shaping their sons and daughters’ behavior in the last chapter, “The Colored Mother Beautiful.” She vividly outlines the proper social and moral behavior they should practice in order to be exemplary role models for their children inside and outside of the Notes to Pages 20–33

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home. Hackley advises that “the good breeding of parents is very truly reflected in the manners of their children”; see Hackley, Colored Girl Beautiful, 191. 34. Ibid; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003. 35. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003. 36. Ibid; Ronald L. F. Davis, “Surviving Jim Crow: In-Depth Essay,” History of Jim Crow, http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/surviving2.htm/. See Davis’s selected bibliography, including James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1880–1935 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1988); Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992); Henry A. Bullock, A History of Negro Education in the South from 1619 to the Present (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1967); Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye, eds., Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1991); J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restrictions and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880–1910 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1974); Lawrence L. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977); David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993); C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African-American Experience (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1990); Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Knopf, 1998); Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919 (New York: Norton, 1977); Joe M. Richardson, Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861–1890 (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1986); Dorothy Salem, To Better Our World: Black Woman in Organized Reform, 1890–1920 (New York: Carlson, 1990; Loren Schweninger, Black Property Owners in the South, 1790–1915 (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1990); Stephanie Shaw, What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do: Black Professional Women Workers during the Jim Crow Era (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996); Stewart E. Tolnay, A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882–1930 (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1995); Clarence E. Walker, A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church During the Civil War and Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1982); Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery: An Autobiography (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1901); Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984); Joel Williamson, A Rage for Order: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986); C. Vann Woodward, Origins of The New South, 1877–1913, 3rd. rev. ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1997); and C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1974). 37. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003; see Will Cardwell’s thorough research on the history of the telephone, including the party line, in “Atlanta Telephone History: Part I—Early Telephone Service,” http://www.atlantatelephonehistory.info. Notes to Pages 24–25

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38. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 39. Ibid. 40. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003. 41. Ibid; Frazier, Negro Youth, 62. 42. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 1, 2003. 43. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003; See also Franklin and Moss’s discussion of black disenfranchisement during the Jim Crow era through the use of poll taxes, ballot stuffing, literacy test, and other measures preventing or deterring blacks from voting. Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom 2:281–89. 4 4. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003. 45. Ibid; Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 4, 6, 8, 12, 124. 46. Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 3–33, 73–83. 47. Ibid., 11–13; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003. See the lifestyles and homes described in Willard B. Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920 (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1990). 48. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 49. The term “flapper” originated from the silent film Flapper, in which a teen girl, “Genevieve ‘Ginger’ King,” starring actress Olive Duffy Thomas, portrayed a rebellious, flirtatious girl sent for taming to a strict boarding school, where she wreaks further social havoc by continuously breaking the rules of proper female behavior via her dress and hairstyle, her open association with boys, and so forth. She played similar teen flapper roles in other films, including A Youthful Folly and Everybody’s Sweetheart. Her real life reflected that of the characters she played as she posed nude for paintings, adopted a party lifestyle, and broke the conventional social culture of women’s role being in the private sphere and married with children, not in the public sphere socially commingling with men and other “loose” women. This Hollywood celebrity social culture eventually had a major impact on changing aspects of the larger female youth culture, particularly their dress, hairstyles, and their traditional male-female gender relationships, during an era when women were gradually reordering their lives after finally getting the right to vote and challenge their future roles in society. See T. Thomas Hine, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager (New York: Bard, 1999), 195–97. Also see Stuart A. Kallen, The Roaring Twenties (San Diego: Greenhaven, 2002); Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995); David E. Kyvig, Daily Life in the United States, 1920–1940: How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2002); Thomas Streissguth, The Roaring Twenties (New York: Facts on File, 2007); and Clarice Swisher, Women of the Roaring Twenties (Detroit: Lucent, 2006). 50. Ibid; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. See Wendy Bonaventura’s discussion of African American dance, including the cakewalk, the shimmy, and the Charles-

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ton, in I Put a Spell On You: Dancing Women from Salome to Madonna (London: Saqi, 2003). 51. See photos and the evolution of female fashion in the twentieth century in Elizabeth Ewing’s History of Twentieth Century Fashion (London: Batsford, 1993); Clare Hibbert and Adam Hibbert, A History of Fashion and Costume: The Twentieth Century (New York: Facts on File, 2005); François Baudot, Fashion: The 20th Century (New York: Universe Publishing, 1999); Gerda Buxbaum and Andrea Affaticati, Icons of Fashion: The 20th Century (New York: Prestel, 2005). 52. See John A. Young, Our Deportment, or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society (Detroit: F. B. Dickerson, 1883); William M. Thayer, Womanhood: Hints and Helps for Young Women (New York: Thomas Whittaker, 1895); Emily Thornwell, The Lady’s Guide to Complete Etiquette (Chicago: Belford, Clarke, 1884); Walter T. Griffin, The Homes of Our Country: Or the Centers of Moral and Religious Influence: The Crystals of Society (New York: Union Publishing House, 1882); Handbook for Self-Improvement Which Leads to Greater Success (n.p.: published by the author, 1913); John W. Gibson and Mrs. Gibson, Golden Thoughts on Chastity and Procreation, Including Heredity, Prenatal Influences, etc. etc. Sensible Hints and Wholesome Advice for Maiden and Young Man, Wife and Husband, Mother and Father (Washington, D.C.: Austin Jenkins Co., 1914); Ida Husted Harper, “Let Love Be Controlled,” Independent 53 (June 27, 1901): 1477–80); Lavinia Hart, “How to Win a Man,” Cosmopolitan 35 (Sept. 1903): 548–53); Emily Post, Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1922); Jane Hunter and Jane H. Hunter, How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood (New Haven: Yale Univ., 2003); Nancy A. Walker, Shaping Our Mothers’ World: American Women’s Magazines (Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2000). For a more complete bibliography on housekeeping and etiquette for both females and males, see the Housekeeping & Etiquette Bibliography, Home Economics Archive, Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University, http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/h/hearth/bibs/housekeeping.pdf/. 53. See Hackley, Colored Girl Beautiful, 45–46; see also Elias McSails (E. M.) Woods, The Negro in Etiquette: A Novelty (St. Louis: Buxton and Skinner, 1899); Charlotte Hawkins Brown, The Correct Thing to Do, to Say, to Wear (Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1941); Silas X. Floyd, Floyd’s Flowers or Duty and Beauty for Colored Children (New York: AMS Press, 1975); and Alexander Crummell’s “Here and There,” Colored American Magazine (Sept. 1900): 258; “The Care of Daughters,” in Tracts for the Negro Race (Washington, D.C.: n.p., 1899); “Marriage a Duty,” Tracts for the Negro Race (D.C.: n.p., 1899); and “Divorce,” A.M.E. Church Review 8, no. 4 (Apr. 1892): 504–8. 54. Godey’s Lady’s Book (also called Godey’s Magazine), July 1832; Post, Etiquette in Society, xix, 627. Samples of such articles include two articles by William Johnson, “When Men Won’t Marry,” Collier’s, Mar. 14, 1925, and “The Two High Costs of Courting,” American Magazine, Sept. 1924, 27, 145–50. See the four articles

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by Mrs. Burton Kingsland, “Lady from Philadelphia,” Ladies Home Journal, July 1905, 35; “Good Manners,” Ladies Home Journal, Feb. 1907, 54; “Good Manners and Good Form,” Ladies Home Journal, Aug. 1909, 39; and “Good Manners and Good Form,” Ladies Home Journal, Apr. 1907, 54; Eleanor Phillips, “What Girls Ask For,” Ladies Home Journal, Mar. 1912, 42; “If a Man Takes Liberties, Is It Always the Girl’s Fault?” Woman’s Home Companion, Mar. 1916, 10; Eugene A. Leonard and Margaret Bond Brockway, “Must a Girl Pet to Be Popular?” Parents, June 1932, 20; Roy Dickerson, “Prepare Them for Marriage,” Parents, Dec. 1937, 73; “Where People Go When They Take a Date?” Pulse, Sept. 1937, 20; Henry F. Pringle, “What Do Women of America Think About Morals?” Ladies Home Journal, May 1938, 14–15; “Puppy Love,” Ladies Home Journal, Sept. 1907, 44; Ernest R. Groves, “Too Much Kissing,” American Magazine, Dec. 1939, 23; Henry Seidel Canby, “Sex and Marriage in the Nineties,” Harper’s Magazine, Sept. 1934, 427– 36. For a more complete listing of women’s magazines that influenced women’s roles and behaviors, see Walker, Shaping Our Mothers’ World. 55. Hackley, Colored Girl Beautiful, 71–72. 56. A few Black upper-class women established preschools that operated out of their homes, offering early childhood education to their children since they had to wait until age six to enter grammar school. A local Presbyterian minister, Reverend Simon H. Scott, and his wife started a private parochial school for a few years between 1909 and 1924; another woman, “Miss Louise”(?), living on Oak Street near Treadwell Street and Railway Avenue, also established a private preschool that operated out of her home, according to Zimmerman. See Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 14–15, 25, 32; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 3, 2003. 57. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 3, 2003. Hazel Tatnall Pierce charged each child five dollars a month to attend her preschool, earning her a sizable income. Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 46. 58. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 3, 2003. 59. Ibid. The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a northern organization committed to obtaining equal rights and privileges for blacks in the United States. Initially it sponsored the early White teachers who migrated to the South to teach Blacks in the early schools, including many from Boston, Massachusetts. It focused on educating and training a cadre of Black teachers to eventually take over teaching their own people. Samples of their documents and platforms can be found at “American Missionary Association,” Access Genealogy, http://www.access genealogy.com/american_missionary.htm/. See Vanessa Siddle Walker, “Organized Resistance and Black Educators’ Quest for School Equality, 1878–1938,” Teachers College Record 107 (2005): 355–88; and Joyce Hollyday, On the Heels of Freedom: The American Missionary Association’s Bold Campaign to Educate Minds Open Hearts and Heal the Soul of a Divided Nation (New York: Crossroad, 2005). 60. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003; Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 123–24, 128–43, 151. 61. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003. Notes to Pages 29–30

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62. Ibid. 63. See Catalogue of State Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina, 1925, 87–113. A brief history of Felton Training School, now called Felton Laboratory School, can be found at “History,” South Carolina State University, http:// www.scsu.edu/researchoutreach/feltonlaboratoryschool/history.aspx. 64. Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 128–43. 65. Ibid., 138–39. 66. Ibid., 128–43. 67. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003. 68. Ibid. In Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 33, where this point is discussed, the year mentioned should have been 1928 and not 1911, as documented in note 80 on page 196; see Catalogue of State Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina, 1928, 6. 69. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003; Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 141; See Catalogue of State Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina, 1925, 4–6. 70. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 71. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. 72. Ibid. From this point on, Zimmerman kept her hair short until her later adult years; see Kallen, Roaring Twenties, 36–41, 128–30. 73. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 74. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003. 75. Ibid; Zimmerman interview, Sept. 3, 2007. 76. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003. 77. Ibid. See Rodney T. Cohen, Fisk University (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2001), 7–45. Also see Joe Richardson, A History of Fisk University, 1865–1946 (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 2002); and the Fisk University Web site, http://www.fisk.edu/. 78. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003. 79. Ibid.

Chapter 3

Geraldyne: The Young Adult, 1929–1933 1. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003. 2. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. 3. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 4. Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Aug. 8, 2003. For further information on these artists, see Allen Keiler, Marian Anderson: A Singer’s Journey (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2002); Shirley Porter Washington, Countee Cullen’s Secret Revealed by Miracle Book: A Biography of His Childhood in New Orleans (Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2008); Arnold Rampersad, Notes to Pages 30–38

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The Life of Langston Hughes, vol. 1, 1902–1941: I, Too, Sing America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002); James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an ExColored Man (New York: Vintage, 1989). 5. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003; see Stetson Kennedy, Jim Crow Guide: The Way It Was (Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic Univ., 1990). “Stepin Fetchit,” born Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, was Black performer who was controversial due to the character he portrayed: a lazy, shiftless, Sambo-type black man; see Mel Watkins, Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry (New York: Pantheon, 2005). 6. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 7. Ibid; see Paula J. Giddings, The Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement (New York: William Morrow, 1988); Tamara L. Brown, Gregory S. Parks, and Clarenda M. Phillips, eds., African American Fraternities and Sororities: The Legacy and the Vision (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 2005). 8. Marjorie H Parker, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Through the Years, 1908–1988 (Chicago: Alpha Kappa Alpha, 1989); Zimmerman interview, Aug. 9, 2003. 9. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 9, 2003. 10. Eleanor Alexander, Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore (New York: New York Univ., 2001), 131; Patricia L. N. Donar and John D’Emilio, “A Feminist Redefinition of Rape and Sexual Assault: Historical Foundations and Change,” Journal of Social Issues 48, no. 1 (1991): 11; see two chapters called “Self-Control” (101–8) and “Her Relationship With Men” (109–32) in Hackley, Colored Girl Beautiful. 11. Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985); also see Larry E. Hudson Jr., To Have and to Hold: Slave Work and Family Life in Antebellum South Carolina (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1997). 12. See White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Zimmerman interviews, Aug. 6 and 8, 2003. 13. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 4, 2003. 14. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. An interesting history of the sanitary napkin is presented on the Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health Web site, http://www.mum.org; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 18. Stewart E. Tolnay, The Bottom Rung, 1–48; for information on the history of the television and a time line of its development, see Albert Abramson, Zworykin: Pioneer of Television (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1995); Zimmerman interview, Aug. 2, 2003. 19. The saying of babies being laid by the buzzard, hatched by the sun, and raised by the moon, is one that I remember my grandmother, Celia Perry Mack Tilley, Notes to Pages 38–43

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born in 1900, telling me as a child when I asked her about babies. She repeated the saying in a later interview with me. Tilley interview, Nov. 26, 1986; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 2, 2003; also see White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? and Larry E. Hudson Jr., To Have and To Hold, for insight on childrearing in slave families. 20. Hackley, Colored Girl Beautiful, 60–64. 21. Hackley, Colored Girl Beautiful, 45–46. 22. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003; Fields with Fields, Lemon Swamp and Other Places, 145; Bailey, Front Porch to Back Seat, 148n25; Alexander, Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow, 130–32. 23. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 24. Ibid., Aug. 4, 2003. 25. Ibid., Aug. 9, 2003. 26. Ibid.; see White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? 91–118; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 27. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 28. Ibid; Zimmerman interviews, Aug. 9, 2003, Sept. 3, 2007. 29. Ibid. 30. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 9, 2003; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. See the “Preface” section in Annual Catalogue of Claflin University, and College of Agriculture and Mechanics, Orangeburg, S.C. and Annual Catalogue of Claflin University, Orangeburg, S.C., 1872–1922, and Catalogue of State Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina; Linda Perkins, “The National Association of Colored Women: Vanguard of Black Women’s Leadership and Education, 1923–1954,” Journal of Education 173, no. 3 (1990): 65–75. 31. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 9, 2003; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003; Gladys D. Shultz, “Down with Chaperones,” Better Homes, July 1939, 46; and Perkins, “National Association of Colored Women,” 65–75. 32. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 9, 2003; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 33. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 34. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 9, 2003; Shultz, “Down with Chaperones,” 46. 35. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 36. Ibid; Tilley interview, Nov. 24, 1986; Robert Shaw Wilkinson was the second president of State A&M College, from 1911 to 1932. Lula Love Wilkinson, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Feb. 9, 1987; Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 63; “Chronology of Selected Events in the History of South Carolina State University,” South Carolina State University 110th Founder’s Day Program: Building Upon a Rich Heritage and a Proud Legacy, Mar. 5, 2006, unpublished program from the Founder’s Day event, Miller F. Whittaker Library Archival Collection, South Carolina State University, Orangeburg. 37. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 38. Ibid.

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39. Ibid. 40. Ibid.

Chapter 4

Gerry: The Mother, 1933–1960s 1. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. For a history of the early oil industry in Texas, see the book by C. A. Warner, Texas Oil & Gas Since 1543 (Fulton, Tex.: Copano Bay, 2007) and the collection of oral history interviews between 1952 and 1958 documenting the development of this industry in “A Guide to the Oral History of the Texas Oil Industry,” Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utcah/00282/cah-00282.html/. 2. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 9, 2003. 3. Ibid. 4. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. 5. Ibid.; see Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 34–60, 85–110. 6. Ibid; for background information on Felton, see South Carolina State University’s Web site, http://www.scsu.edu/researchoutreach/feltonlaboratoryschool/history. aspx/. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid; see the impact the Great Depression era had on Orangeburg’s upper- and middle-class black women in Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 43, 48, 6, 58–59, 64, 67, 84–84, 92, 101. 9. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003; “History of Household Wonders: History of the Refrigerator,” History Channel, http://www.history.com/exhibits/modern/ fridge.html/; also see Bryan Bunch and Alexander Hellemans, The History of Science and Technology: A Browser’s Guide to the Great Discoveries, Inventions, and the People Who Made Them from the Dawn of Time to Today (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 487. 10. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. 11. Ibid; Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 24–26. 12. See more information on the Church of the Redeemer in “Orangeburg, a Small Town with a Big History,” City of Orangeburg, http://www.orangeburg.sc.us/ history/walkingtour.pdf/. 13. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 14. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. 15. Ibid; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003; According to the Zimmerman Ancestral website, www.missrosa.org, the couple met and married in 1909. Rosa was a domestic worker and loved horses; William was “an executive chef and merchant.” They owned a store, their own home, and several properties. See www.mczig.com/ missrosafeb09/history.html.

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16. Zimmerman interviews, Aug. 7, 2003, Sept. 3, 2007. Zin’s mother was also very active in the Hartsville community and in the Centenary United Methodist Church. She died in 1978 and was buried next to Zin’s father, William, in Hartsville. See www.missrosa.org at www.miczig.com. 17. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. 18. Ibid; Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 19. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. See Alexander, Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow; Trudier Harris, Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South (Boston: Beacon, 2003); Middleton and Barnes, Knowing Who I Am. There is a growing genre of literature revealing the transition of traditional beliefs of women’s roles and gender relations to those that either changed moderately or were major departures over time, including Leora Tanenbaum, Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation (New York: HarperCollins, 2000); Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986); Diana O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 2002); Gertrude Himmelfarb, Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001); Hine, Rise and Fall of the American Teenager. 22. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. On various research Web sites, there are primary data from original family records and oral interviews regarding people being paid in script during the Depression era. For examples, see Barb Jensen, “Education During the Great Depression,” Jan 25, 2008, Associated Content News, http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/549487/education_during_the_ great_depression.html?cat=37/. Also, the University of Texas at Austin posts a Web site that enables the University of Texas community to publish personal Web pages, including those on genealogy. One article that discusses payment in script by their family members is Philip Mullins’s “Depression Years,” Ancestors of George & Hazel Mullins, http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~pmullins/chapter17.htm/. To listen to online oral interviews from those who were actually paid in script during the Great Depression, go to “Somers Point History: Facts and Folklore,” interviews, http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01516/interviews.htm/. Also listen to the interviews at http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:QZq1KLvlXeMJ:library. thinkquest.org/05aug/01516/interviews.htm+paid+in+script+during+great+ depression&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=19&gl=us/. 23. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. See Alexander, Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow; Jacqueline Anne Rouse, Lugenia Burns Hope: Black Southern Reformer (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1992); and Lisa Pertillar Brevard, A Biography of E. Azalia Smith Hackley (1867– 1922), African-American Singer and Social Activist (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 2001).

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26. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. 27. Ibid. For more history on St. Philip’s Chapel, see “Episcopal News” in The Voice (Denmark, S.C.: Voorhees College Library), vol. 10, no. 9 (Fall 2005): 9. 28. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003. 29. Ibid. For more in-depth discussion of this type color caste discrimination in South Carolina and the larger Black elite community, see Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 3–4, 8–10, 15, 16, 17–19, 21–24, 29, 31, 169, 170. 30. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 7, 2003; According to “The Biographical Sketch” in the Thomas J. Crawford Collection, in 1984 a facility was built in honor of and named the Thomas J. Crawford–Dudley M. Zimmerman Services Complex. See “Thomas J. Crawford Collection,” South Carolina State University Archives, 2002, Orangeburg, S.C. 31. Ibid. Caning is normally referred to as “chair caning” or “seat weaving.” 32. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 33. Upon graduation from Kansas State University, Zimmerman’s brother James (“Bubba”) Pierce followed in the footsteps of his father and took a job at a historically Black school. Tougaloo College, as superintendent of grounds and buildings. From there he accepted government positions, first at the Tuskegee Air Base in Alabama and later at the Naval Base in Charleston, South Carolina, working as an engineer. He eventually returned to New York City, earned his master of science degree from the City College of New York, and married, remaining in New York City until his death in 2000. Zimmerman interview, Sept. 3, 2007. 34. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. The Sunlight Club was established in 1909 by a few African American elite women of Orangeburg, including Zimmerman’s mother, Hazel Tatnall Pierce, who was one of the founding members. Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 57–59. Also see Joan Marie Johnson, Southern Ladies, New Women: Race, Region, and Clubwomen in South Carolina, 1890–1930 (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2004). 35. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 36. Ibid. Tilley interview, Nov. 24, 1986. Celia Perry Mack Tilley, my paternal grandmother, took the little Mack boys, including Ernest Jr., age four, Clarence, age three, and William, age two. Clarence Mack was my father, making Celia Tilley my adopted grandmother, whom I grew up knowing as my real grandmother. My siblings and I referred to our biological grandmother as “grandma Lessie,” and we only vaguely remember a few visits from her to see us on Christmas Day during our elementary school years. 37. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. See Henry Darius Malloy Sr. biographical sketches, http://home.earthlink.net/~saundersangela/campaign/DrHRMalloyBio. htm/ and http://home.earthlink.net/~saundersangela/drmalloy/. During this era, many people turned to superstitious means to seek answers for the unknown, including problems in conception. See Mary Chamberlain, Old Wives’ Tales:

Notes to Pages 85–91

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The History of Remedies, Charms and Spell (Stroud, UK: Tempus, 2007); also see Rosalind Franklin’s ebook, which includes collections of hundreds of wives tales, myths, and superstitions from all over the world concerning female pregnancy, conception, and baby care in Rosalind Franklin, Fertility Magic, Myth & Lore: Old Wives Tales, Magic Practices, Fertility Rites & General Superstitions About Conceiving a Baby (Cornwall, England: Diggory Press, 2005), http://ebooks.ebook mall.com/author/rosalind-franklin-ebooks.htm/. 38. Zimmerman interview, Sept. 3, 2007. 39. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003; see Chamberlain, Old Wives’ Tales. 40. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid; see Hunter and Hunter, How Young Ladies Became Girls. 44. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 45. Ibid. See Jane Eliot Sewell, Cesarean Section—A Brief History, brochure for History of Cesarean Section exhibition, National Library of Medicine, April 30–August 31, 1993 (Washington, D.C. : American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 1993). 46. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. According to Michael G. Ross, using forceps today is less common due to the major advancements made in obstetrical medicine. See the article by Michael G. Ross, “Forceps Delivery,” eMedicine from WebMD, May 21, 2007, http://www.emedicine.com/med/fulltopic/topic3284.htm #section~AuthorsandEditors/. 47. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. See A. M. Weber and L. Meyn, “Episiotomy Use in the United States, 1979–1997,” Obstet. Gynecol. 100, no. 6 (2002): 1177–82; and J. W. Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), 179–86. 48. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 6, 2003. 49. Ibid. . 50. Ibid. Studies have shown that toddlers often are resentful or jealous of their infant siblings as they gradually adapt to this new personality in the family. See Lawrence Kutner discussion of how this jealousy not only reflects their emotions but also indicates how their brains are developing in “Parent and Child,” New York Times, Aug. 22, 1991. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. See the “South Carolina State University 110th Founder’s Day Program.” 53. Ibid. 54. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 91–98

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57. Zimmerman’s scholarly work included articles in 1954, “A Predictive Study of Freshman Success in Mathematics at South Carolina State College,” and in 1961, “Contemporary Mathematics for Elementary Teachers.” She also wrote and produced three Educational Television (ETV) tapes for the South Carolina Department of Education and wrote several handbooks and pamphlets, including A Handbook of Formulas and Conversion (n.d.), Factors for Students of Mathematics (1964), and New Approaches in Mathematics (1964). See the private papers of Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, Orangeburg, S.C.; and “Geraldyne I. Pierce Zimmerman, Educator/ Community Leader,” September 1999 honoree, South Carolina African American History Calendar, http://www.SCAfricanAmericanHistory.com; Zimmerman interview, Sept. 3, 2007. 58. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 59. Ibid. For more information on these Black Catholic Nuns, see the works by Maria Mercedes Lannon, Response to Love: The Story of Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange; with Biographical Sketches of the Women Who Followed Her as Major Religious Superiors of the Oblate Sisters of Providence (n.p.: n.p., 1992); Diane Batts Morrow, Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1828–1860 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2001); Sharon C. Knecht, Oblate Sisters of Providence: A Pictorial History (Virginia Beach, Va.: Donning, 2007); and Cyprian Davis, The History of Black Catholics in the United States (New York: Crossroad, 1998). 60. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid. Like most churches, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church also had an active youth program to involve its children in programs year round. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. The first chapter of the Boy Scouts of America was established and incorporated in Washington, D.C., on February 8, 1910, with an all-White membership. See William D. Murray, The History of the Boy Scouts of America (1937; reprint, Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger, 2007) and the “Boy Scouts of America National Council,” Boy Scouts of America, http://www.scouting.org/Media/95thAnniversary/ history.aspx/. By July 31, 1910, the first “Negro Boy Scout” chapter was established in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. By 1926, the number of troops had grown to 248. See African American Registry, http://www.aaregistry.com/detail.php?id=2781/. Called “Girl Guides,” the first chapter of the Girl Scouts of America was established in Savannah, Georgia, by Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low on March 12, 1912, with an all-White membership. See “Girl Scout History,” Girl Scouts of the USA, http://www.girlscouts.org/who_we_are/history/. The first Black Girl Scout troop was established in 1917, I believe, in New York City, though sources have been rather vague. Also in 1917, the first troop of disabled girls was established also in New York City, followed by the establishment of a Native American troop in Syracuse, New York, in 1921 and a Mexican American one in Houston, Texas, Notes to Pages 99–102

149

in 1922, according to “Celebrating 95 Years of Black History at Girl Scouts of the USA,” Girl Scouts of the USA, http://www.girlscouts.org/news/stories/2007/black_ history_month.asp/. 66. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 67. See Brown, Correct Thing to Do. Brown founded the Palmer Memorial Institute (PMI) in Sedalia, North Carolina. Its included youth from Orangeburg. See Diane Silcox-Jarrett, Charlotte Hawkins Brown: One Woman’s Dream (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Bandit Books, 1995); and Kathleen Rawls, “Charlotte Hawkins Brown,” Encyclopedia of the State Library of North Carolina, State Library of North Carolina, http://www.statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/nc/bio/afro/brown.htm/. 68. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 69. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 2, 2003. 70. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid; See Michael Marcell’s discussion of how parents in the early twentieth century handled discussing topics of “where babies came from” and “how are babies made” in his article “Sex Education Books: An Historical Sampling of the Literature,” Children’s Literature in Education 13, no. 3 (Sept. 1982): 138–49. This article includes early “parental-child care manuals” used by parents and the “sexuallyoriented children’s picture story books” to inform children about the “birds and the bees” that Zimmerman most likely consulted in the 1940s and 1950s. Examples of books for children and teens included M. L. Faegre, Your Own Story (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1943); E. S. Bell and E. Faragoh, The New Baby (New York: Lippincott, 1938); K. DeSchweinitz, Growing Up (New York: Macmillan, 1928); S. Gordon and J. Gordon, Did the Sun Shine Before You Were Born? (New York: Okpaku, 1974); Better Homes and Gardens Baby Book (New York: Bantam, 1969); and M. Goldstein, E. J. Haeberle, and W. McBride, The Sex Book: A Modern Pictorial Encyclopedia (New York: Herder & Herder, 1971). Books and articles for parents included F. B. Strain, The Normal Sex Interests of Children (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1948); Child Study Association of America, When Children Ask About Sex (New York: Maco, 1953); M. I. Levine and J. H. Seligman, A Baby Is Born (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1949); and E. Chesser and Z. Dawe, The Practice of Sex Education (New York: Roy Publishers, 1946). 73. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. Brown, Correct Thing to Do, 33. Charlotte Hawkins Brown devoted an entire chapter called “At the Dance,” in which she outlines proper thing to do (32–36). 76. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 77. Ibid. For more information on St. Emma’s Military Academy and St. Francis Academy, see Theophile L. Chenevert III, “History,” St. Francis/St. Emma Military Academy, http://www.belmead.com/history/history.htm/. 78. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 102–7

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79. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 80. Ibid. See David Parlett, A History of Card Games (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991). 81. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. I also interviewed my own mother, Dorothy Scott Mack, about her early boyfriends or love interests and her experiences were similar to the younger Rose Hayzel’s. She married Clarence “C. J.” Mack Sr., my father. Dorothy Scott Mack, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., July 21, 2004. 82. Ibid. I was unable to find references to the expression “Paula girl” or “Paula kind of girl,” though other terms are used to describe “prissy” females who willingly engaged in traditional female activities, work, or interests such as television housewife icons June Cleaver of Leave It to Beaver, Donna Reed of the Donna Reed Show, or Loretta Young of the Loretta Young Show. See critiques and reevaluations of these stereotypical images in the works by Guerrilla Girls, Bitches, Bimbos, and Ballbreakers, The Guerrilla Girls’ Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes (New York: Penguin, 2003); and Joanne Meyerowitz, Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960 (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1994). 83. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid. Six Franciscan friars from Ireland, who were invited by Pittsburgh’s Bishop Michael O’Connor, established the “inclusive learning community,” Saint Francis University, in 1847 in a forest near Loretto, Pennsylvania. It is noted as being the first Franciscan College in the United States, one of the first Catholic universities in the country, and one of the first coed universities in the country. For more information, see “About Saint Francis University,” Saint Francis University, http:// www.francis.edu/UniversityHistory.htm/. 86. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 87. Ibid. The Sisters of Providence, a Catholic religious community originally started by five nuns from France who were invited to come spread their ministry among the “French-Canadian settlers and Native Americans,” founded Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in 1943. As the community’s ministry spread, several sisters went west in 1856 to care for the poor, hungry, sick, and homeless. By 1893 their ministry had spread “to towns throughout Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, British Columbia, Alaska, and California.” For further information, see “History of Mother Joseph Province,” Providence Health & Services, http://www. providence.org/PHS/Archives/History_Online/mjprovince.htm/. 88. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 8, 2003. 89. Ibid; Zimmerman interview, Sept. 3, 2007. 90. Ibid. 91. Zimmerman interviews, Aug. 1 and 8, 2003. See note 7 in the notes to chapter 1 for more information on Benjamin Mays. 92. Zimmerman interviews, Aug. 8, 2003, and Sept. 3, 2007. 93. Ibid. Notes to Pages 108–12

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Epilogue

Mrs. Z: Lady Maverick, 1960s–2009 1. Founded in 1946, the Links, Incorporated is still one of the largest volunteer service-oriented organization for women “committed to enriching, sustaining and ensuring the culture and economic survival of African Americans and other persons of African ancestry.” For more information, visit the organization’s Web site, http://www.linksinc.org/. 2. Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 56–59; Zimmerman interviews, Aug. 8 and 9, 2003. 3. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 9, 2003; Mack, Parlor Ladies and Ebony Drudges, 24, 40–41, 43, 54–59, 62–64, 67, 95, 100, 103–4, 108. 4. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 9, 2003. 5. Ibid. 6. Zimmerman interviews, Aug. 7 and 9, 2003. 7. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 9, 2003. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, records, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, http://www.southcarolinahistoricalsociety.org/. 10. Zimmerman interview, Aug. 9, 2003. 11. Ibid; Zimmerman’s awards and honors are among her collections in her private home. Also see “Geraldyne I. Pierce Zimmerman, Educator/Community Leader”; Zimmerman interview, Sept. 3, 2007; Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Oct. 15, 2007. 12. Ibid; Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, interview by author, Orangeburg, S.C., Feb. 10, 2008; Dionne Gleaton, “Mrs. Z’s Pride and Joy: Retired Educator Relishes Role in Lives of Orangeburg’s Young Women Leaders,” Times and Democrat, July 3, 2005, 1–2.

Notes to Pages 112–19

Bibliography Primary Sources Archives and Special Collections Annual Catalogue of Claflin University, and College of Agriculture and Mechanics, Orangeburg, S.C. 1872–98. Claflin College Archives, Orangeburg. Annual Catalogue of Claflin University, Orangeburg, S.C. 1905–40. Claflin College Archives, Orangeburg. Catalogue of State Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina. 1911–40. South Carolina State University Archives, Orangeburg. (Sometimes called “Catalogue of Colored Normal Industrial, Agricultural, and Mechanical College of South Carolina.”) “Chronology of Selected Events in the History of South Carolina State University.” South Carolina State University 110th Founder’s Day Program: Building Upon a Rich Heritage and a Proud Legacy. Mar. 5, 2006. Unpublished program from the Founder’s Day event. Miller F. Whittaker Library Archival Collection, South Carolina State University, Orangeburg. Thomas J. Crawford Collection. South Carolina State University Library and Archives. 2002. Orangeburg. “Geraldyne I. Pierce Zimmerman, Educator/Community Leader.” September 1999 honoree. South Carolina African American History Calendar. http://www.SC AfricanAmericanHistory.com/. Hedrick, Amy, ed. Coastal Georgia Genealogical Society News & Reviews Newsletter, July 2004, 1–4. Lannon, Maria Mercedes. Response to Love: The Story of Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange; with Biographical Sketches of the Women Who Followed Her as Major Religious Superiors of the Oblate Sisters of Providence. N.p: n.p., 1992.

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Bibliography

Index Adoption: informal and formal, 11, 90, 133n42 AKA and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, x, xii, 39, 75, 80, 89, 109, 115, 119–20 Allendale, SC, 82–84 Anderson, Marian, 28, 38 As You Like It Women’s Bridge Club, 89, 109, 115, 119 Awards, Honors, xviii, 99, 119, 151n11 Behavior: proper and improper, xiv, xvii– xviii, xxxi, 4, 16, 18, 24–29, 33, 40, 43–44, 49–50, 100, 103, 108, 114, 136n33, 138n49 Birds and Bees. See Sex information Black Codes, xxii, xxv Black elite and upper class, xi, xxiii, xxvi, 2, 3, 29, 49, 87, 92, 109, 115–16, 146n29 Black southern parents and families, history of, xxi, xxvii, xxviii, xxix–xxxii, 8, 11, 16, 19, 21, 40, 42–43, 83, 131n20, 131–32n30 Black Orangeburg, history of, xxi, xxiv– xxvii, xxxi–xxxii, 119 Black South Carolinians, history of, xxi, xxiii–xxiv, xxix Boy Scouts of America: Black, 70, 102, 116, 148n65

Boyfriend(s), 9, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 109, 112, 150n81 Breastfeeding and nursing, 90, 94, 95, 97 Brown V Board of Topeka, KS court ruling, xxiv, xxxii Brunswick, GA, 5, 7, 10, 13–15, 17, 20, 26, 30, 44, 55, 58, 79, 91, 130–31n17, 131n18, 131n28 Bubba, ix, ix, x, 13–17, 19–20, 22–23, 26, 29–31, 33, 41–2, 46, 57–58, 71, 80, 124, 133n2, 146n33 Buggs, Victoria and Matilda, ix, 5–6, 14, 55, 124, 131n18, 133n4 Bythewood Funeral Home, 15, 16, 46, 134n8 Cesarean section births, 90, 93 Childbirth and childbearing, 16, 42, 91 Child rearing, xi, xviii, xix, xxii, xxviii, xxix, xxxi, xxxii, 10–11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 32, 99–111, 113–14, 134n13 Children: activities, 9, 22, 23, 29, 44, 100, 102–3, 109, 110, 117, 118, 150n82; chores, xxx, 14, 17, 21, 23, 104, 107, 108; outdoor play, 15, 16, 20, 39, 41, 105 Christ the King Catholic School, 69, 101–2, 107, 108, 110 Christ the King Roman Catholic Church, 101

166

Church and church-related, x, xii, xvii, xxiii, xxvi–xxxii, 9, 10, 11, 16, 19, 22–23, 27, 30, 34, 42, 44, 73, 80, 82, 85, 92–93, 100–102, 110, 114, 117–20, 145n16, 148n63, Civil Rights Movement, xi, xii, xviii, xxii, xxiii, xxiv, xxvi–xxvii, 130n7 Civil War, xxii, xxiv, 5, 122 Claflin Grammar School, xxx, 17, 29–31, 41, 45, 100 Claflin University, xxv, xxxii, 2, 15, 21, 27, 31, 47, 49, 76, 101, 119, 130n14, 136n24 Community and civic work, xii, xiii, xviii, xix, xxxi, xxxii, 11, 27, 74, 89, 115–17, 151n1 Cooper, Rosa. See Zimmerman, Rosa Courtship, “calling on”, “taking company”, xviii, 6, 8, 9, 44––51, 81–84, 86, 105–7, 109–12 Dating, 9, 29, 34, 82, 86, 109–11 Dawkins, Lamar, 96–97 Death, xiv, xxv, xxvi, xxx, 13, 15, 20, 31, 81, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 97, 98, 112, 133n42, 134n8, 136n24, 145n16, 146n33 Diphtheria toxoid, 14, 15, 30 Discipline. See Punishment and discipline Discrimination: racial and intra-racial, xxii, xxvi, xxvii, xxxii, 25, 114, 146n29 DST and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., 38–39 Education, xii, xiii, xiv, xvii, xxiii, xxix, xxx, xxxii, 2, 6–8, 23, 27, 29–35, 42, 54, 78–79, 81–82, 88, 100–101, 105, 107–9, 129n5, 130n16, 140n56 Elite occupations and jobs, xxv–xxvi, 2, 5, 26, 30, 31, 38, 49, 80, 88 Engagement for marriage, 44, 83–85, 111 ECW and Episcopal Church Women, St. Paul’s, 118 EYC and Episcopal Youth Club, St. Paul’s, 102, 118

Etiquette and manners, xvii, xxvi, 9, 11, 18, 26–29, 32, 50, 102–4, 112, 114, 136n32, 137n33 Family mealtime, 10, 19, 33, 95, 96; breakfasts, 19–22, 104; dinner, 1, 19–22, 82, 93, 103–4, 114 Felton Training School, 31, 33, 78, 79, 83, 86–88, 101–2 Fetchit, Stepin (Lincoln Perry), 38, 142n5 Fisk University, TN, ix, xii, xiv, 34–35, 37–39, 47–51, 59–60, 77–79, 81, 85, 99, 111 Flappers, 27–28, 32–33, 138n49 Four Fours Club, 80, 89 Freedmen’s Bureau, xxv, 34 Funerals, 15–16, 133n8 Gaffney, SC, 88 Garvin, Mamie, 9, 18 Girl Scouts of America, x, xii, 73, 102, 110, 116–17, 119–20, 148n68 Graduate and post-graduate studies, x, 30, 66, 68, 98,99, 102, 146n33 Grandparents, vii, x, xi, xiii, xvi, xviii, 1, 3, 5–7, 13–14, 17, 20, 28, 30, 41, 65, 72, 86, 95, 97, 100–101, 104, 106, 107–9, 112, 129, 142n19, 146n36 Great Depression, xii, xiii, 78, 79, 82–83, 145n22 Hackley, Emma Azalia, 28–29, 40, 43, 84, 136n32, 137n33 Hair texture and styles, ix, xviii, xxvi, 3, 5, 6, 15, 16, 28, 32, 33, 37, 38, 59, 81, 87, 138n49, 141n72 Hartsville, SC, 31, 80, 82–83, 86–87, 145n16 Hazel, ix, x, 5, 6–11, 13–35, 38, 41–42, 47, 55, 58, 65, 71–72, 86, 88, 91–93, 95–97, 99, 100, 104–7, 124, 129n1, 131n21, 132n30, 132n36, 133n42, 140n57, 146n34 Helen Sheffield Girls Club, 116, 120

Index

167

Homes and households, xxii, xxiv, xxv, xxvi–xxviii, xxx, xxxi, xxxii, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 17, 18, 19, 21–27, 29, 31, 37, 38, 41–42, 44, 46, 79, 80, 83, 86–88, 89, 92, 101, 102–5, 109, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 131n18, 132n30, 136n27, 137n37140n56

Mestizo and mulatto heritage, xxiv, 1, 2, 5, 125n2, 129n1 Middle class occupations and jobs, xii, xxv, xxix, xxx, 78, 87, 130n16 Middleton family, xxvi, xxix, xxx Miller, President Thomas E., xxvi, 2, 31 Moonshine alcohol, 44–45 Motherhood and mothering, xiii–xiv, 10–11, 17, 19–21, 32–33, 35, 47, 51, 81, 86, 84, 91, 94–114 Mt Pisgah Baptist Church, 10, 22, 23, 117–18

James, ix, x, 1, 4–5, 8–11, 13–35, 41, 45, 47, 50, 58, 63, 88, 91, 112, 124, 129n1, 132n36 Jefferson High School, SC, 84 Jello, ix, xii–xiv, xix, xxi, 13–47, 53, 55–58, 71,113, 119, 124, 133n2 Jim Crow culture and segregation, xi, xxii–xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, xxxii, 3, 6, 18, 23–26, 31, 38, 104, 138n43

New Mount Zion Baptist Church, 23, 117 Oblate Sisters of Providence and Christ the King School, 101

Kansas State University, KS, 89, 146n33 Kindergarten and preschool, 29, 30, 79, 100, 101, 140n56, 140n57 L.I. and Licentiate Instructione teaching degree, 3, 5, 8 Love, romance, and affection, xviii, 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16, 20, 29, 40–51, 65, 70, 82, 85–90, 106, 112, 113, 116, 120, 150n81 Lynching, xxiii, xxvi, 19, 23, 81, 135–36n22 Mack, Dorothy Scott, 109–10, 150n81 Malloy Sr., Henry Darius, 90–91 Malone, x, 64, 65, 69–72, 94–118 Manners. See Etiquette and manners Marriage and divorce, x, xiv, xvii, xviii, xix, xxviii, xxix, xxx, xxxi, 3, 8–11, 4, 40, 51, 62, 63, 82–91, 110, 114, 131n20, 131n21, 132n30 Maxwell’s Store, xxv, xvi, 20, 27, 136n24 Mayesville Institute, SC, ix, 5, 8–10, 54, 130n15 Mays, Benjamin, xxiv, 2, 112, 129–30n7 Meharry College, TN, 48–49 Menses and menstruation, 41–42, 106

Parties, dances, social gathering: formal and informal, x, 9, 33, 44–46, 70, 71, 81, 89, 91, 92, 95, 102, 109, 110, 115 Pierce, Hazel Tatnall and James, xi, xii, xxi, xxvi, xviii; 1–8; 10–53, 85, 91, 92, 113–14, 129n1, 135n16 Plessy V Ferguson court ruling, xxii, xxiv Pregnancy, xviii, 11, 41, 51, 92–94, 96, 106–7, 147n37 Promiscuity, 40–41, 42–44, 51 Protestations, Resistance, demonstrations, xi, xvii, xviii, xxiii, xxvi–xxvii, 24–26, 28, 32–33, 37–38, 78, 92, 105, 108, 119 Punishment and discipline, xxviii, 1, 16, 17–19, 21, 23, 33, 39, 95, 100, 108–9, 113–14 Purdue University, IN, 112 Racial discrimination. See Discrimination Railroad Avenue and Boulevard Avenue, xxv, 27, 136n24 Rape and molestation. See Sexual Exploitation Reconstruction era, xxii, xxiii, xxiv–xxv, 2 Religion and values, xi–xiv, xvii–xviii, xxix, xxx–xxxi, 1, 13, 17, 20, 22–23,

Index

168

Religion and values (cont.) 27, 30, 40–41, 54, 100–104, 113–14, 118, 133n2, 131n20, 150n87 Risley School, GA, 7 Roaring Twenties era, xvii, xix, 27–28, 32–33, 138n49, 141n72 Rose Hayzel, x, 64, 65, 68–72, 97–112, 115, 117–18, 124, 150n81 Rural southern life, xii, xxiv–xxv, xxvii– xxviii, 1, 7, 8, 10–11, 15, 30, 42, 49, 83, 88, 132n30, 133n42 Saint Francis University, PA, 110, 150n85 Sarah B. Henderson Club, 116 Schiffley, Dr.(?) 90–94, 96–97 Selden Normal and Industrial Institute, GA, 7–8, 131n28 Sex information, morality, and intercourse, xii, xiv, xvii, xviii, xxviii, xxix, 28, 40–45, 47, 50–51, 86, 95–96, 105–6, 114, 149n72 Sexual exploitation, xxv, 40, 44 Skin color and prejudices, xxiii, xxvi, 2–7, 87, 126n6 Slavery era, xxi–xxii, xxiv–xxv, xxvii– xxviii, xxx, xxxi, 2, 40–41, 125n2 Snobbery and snootiness, xxii, xxvi, xxxii, 3, 27, 37, 105, 116 South Carolina State A & M, xxxii, 2, 10, 31, 61, 66, 81, 99, 129n7, 130n14, 136n24 South Carolina State Academy, 30–33, 39, 44–45, 81, 107 Spankings. See Punishment and discipline St. Athanasius Industrial School, GA, 30 St. Emma Military Academy, VA, ix, 7, 56, 107–8, 112 St. Francis Academy, VA, 7, 56, 108 St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, xii, xxvi, 80, 117–19, 148n63 St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, 85, 118 Sunbeam Club, 23 Sunlight Club, 11, 109, 115–16, 146n34

Tatnall, Matilda Buggs and Harry, xviii, xxi, 5–11, 13–14, 16, 18, 54–55, 113, 129n1, 130–31n17, 133n4 Teaching and teaching-related, xiv, 3, 5, 19, 23, 30, 67, 77–79, 82–84, 87–88, 97–99, 101, 105, 108–9, 114 Thalman, GA, 14 Thirteen Twenty Club, 102, 115–16 Thomas, Father, 80, 85 Tilley, Celia Perry Mack, 11, 49, 90, 142– 43n19, 146n36 Tougaloo College, MISS, 146n33 Travel and transportation, ix, xxiv, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 13–15, 18–19, 21–22, 24, 34, 37, 51, 58, 77, 78, 82–83, 86, 96, 99, 105, 109–10, 118 Treadwell Street, 10, 26–27, 38, 120, 140n56 Trinity Methodist Church, xxvi, 118 Usher, Father Samuel C., 85, 118 Victorian ideals and females, xii, xviii, 28, 40 Viessa, ix, 13–17, 29–30, 57, 63, 124, 133n2, n6 Wedding, 10, 13, 84–87, 111, 112, 117 White Negroes. See Skin color and prejudices Whittaker, President Miller F., 31, 32, 82, 83, 84 Wilkinson family, xxvi, 2, 29, 31, 49, 80, 116, 118, 143n36 Working class occupations and jobs, xxiv, xxv, xxix, xxx, 4, 42, 83, 96, 109–10, 120, 144n15 World War I, xxiii, 7, 42 World War II, xii, xiii, xxiii, 4, 42, 79, 97 York, SC, 84, 86, 87 Zimmerman, Rosa Cooper and William xxi, 16, 60–61, 80–81, 144n15, 145n16 Zin, ix, x, 31, 60–61, 64, 70, 72, 77, 80–105, 107–12, 114–15, 117–18, 145n16

Index