This interview was conducted on behalf of Charleston County as part of the project: Stories from Historic African American Communities: A Journey to Equal Education, W. Gresham Meggett High School, James Island, SC.  Charleston County was awarded a grant from the Department of Interior and National Park Service (NPS) in 2018 to conduct this oral history project aimed to provide insight into the lives of African American students during desegregation.  The project is structured by the NPS research framework: Civil Rights in America: A Framework for Identifying Significant Sites (2002, rev. 2008). 

This interview was conducted on March 18, 2019, at St. James Presbyterian Church, James Island, Charleston County, South Carolina.  Mary Beth Reed (New South Associates) was the interviewer; Jenna Tran (New South Associates) was the technical assistant

Mary Beth Reed:        Hi, this is Mary Beth Reed with New South Associates. It’s March 19. I’m in St. James Presbyterian Church on Secessionville Road and I have the honor of interviewing David Richardson about his time at Gresham Meggett. And because I know him a little bit now because he’s also worked with me, we’re probably going to hear things farther afield as well. So, David, first thing, could I have you say your name and spell it out, please?

David Richardson:      I didn’t learn to spell in school, but anyway, I’ll try. My name is David Backman Richardson. That’s D-A-V-I-D, B-A-C-K-M-A-N—

MBR:              Man.

DR:                 …R-I-C-H-A-R-D-S-O-N.

MBR:              Okay. Now that we’ve got the housekeeping over with, can you tell me a little bit about where you were born, when you were born, and about your family life as a child? Your parents’ names, what they did, just kind of—I’m here for the long haul here.

DR:                 I was very blessed. My biological parents that I knew did not raise me. There was Thomas and Susie Backman. My mother’s maiden name was Brown. And my adopted parents was my dad’s oldest brother and sister-in-law. They lived right next to each other. My mother had totally eight children. I was the fourth born and the third boy. And Harriet was my adopted mother, Harriet Richardson. And they were very close friends and also sister-in-laws.

                        I am told and verified by both women that when my mother got pregnant for the fourth time, she said to Harriet, her sister-in-law and best friend, “If I have another boy, I’m going to give him to you.” Well, here I am. And Dave and Harriet did not have any children. So I was very blessed. And also they were very well comfortable in life on the island, okay. I have six—had six brothers and one older sister. My father had other children. But I grew up here on James Island.

MBR:              What road did you grow up on, David?

DR:                 I spent most of my life on Folly Road, and—but I was born on Variella [phonetic] Drive in a house that my parents then lived in that was my granduncle’s house. And that house is still there today. I’m the last of my mother’s children that was born home and delivered by a midwife. And that midwife was my great grandmother. And her name was Alice MacNeil Chavis.

MBR:              Alice MacNeil Chavis?

DR:                 Yes.

MBR:              Okay.

DR:                 Yes. Okay. My early years, I remember starting about four years of age when Dave decided he was going build his second house, which was a two-story house. He was a very successful entrepreneur, a carpenter, a contractor. He had nightclubs. He was the first to purchase and own shrimp trawlers as an African-American that was recognized. This was like in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, which is the only reason why I became a shrimper myself.

                        Because he lost those two boats on Kiawah in a storm. That was—one of them was operated by my biological father. He was missing for about three days. And when he finally arrived, because they had to come from Kiawah via Johns Island at the time, they had to do it by walking. But the house that I was raised in was a two-story house. And it was built in ’45. And at the time it was one of three African-American-owned houses on the island that was constructed with indoor plumbing, hot and running water.

                        And some of us have heard about the Green Book. It was not listed, but it served that purpose. A lot of the relatives and people traveling through would stay with us as guests overnight, sometime weeks at a time because of the convenience. Everybody else around us still had outdoor privies [inaudible] [00:09:07].

MBR:              Wow. Your adoptive parents, did they stress education?

DR:                 Absolutely.

MBR:              And were you—so they wanted you to go to school and—

DR:                 Matter of fact, interesting that you ask that. From the time I had any consciousness of what schooling was all about, my dad always said, “You going to be a doctor.” So I’d walk around, people ask me, “Well, you know, what you going to do when you grow up?” “I’m going to be a doctor.” I didn’t know what a doctor was like. And I kept that notion until I went off to go to college in 1961. And just that the courses that I had at Gresham Meggett was not sufficient enough and I didn’t have enough science to sustain myself in—going into medicine. Yeah.

MBR:              So you grew up as a single child then?

DR:                 I grew up as an only child.

MBR:              An only child.

DR:                 Yes.

MBR:              And they made their living through shrimping, so—

DR:                 No. Dave was a carpenter.

MBR:              Okay.

DR:                 And he built houses, and his clients were primarily folks with money, which was white people. And he had such a reputation that it was not uncommon for a prospective customer to wait two or three years for him to get to them because he always had a back load of work. And very bright person. And I recall many times after I got old enough to go on the jobs with him, he would go to visit a site and the owner would say, “Well, Dave, I would like to add a room onto this house” and sort of walk it off.

                        Then he would use his rule to determine the dimension, go to the truck on a piece of brown paper bag and start sketching out what the floor plan would be, figure out what the lumber—amount of lumber, and he would give the person at that point an estimate of what the cost of construction. And he was well entrusted because he was very honest person. Said, “Well, you go ahead and do the job and just give me a bill.” I heard that many times. Yeah.

MBR:              Well, had he gone to school?

DR:                 No. He had about a third grade education. But the thing that impressed me about him so much is that Harriet grew up on the McLeod plantation and she was her parents’ oldest child, and she probably took the advantage of marrying Dave to get away from the hard work on—because her mother had a number of other children, too, that she helped her raise. She used to tell me that she got up on a—when she was eight, she would get on a stool to wash dishes and take care—cook for her siblings.

                        So she was a very attractive woman. And Dave was a very successful young man, had 25—when he was 25—He was born in 1900. He thought he was born in 1904. But when he was 25, he bought a new Model T Ford, and he and Harriet drove that to New York. Took them almost a month to get there [indistinct] [00:12:35]. He said he paid for it cash, so—and he also had a very successful nightclub.

                        So he always knew—had an edge on how to make money. So his—my influence—he influenced my life a lot in terms of my direction and things that I did. He was always pushing me to do things very early. Like at 15 I was captain of a shrimp boat. But my early years at Gresham Meggett I could not have the time to play sports because I always had something to do.

MBR:              Did you enter early on? Where did you go to elementary school?

DR:                 Interestingly, I started school right here, St. James Presbyterian.

MBR:              You did?

DR:                 Yes.

MBR:              Talk to me about that.

DR:                 Well, about maybe five years ago now, there’s a lady by the name of—her last name was [indistinct] [00:13:39]. I’m trying to remember her first name. I’ll remember in a minute, but she was my dad’s first cousin. And she was a teacher. And she told me before she passed, said, “David, you know, I’m the first person that took you to school.” She was a woman who knew how to drive and she brought me to school here. She was also my teacher. And that piece I didn’t know because of my age.

                        But then later on I left this school and went ahead in public school. It was right up the road here near where—the Presbyterian church on the corner at Folly Road and Fort Johnson. And it was—the school building was an old lodge that just was a big open room. And it had two class in that room. My first teacher whose name was Janie Chisholm [phonetic]—who was from this island. Her house was not too far from where Gresham Meggett High School is up here. And so when I went to Cherry Beam [phonetic] one year—I used to ride my bicycle to the school. And then the schools got consolidated. And that’s when I transferred to Gresham Meggett. That was first as a elementary, and then eventually they kept adding. I think about a year or two later they add another wing and then made it into the high school.

MBR:              So you went from really partially going to elementary school all the way up to 12th grade.

DR:                 Absolutely.

MBR:              Okay. Do you remember going from—I’m not going to say it right—Cherry Beam?

DR:                 Cherry Beam.

MBR:              I’m trying—to W. Gresham Meggett. Do you remember any feelings or impressions you had of its modern look, the newness of it?

DR:                 Yes, Cherry Beam was a wood building that had—you’d look through the walls and look outside. And it had a potbelly stove in the middle. So in the morning whoever came in early would go outside and get wood and start the fire. And take turn to get warm. The desks at the time—there’s a difference between that kind of furniture and the one at Gresham Meggett because the one at Gresham Meggett was new desks. The one in Cherry Beam Hall, the desk was—which seemed it sort of was on a metal frame. The back of the desk was a top for the student who sat behind. And the front part of it was a chair for the student who was in the front. And I think the top was able to raise a little bit and put stuff up under it. That was the kind of seating that we had at the time.

MBR:              So W. Gresham Meggett, did you ride your bike there or did you take a bus? How did you get there?

DR:                 No. Because Gresham Meggett was the first year when—when they consolidated all these other schools, they also—there was three school buses for the entire island for the black students. The white school, they would pass us, but there must have been something about like maybe six or seven of them. And of course many of the bus drivers did several trips back and forth.

                        There were three persons that drove a bus. One of them was Eugene Wilder. We call him Pooney [phonetic]. The other was this lady, she was a short lady off of—that lived on Cutbridge [phonetic]. When you all—when you go back Riverland Drive, you’re going to pass her house. Arlene [indistinct] [00:17:40], she was—There was one other bus driver. I don’t remember who that was. But there were three buses that carried us, but they made several trips back and forth.

MBR:              Can I ask you, did they just have bus stops? In other words, did they come to your house, the bus, or did you have to get to a bus?

DR:                 Basically there was a route where they pick you up, and usually it was on a main road, you know. So if there’s—and because of the area was very rural at the time, there were roads that were unpaved or some distance away from the road. But the buses ran Sol Legare [phonetic] Road, Fort Johnson, and Riverland Drive, and I think also Central Park. And then later on I drove a school bus myself before I graduated from high school. And I had the Fort Johnson route. Kids were not hard. They were not difficult. I couldn’t drive a bus now. I couldn’t drive a bus—

MBR:              It was a full-size bus?

DR:                 Yes.

MBR:              It was. Okay. All right. And was it a bus in good shape?

DR:                 Yes. Those buses at that time were new. But then subsequently over the years, especially when I started driving, we would sometimes get a bus that might have—was not new, you know, obviously was being recycled from what white kids might have had. So we always got the seconds, you know. That’s the way it was at the time.

MBR:              Well, all right. So I learned about your parents. Even as—in grammar school or elementary school, were your parents involved with your education?

DR:                 My dad was very much involved. And I guess I developed pretty consistent study habits because I was expected to do my work, but I also had to do various chores after school, sometimes me riding—because my dad had a shrimp boat then and it was at the end of Folly Beach. So there were times when I had to ride all the way down to Folly to go pump the boat out because they’re wooden boats and they leak sometimes. Yeah.

MBR:              Well, coming to Gresham Meggett then, as an elementary school, so you’re in the unique position—Most people go in elementary school, then middle or—and then a high school. But you had this continual. So that gives you a little bit different perspective. When it was just a elementary school, did you know most of the kids in your class? What were the classes like? Do you remember? Elementary school per se, everything from lunch to recess, what did a day look like? Do you remember?

DR:                 First of all, the change from the time at Cherry Beam to Gresham Meggett, instead of one teacher having two classes in one room, it was only set of kids, one grade in a room with one teacher. And understandably that you had a collection of students from different sections of the island that would be in the same grade. So therefore it’s natural that the classes would be a little larger, and it was difficult sometimes when you were in a class with a teacher with two classes because she has to teach both [indistinct] [00:21:01].

                        And it’s just some—sometime is distraction, because while she’s giving instructions to the other class, they got to hear what they are. And meantime, you might be left to do some homework or to go work on the task that she gave you. So, you know, it’s a matter of being able to concentrate and block that [indistinct] [00:21:23], and I didn’t do that well. Still can’t do it well now.

MBR:              Well, I think one person showed me their—actually their elementary school records I guess which you can pull up still, which is pretty amazing. Well, the modern look, what did you think? I mean at Meggett.

DR:                 The school—this room that we in now sort of reminds me of it because it was the first time concrete construction. And that school was made out of concrete block. Bright paint. Each classroom and my elementary classroom my elementary years, I think I might have been like in sixth or seventh grade, I remember Ms. Baxter who was a principal for the independent school, Society Corner, which was right down the road from where we are now. And she made a pretty good impression on me.

                        And that is, she had on the—made out of construction paper on bulletin board, a painting of a large treasure chest like pirates have. And it was like crack open some. And what was visible were things like a house, a car, different things that people basically would want and expect to have in life. And then the lock was partially open and the key in the hands of someone that had reading on it. Reading unlocks the key, treasure chest to life, I always remember that. And so I—from that, I, you know, probably developed my reading interest, and that same theme really turned out to be true.

MBR:              That was my next question. Do you think if you had to characterize what made—I’m trying to think the best way to say this—that Gresham’s guiding philosophy—What was his philosophy? You know, if you look back on it, I think you just gave us a key to it, you know, just not reading but—

DR:                 Well, you know, some of the people that I’ve spoken to since we started this process, reiterated what is a known factor and characteristic, and that is that teachers were dedicated. They were young. They had not developed bad habits yet because some of them were just out of college. But Mrs. Matago [phonetic] that was at a meeting that we had on the 24th, she and another Mrs. Matago, unrelated, were dancers. One of them was tall, and one of them was short. But more importantly, they were highly dedicated and they were just out of college, maybe a year or two.

                        So the principal that we had who was Leroy Anderson that influenced the school that I—my undergrad school that I selected, was also very young and very intelligent. So the teachers would try each other’s method that was successful in teaching the children. And they were not unabashed to the point where they would not try another method. And one of the teachers told me not long ago that they would have these brain discussion—what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s when you in a group and you—

MBR:              Like assembly?

DR:                 No. When a group of people begin to discuss certain issues and they try to—

MBR:              Like a discussion group or something?

DR:                 Yeah. But it’s another word. I just—

JT:                   Brainstorm?

DR:                 Yes, brainstorm. Look at that smart [crosstalk] [00:25:28]. When they would brainstorm in the faculty meetings, the—not only was it a current invited principal—and I think this is a very key thing that the children graduating left here with, unaware of what there was—those factors were, is that they were free to discuss different concepts and ideas. The principal encouraged that and they developed—they had sort of a friendship among them, so it was like—among the teachers it was like a family. And their dedication towards the children, they went the extra way and distance to be able to find information to teach them that would supplement what was deficient in the books.

                        So we knew that—I asked one person, I said, “Do you think the teachers care about”—He said, “Yeah, absolutely.” I said, “Why do you say that?” He said, “Well, they showed the kind of affection and they were never critical of us, and they would quickly communicate with our parents if we didn’t do what we were expected to do.” So you had what is missing in the school systems now I think, a three-component. One, the willingness of the students to learn, respect the teachers in one. The parents respect the teachers and also were very supportive of them. And then you had the leadership in the school where the teachers felt that they were all part of a—like a group, like a team. And that’s what I thought prevailed at Gresham Meggett even after I left, you know, until they closed it.

MBR:              Until they closed it.

DR:                 Yes.

MBR:              That was a really good summary. For the teachers there, were there any particularly mentors for you that—

DR:                 I’m thinking of—

MBR:              You mentioned the principal name, Mr. Anderson.

DR:                 Yeah. And David Mack.

MBR:              David Mack.

DR:                 Yeah. David Mack was the superintendent that was at our first meeting.

MBR:              Oh, yes.

DR:                 His son was a member of the legislature.

MBR:              Yes.

DR:                 Interesting thing about David Mack, in 1960…I graduated in ’61—’61, when we had May Day approaching, we’d have this parade. And he had just bought a new—a Fairlane Ford. And he sent for me one day. So I went to the class and I said, “Yes, sir.” He says, “I want my car in the parade, but I want you to drive it.” So I said, “Mr. Mack, why you choose me to drive your car?” He said, “Well, I see you driving your daddy’s car and you have a bunch of boys in it. You don’t horse around. You go and do what you need to do. So I think you’re reliable.”

                        Well, the other side of that that I learned later on, David Mack’s father was a contractor, and his dad and mine were very close friends, too. So there was that kind of a link. And see those guy—at that time, some of the old “craftsmen,” and I’m talking about where they were painters, where they were plumbers, electricians, or carpenters, I knew many of them because my dad would have them to do subcontracting work for him. And there was a group of people, since he always want to have his work that’s done reliable and first quality, so the people that he had that he would hire, the subcontractors had the same standards.

                        And so, you know, many of the old guys I knew because I was—when he first adopted me, he was 40 years of age, so, you know, he was a seasoned man. And he was raised by his grandfather who was 40 when he was born, you know, so I benefited from that stream of wisdom. And I listened to him because I respected him.

MBR:              I like that.

DR:                 But he always supported my interest in school, always supported my interest in school. He was the one that said, “You going to go to college.” When I graduated from here, they delivered me to the Greyhound bus station here in Charleston— and I had never ridden a Greyhound before—and my suitcase and everything and sent me to Nashville. Two summers before, I drove with a friend of his to New York. He wanted to have another driver. I was about 16 then. So I drove with him to New York. And that was a good experience.

MBR:              All right. I’m going to pick that up in a minute. We talked about your parents’ involvement with school and that your father was involved and kept up with you. Folks have talked to us about that you received secondhand books at Meggett that had been used previously. Was there a want in any other direction in terms of—

DR:                 Yeah.

MBR:              …[indistinct] [00:30:33] school supplies and that sort of thing?

DR:                 I remember interviewing Ned Roper who was after me. And he wanted to be a chemist. When he got admitted—I think he said he went to State—South Carolina State college. David Mack was a chemistry teacher, and who else was a chemistry teacher? What Roper shared with me was that they only had one Bunsen burner in his chemistry class, and it was obvious that we knew that the white school had all the supplies that they needed. He said that deficiency, impact on him not being able to study chemistry when he went to State. He had to choose something else.

                        I know that my biology course here was not strong enough. I took biology at Fisk. I had no calculus or—I had a course in geometry, but that was the extent of it. If I had some of the additional courses, I probably would have studied medicine. I just did not have my science—What they call it now? STEM? STEM courses.

MBR:              Right.

DR:                 They didn’t have sufficient strength in STEM courses. So I chose to study prelaw, became a history major. And my professor, head of the department, was also the person who taught John Hope Franklin. He was John Hope Franklin mentor. And so I was fortunate to be influenced by a great mind. And many of my—at that—when I graduated, three of my classmates were admitted to Harvard Law School. And at the time, I was admitted to Howard.

MBR:              Maybe not having a STEM education didn’t work out so badly for you.

DR:                 I don’t know about that.

MBR:              We’ve talked about language because there is—Gullah Geechee, there is a dialect, the language itself. And children would come to school with that language, and teachers would come with, what I’ve heard different ways of saying it, proper English, standard English, whatever. How did that work out in the classroom? How did these two languages, two people using two different languages, how did they make it all work? Because they obviously did.

DR:                 I loved my teachers because at the time, I was not aware of it. But after I went away to school, then learning the distinction in the speech—For example, at Fisk I didn’t talk much my first year because of my sensitivity of not speaking probably instantaneously correct English. I had to take a—what’s that word—

MBR:              Remedial?

DR:                 Remedial, thank you. Mind getting a little slow sometime. Remedial English. And many of my close friends were West Indians. My roommate was from St. Thomas. And several of my other friends were either from Barbados or Jamaica. So after my freshman year, I became a little more talkative because my association with those guys and that their speech pattern was very similar to mine and even our vocabulary. So that gave me a—quite a comfort level there.

                        Some of my other classmates from high school, after completing their education over the years, basically made an effort to lose their identity as a Gullah person. And because of the environment that they was transferred to, they became very sensitive about their speech and instead of just learning how to speak correct English, they basically tried to get rid of their accent completely. But I didn’t.

                        Matter of fact, I had a special experience my junior year. I rode a Greyhound back and forth. It took 18 hours to get to Nashville on a Greyhound. It was 24 on a train, and I could not afford to fly at the time. This was like 1961. So it was about ’62, ’63, on my way back to Fisk. And I was getting ready to board a bus in Chattanooga, and I was probably almost—maybe about the 10th person getting on the bus. And I’d always sit about midways instead of all the way to the back. And this was before open accommodation, okay?

                        And so when I got on the bus, there was some—like the first seat at the door, there was this black person sitting there. So I passed him and went back about maybe four or five seats and sat down. So by the time—you know, the bus wasn’t completely full. It’s just half full of people. So the driver got on the bus and he looked at this guy and said, “Boy, you can’t sit there.” So—and the guy said, “Excuse me, sir?” And he heard that accent, right? And he was Nigerian. He said, “Boy, you not from here.” He says, “No. I am Nigerian.” So the driver said, “Oh.” And he went and sat in his seat, okay, and didn’t say nothing. It didn’t bother him.

                        I never forgot that. So the message that I picked up from that is, if you’re not an African-American, you got treated differently. And that was also confirmed because of those same friends of mine that was from the West Indies. I was the only African-American who was a member of the foreign student association. Because we had exchange students, we had students from Greece, we had students from Kenya, the Congo, and then the West—Caribbean islands. For Thanksgiving, they—because of the short holiday, they couldn’t go home. So some of the, I guess, wealthy people in Nashville with their paternalistic attitude, would sometime invite them to a dinner.

                        So this one winter I didn’t go home, and they said, “Dave, come on. You come go with us, man.” Said, “Where y’all going?” Said, “Well, you know, these folks invited us to this dinner and”—I said, “But listen, that’s for Caribbean guys, not me.” He said, “Don’t worry. We cover you.” So we go to the affair, and one of the hosts came, started having a conversation with me. And she says, “And you?” She asked me my name and I told her. And she says, “Well, what island are you from?” I said, “James Island, ma’am.” So in the meantime, she says, “What part of Jamaica is that?” So when she asked that question, I know things getting a little tight, right? Because I had never been to Jamaica.

                        So one of my buddies walked in and said, “Oh, that’s not too far from Montego Bay,” and I slipped away [indistinct] [00:38:24]. You know, but those were some of the lessons that I had.e said, He

            But Fisk was a—

MBR:              That’s a good one.

DR:                 Now, the reason why I went to Fisk was because of Leroy Anderson the principal. He was a graduate, and it were his recommendation that got me into Fisk. Not only because of my grades, but I learned later on, he says, “Fisk may not need David, but David needs Fisk.” And that was one of the key factors that got me admitted. Great experience, the best that I could’ve had. The school’s small, family-like, just like being on this island almost. And even if I—[indistinct] [00:39:05] classmates, 50-some years, same closeness.

MBR:              It was a good decision.

DR:                 Yes.

MBR:              The years spent at Meggett, especially as a senior—excuse me, junior and senior, how aware were you of cultural changes, of where we were as a country in terms of race relations, that maybe desegregation was on the horizon? Far out but still on the horizon. Did your folks talk about things like that at home or—

DR:                 No. And let me give you an example. My dad, I told you he was a contractor. Have you ever been to Folly since you’ve been here?

MBR:              Say it again?

DR:                 Folly Beach. Have you ever been to Folly Beach?

MBR:              Yes.

DR:                 You know where the pier is? Well, the parking lot for the pier was where the amusement park was. Across the street from the amusement park was a guy who had owned that and had a two-story house. My dad did all of his—He had other houses. Some of the other buildings are still there. He did all the [indistinct] [00:40:09] for him and repair work up there. Well, every—you know what Decoration Day is? Ever heard of that?

MBR:              Uh-uh [negative].

DR:                 You heard of Decoration Day? This young lady here says she hear about Decoration Day. Decoration Day—and I’m just going to repeat it because of what we doing—Decoration Day was usually the 31st of May. And it was started by African-Americans in Charleston. It was in honor of the 54th Regiment, Massachusetts regiment, soldiers that fell in battle. They were interned at the cemetery in Beaufort.

                        So every Decoration Day, we would go down to Beaufort for that weekend or a couple of days, okay. Well, the guy that owned the amusement park would disassemble all of his stuff, take it down this—for the African-American that gather. Decoration Day has become Memorial weekend, okay? Became it. But it’s a precursor to Memorial Day, okay. And Earl Johnson was his name. Earl [indistinct] [00:41:16] would give me a ball of them—ticket. You know those tickets that you use, red white, and blue that got the numbers on them?

MBR:              Hm-hmm [affirmative].

DR:                 Tickets like that. There would be a whole ball of ticket. Of course I’d never be able to use it all. But during the summer months, when he came—had his equipment brought back and reassembled, well, I had free access to go and ride on anything that I wanted to ride on, okay. But to get to your point, so one day my dad was doing some construction work, some carpentry work. I said, “I’ll be right back. I’m going over on the carousel.” He said, “Okay.” So I got over on the carousel. I must be about 10, about 12—11 or 12.

                        And I remember there was a young lady that was in a bikini suit, and I looked at her and I said, “Wow, look at that.” And the guy who was running the operation grabbed my arm and twisted. He said, “Boy, you’re not supposed to be looking at no white girls, okay?” “Get your hand off of me.” So he turned me loose because he know my role and relations. So I went back across the street and I told my dad. He never said anything. Never said anything. Next day I said, “Daddy, I’m going to go ride the carousel or the Ferris wheel. He said, “Well, wait a minute before you go. Help me do this.” And he never let me go back over again. And that was a quiet way of him saying, you need to stay close to me, okay.

                        But in the meantime, you know, you grow older, you begin to realize, you know, hormone starts growing, you look at other people and you say, hey, man, that’s dangerous, you know. And at Folly Beach at the time, many of the women that worked near Center Street were from Sangaree. And so they were cousins, okay. The maid that Earl Johnson had was my dad’s—she was my grandmother’s first cousin, my paternal grandmother’s first cousin. So anyway, my freedom to walk around in Sangaree—I mean Folly Beach, was because of the fact that I had cousins that worked, okay. And one of my cousins drove the garbage truck, and at the time cars still ran on the beach. And so my dad never really worried about me because most folks knew me who were, you know, folks that were part of the local economy or resident, said, “That’s little Dave” because they knew my dad very well, okay.

                        And he used to tell me also that Heyward that wrote the play Porgy and Bess, that Heyward had a house down on Folly Beach and that he did the maintenance of it. I heard it many times, but I never had—never went to that house with him. It was only about probably five years ago I located it and realized where the house was. Because I read the book, Folly Beach, and—which was a fiction of Heyward’s wife coming back to life, okay. But Porgy, the figure in the opera, whose gravestone is down at the end of this road, he [indistinct] [00:45:06] say that Porgy was our cousin and he knew Porgy. And in the—where the courtyard where Porgy and Bess hung out, he showed me where that was. And, you know, Porgy was a real person, okay. And Porgy’s last name was Smalls. My grandmother’s last name—great grandmother’s last name was Smalls. And she is a descendent from that family I’m told. So everybody over on this island is always related.

MBR:              Yes.

DR:                 But Gresham Meggett.

MBR:              Well, Gresham Meggett but also, you know, the feeling like when you were in high school, did you—you didn’t play sports or—

DR:                 No.

MBR:              …debate club or any—with any white schools?

DR:                 No.

MBR:              Am I correct? It was just—

DR:                 No, not then.

MBR:              …totally segregated, yes.

DR:                 Separate, yes.

MBR:              So were you aware of the discrepancies between the school systems?

DR:                 Of course.

MBR:              Well, of course, but what do you mean?

DR:                 And here’s another reason why. The kind of skill that my dad had, some of the most expensive and old houses in Charleston, he worked on those houses. And I had a chance to go in and—[indistinct] [00:46:23] old but you realize that they also magnificent. And it’s about money, you know. And at some point in time when you look and see a kid who works in the field, just is partially clad, and on the other hand you go to town and watch the street.

                        And at 14 I got a driver’s license. I used to take my—drive my mom to wherever she wanted to go or needed to go. And then because of Dave’s position and comfort level, I was a little more privileged than a lot of other folks on the island. Like I didn’t go to no fields. You know, I spent my time on a boat, on a shrimp boat. And we fed a lot of people, you know, because by being shrimpers, we always had bycatch, and it was a lot sometimes, you know. So many of the people on the island were our cousins, so we fed, you know—instead of throwing that stuff back overboard, last drag, bring it and exchange it for maybe a bushel of vegetables and fish. So barter system was very much in [indistinct] [00:47:30], you know.

MBR:              Well, how did you and Mr. Anderson, for instance—because it seems like he must have taken a personal interest—some personal interest for you, to be able to come with “Dave might—Dave needs Fisk,” to figure that out. Was he a mentor? Was he—he was a principal. Was the principal also the guidance counselor or—

DR:                 No.

MBR:              Did he help kids get into the colleges?

DR:                 No. I would venture to guess no, because at some later time after I completed my education and came back, there are some things that I did that basically it was the right thing to do and almost like paid him back, okay. Because I had become politically active and—up until probably about 10 years ago, I was very, very active politically. But, you know, there’s a term that I heard since I was a child, that elderly people would say, “That child, they’ve got something in them.” Or if you lack certain kind of a aptitude, they may say, “He just ain’t got in him,” okay.

                        And it’s basically the character nature. And folks who—and yourself—who’ve dealt with people over a period of time, you’re almost instantly able to spot certain kinds of implied ability that a person may have or an interest. As well as, you know, you look at the family background and what could be expected. And my dad was relatively very comfortable, you know, on the island. So that and the fact that there was a relationship between David Mack’s father and him, so, you know—And I was a very responsible kid. He always pushed me to do things ahead of my brothers who were older than me.

                        So when my brother Thomas and Bob started running a shrimp boat, I did, too, even though I was about two or three years younger than they were. And at that age, it made—that’s a significant difference, but he always pushed me over—build my self-confidence into doing things.

MBR:              Did you mention—I think you mentioned before that you drove the bus.

DR:                 I did.

MBR:              Was that a privilege or responsibility? You understand what I mean?

DR:                 Responsibility.

MBR:              Responsibility, okay.

DR:                 Yes. The school board, I think when they started switching down to students, they recognized that the availability of adults became more difficult, but you had the students who was in the school and there, so it was less of a hassle. And so they started offering the opportunity for students to drive a bus. And so I, you know, it was the school that trained. Interesting in this case, the state trooper who was a instructor, he was also a member of our—a close member of our—not a member, but a friend of the family. His name was—Oh, gosh. I’ve forgotten now.

MBR:              So he was your instructor?

DR:                 He was the instructor. And the class was over on Johns Island where we were taught to drive a school bus. And the last day, after we all had taken our test and proven, he said, “Boys, I’m going to give y’all the treatment. The best driver I’m going to select that he is going to take us for a ride.” And he chose me because I was a good driver. My dad, he taught me how to drive. And he was an older man, so I had to be very attentive and be correct in what I did, you know. So it was responsible.

MBR:              That’s something. Well, you mentioned political activity. Were you politically active as a teenager?

DR:                 At 18 I was, yes, basically. I started demonstrating before I went to school.

MBR:              Before you went to college?

DR:                 College, yes.

MBR:              So you’re out of Meggett. That means that you were very aware of what—

DR:                 Very much so.

MBR:              …[crosstalk] [00:52:02] that was for civil rights?

DR:                 Yes. Well, yeah, because see, I grew up on Folly. I knew that at 6:00 o’clock in the afternoon, if you were not a maid or a butler with a family that was vacationing, you need to get the hell off of there, because the last bus at 6:00 o’clock, yeah, you got to get out of there, okay. Well, the other thing that I found that was strange once, is that there was a cousin of mine who was a maid for this lady that was right—the street across from where Johnson’s [indistinct] [00:52:37]. And she got hungry one day. And the lady she was employed by had two pork chops in the refrigerator, so she cooked and ate one.

                        So when the lady came home, she says, “Anna, you seen my pork chop I had in here for my dog?” She said, “Yes, ma’am.” She said, “Well, they ain’t but one there now.” Said, “What happened to the other one?” She says, “I got hungry and I cooked and ate it.” She fired her, okay. And when I heard about that, that’s not fair, you know. You mean the damn dog can be fed, and what about a human being?

                        The other thing that I didn’t forget is that, because of the bus that would transport people back and forth from Folly to city of Charleston, it was occasional when the employer, the head of the household, female head of the household would be on that bus and her maid come on after her and pass her. And she—just like she ain’t never seen her. And I couldn’t understand how people could, you know, be so insensitive. So to me, that was—it’s just wrong, okay? Why you going to treat me like that?

                        And also I remember when—on Cape Street, which was a main commercial street that most everybody from the islands would go to to go shop and they’ll walk down to the end of Spring where—near where the McDonald’s is now. And there were times when you would encounter someone who was white on the street and someone would step off. I never did. I said, “What you going to do that for?” So when I went to Fisk, my freshman year, they—we had demonstration where we wanted to integrate a restaurant called Cross Keys. Ain’t got no money in my pocket.

                        He said, “Hey, man, we doing down to march in front of Cross Keys.” I said, “Okay. Let’s go.” I went. Had no idea I wasn’t coming back home, okay. And it wasn’t long before the paddy wagon rolled up. And I spent Thanksgiving in jail, my first time I ever been incarcerated. And my cellmate—you know the congressman from Georgia by the name of John Lewis? We were cellmates. We spent three days in jail. And of course we knew that—we figured that we going to get out. But that was the first time I came—was a jailbird.

                        So, yes, I was always, I guess, influenced by what’s right or wrong, and that’s still part of my character nature right now. Even when I—after I came back from South Carolina and completed my legal education and got [indistinct] [00:55:34], I was fortunate to get a—find work as a union organizer and that it gave me satisfaction about helping people who didn’t have the power or authority to help themselves. One of the best job, but it was very stressful though, very stressful, because the industry that worked in was hotel. And 60 percent of the workers in a hotel or more are women. And many of those women are head of households, and many of the employers, supervisors were so insensitive about what their needs where. So I had some impact on some of them. Very dangerous job.

MBR:              I would say so.

DR:                 Very dangerous job.

MBR:              How did you—you obviously were a very cared-for child.

DR:                 Say that again.

MBR:              You were a very cared-for child. You know what I mean? Your parents took care.

DR:                 She using one of them fancy word. Another word to say you’re privileged.

MBR:              Your parents—you’re a very well-cared-for child. But how did they feel about you becoming politically active, or is that—had you already left home?

DR:                 No, I was still home.

MBR:              Huh?

DR:                 I was still home.

MBR:              You were still home, yeah.

DR:                 I’ll tell you something. It’s a great question that you’ve asked, because when I think back, like 90 percent plus of my father’s business was done with white folks. And I listened how he communicated with them. Never condescending but respectful and responsible, okay. Where am I going with this? One of the practice in the neighborhood was, there was a gentleman by the name of Zeely [phonetic] who was an insurance—Zeely. He was an insurance collector. They used to have what they call the debit cards, you know, you pay 50 cents or a nickel every week.

                        Well, our house always had screens on it. The porch was always screened and, you know—That’s why I don’t like flies now because we never had any flies at our house. Anyway. I was on the porch playing one day, and Zeely came in and walked right on the porch and said, “Emily.” And he was getting ready to leave the porch to go into the main house. I said, “Mr. Zeely, her name is Harriet and [indistinct] [00:58:08] use Mrs. Richardson.” So he looked at me and he didn’t like what I said. So he stopped and then he did correct himself and he called her.

                        That afternoon at 5:00 o’clock when he figured my daddy was home, he was back in our yard. [Indistinct] [00:58:26] “Dave,” he said, “I come here to see you because your boy sassing me today.” He said, “Mr. Zeely, was that true?” He said, “What did he say to you?” And when he told, he said, “Well, Mr. Zeely, sound like he might have been right.” So I know who he was, because [indistinct] [00:58:45] always very polite in dealing with his customers, that right attitude. But when he said that, I mean, he stood up for what he knew was right and fair. And I always remember that. I always remember that.

                        Because at one point I—sometime I thought that he did not stand up as much as he should when people attempted to be disrespectful to him. See, my background as a shrimper more than anything else, I think helped to shape my character because shrimpers are very independent. And you think about each vessel is determined—the direction and how it functions, is by one man on the boat, and that’s the captain. And he has freedom to go and—wherever the—it’s almost like going hunting, okay.

                        But more importantly, there’s a culture among shrimpers of mutual respect. And you’re faced with reality of potential risk all the time to the point where, the weather may be as flat as it is now. It don’t remain like that forever. But in about 15 or 20 minutes weather can change, especially during June month. And what was a pleasant sea ride or fishing on the ocean can turn into terror. So you’re, you know, and you can’t run when you get caught in that. So the reality of the ocean teaches you not to be fearful, because it is what it is. If it’s time to go, you’ll know that soon enough, okay.

                        So that gave me the sense of independence and eliminated any kind of fear that I would have. Of course my dad pushed me. At 15 I was on a— I was a captain of a shrimp boat. On the ocean we had no radios to communicate to get advice on any—You got to use your own judgment, you know. So I started very, very early. So ain’t no need to ever be afraid of dying. It ain’t going to happen until it does.

MBR:              So basically you had a great education at Meggett.

DR:                 Had a great education at Meggett.

MBR:              Shrimp boating contributed to your character.

DR:                 Absolutely.

MBR:              But your parents wanted you to go to college, so they put you onto Fisk.

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DR:                 If I had stayed in my biological family, I would not have taken this route. My youngest brother, the two of us are the only one with a college education.

MBR:              Is that Sammy?

DR:                 Yes.

MBR:              Okay.

DR:                 And I am very conscious of the difference in the influence by the two households. So I know that it made a difference. My mother had the insight. And some people say that children who are adopted have a problem of separation. That may be a factor. But I know one thing, I recognize how beneficial it was for me. I know that if I had not had that experience and exposure, I would not have chosen the route that I did. So I’m always very grateful to all of them. No regrets at all from them.

                        So [indistinct] [01:02:11] I had two sets of parents. Because when the—when my adopted parents died earlier, I still had another set left, you know. So it’s great and I appreciate it. My biological mother attended a lot of my graduations afterwards. When I graduated from college, she was there.

MBR:              She was there.

DR:                 When I graduated from law school, she was there. And she and I got a chance to serve on a number of board and commissions here in Charleston. And—

MBR:              So your biological mom, and her first name was?

DR:                 Harriet. She died early. She died about ’64. 19—Or was it ’70? Yeah.

MBR:              But she was also active.

DR:                 Oh, she was a loving person. No, she was very quiet, but very, very loving. Very, very loving. Good with children. And she had a good influence on my sensitivity of caring for people. Very much.

MBR:              All right. I’m going to bring back Charleston County. When we talk about James Island, its geography, you know, things were happening in the City of Charleston but maybe not so much here. People have talked about in the last couple days that being at Meggett was not insulated, but it was separate. Did you feel that coming up or did you have a wider sense of what was going on in Charleston? And around actually the whole civil rights movement and the changes that were in the 1960s?

DR:                 Millicent Brown.

MBR:              Hmm?

DR:                 Millicent Brown, you know that name?

MBR:              Hm-hmm [affirmative].

DR:                 Millicent father was the field secretary for the NAACP, Charleston and eventually the state. Millicent’s father and my dad, Dave, adopted father, were close friends and they knew each other. A little difference in age. Millicent’s father—well, at one point earlier, they lived in the city of Charleston. But they were close in communication because her grandfather was from James Island. And, you know, the island, a lot of us are kin, but there’s also an unwritten or printed rule about loyalty and support because it was necessary to survive.

                        So there’s a book that is written by Eugene Frazier that talks about the descendants of slaves of James Island. Eugene, by the way, is a cousin of mine, too. His grandmother and my grandmother were sisters, that close. So J. Arthur Brown, who was actively involved in the civil rights movement at a early stage of it, obviously is the reason why Millicent was the first to attend Charleston High School.

                        In the meantime, I was not discouraged from being involved in the civil rights activities. So I used to go to meetings. And there’s another name, Esau—Esau Jenkins was an uneducated man from Johns Island, [indistinct] [01:05:52] and had a great impact on some of the things that I later did in life [indistinct] [01:05:59]. So eventually when I came back here after graduating from law school, there’s certain things that I knew was my watch, I just had to do it, whatever the risk or the fear is. Just had to do—You ever heard of Fannie Lou Hamer?

MBR:              Hamer, H-A-M-E-R?

DR:                 I think it’s H-A-M-E-R, yeah. She was a black woman in Mississippi.

MBR:              No.

DR:                 Get a chance, YouTube her.

MBR:              Okay.

DR:                 And it’s about—the period is about 1968 I think. And Fannie Lou was a civil rights activist and was severely beaten because she registered to vote, and kicked off the plantation that she lived on, but had the impact of changing the Democratic Party in Mississippi and the United States period. Heard her testimony, but it’s a piece of history that you all should read, you know.

MBR:              Thank you.

DR:                 You can look at it on YouTube, and it’s about the confidence and the risk, and it’s let people know that, you know, you do whatever you want to do, this is the way I’m going. And to be fearless like that when there’s no expected—You know the Lord is going to help you. You know, you got to—you’s on your own and your belief in the Creator. Fannie Lou is a person—I asked the minister here, I met him this morning, he said he’s from Mississippi—I said, “You know Fannie Lou Hamer?” He said no because he’s too young. He’s too young, yeah. But she made a heck of an impression on me. There’s some things you got to do.

                        It is—I equate that with the philosophy of a shrimper at the time. We had no radios, and if a boat from our river or dock didn’t come in in the afternoon when it was expected, someone would go to the beach, ride the beach with a automobile and see if they see the boat. And if they see it on a hook, come back to the dock and somebody would go get them. Don’t care what time of night it is or what the weather’s like. Somebody got to go get them. Because it could you—you could be in that position. So I grew up with that kind of a sense of responsibility. If it’s your shift, it’s your watch, it’s your watch. Don’t look around for nobody else. It’s your watch.

                        So, you know, it’s that kind of a dedication that we all have. My brother Sammy and I, it’s the same thing because, you know, we grew up in that environment. We Gullah folks had to help each other even at the risk of your own life. That’s not a [indistinct] [01:08:40]. Now, if you ever get a chance to go to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the only black Coastguard unit that ever exist in this country was near Cape Hatteras. And why they’re so important is that [indistinct] [01:09:04] time, Hatteras is a graveyard of ships on the East Coast. More ships have gone down out here.

                        These guys in an open boat almost the kind like the whalers, you know, with oars, would row out to the ship in storms, which meant—you know, and I don’t know how they kept waters out of the boat—open boat—to take a line to the ship to rescue whoever was on there. And they did that time and time again. So there’s a museum that I want to go and see I hadn’t seen. But, you know, it’s like that. It’s your task. You got to do what you got to do. You know some people just never get there [indistinct] [01:09:49]. So that’s the way I was raised. You done?

MBR:              Well, no. I will be in a second, but I will say thank you. No, I appreciate you sharing with us, David, and we’ve had a lot of fun the last—through this process. But this is also a time to think about what makes people who and what they are. And I think you’ve kind of given me a sense of all those things. Jenna Tran is in the room with us, our co-interviewer. Do you have anything you’d like to ask?

Jenna Trans:    You put me on the spot.

MBR:              No, that’s all right. Now I’m just going to ask you, is there anything I should have asked you and didn’t that you’d like to say? I know this is about Meggett, but I think what I’m learning from the interviews is that Meggett prepared people for great things. And each interview tells me a different story that goes that way.

DR:                 One other comment that I’d like to make, observation about where we sitting right now. This church played a significant role in influencing a number of folks who were born and raised on James Island, even though they preceded Gresham Meggett. The school—and if you look at—I saw a picture earlier someplace, we used to call the Sanders School.

MBR:              Say it again?

DR:                 Sanders.

MBR:              Sanders, okay.

DR:                 Yes.  Because the minister—a Presbyterian minister who was educated, name was Marion Sanders. Okay?

MBR:              Oh, okay.

DR:                 And so it was the first, I think, church on the island that had leadership of a educated minister. I think he came out of Johnson [indistinct] [01:11:43]. Now the other factor is right after the Civil War, the Presbyterian Church began in some areas, South Carolina primarily, to set up schools to help educate the ex-slaves. Middleton indicated earlier the uniqueness of the Grimball community. Not only are folks sort of related, but have had the common experience from the common source, and that community survived by being collective and supportive.

                        This church here is a branch of the James Island Presbyterian Church at the road there. This is about more than 200 years old. But this is one of the largest congregation in the—among the Presbyterian churches in the South because it’s part of the Presbyterian. But it [indistinct] [01:12:54] largest one [indistinct] [01:12:54] thousand congregation at that one point, okay.

                        What’s significant? Well, there are a number of people [indistinct] [01:13:06] first of all, more than 200 years ago one of my grandfathers was one of the four people that started this church because everyone no longer worshipped with the James Island Presbyterian Church up there. Started out of sense of pride. And it also was a first—and it preceded these public schools, okay.

MBR:              These are essentially maybe the first schools, right?

DR:                 Yes, that’s right. So sometime people do not connect the tradition and what influence and meaning that has, because it becomes customary and usual and accepted. And so this school here, even I don’t go to church like I used to, but it played a very important role in influencing people on this island, especially black community.

MBR:              We’re going to probably work with you later to map out all of the different schools, the pre-consolidation schools, you know, and kind of work through as we see the school system develop. But I think you’re right, I mean, no one’s brought up the St. James Presbyterian as a school prior to this and they probably had a very important role at that point in time.

DR:                 [Inaudible] [01:14:26] much. And still has an influence in the community through May Day. May Day was a activity that they had every year.

MBR:              What’s May Day?

DR:                 May Day is almost—it’s a festivity. And I remember when I was a kid we all would dress in blue trousers, white shirts, and I remember we’d plait the pole. You know what plaiting the pole is?

MBR:              Platinum pole? You mean a pole that you had things attached to and—

DR:                 Yeah. But you—

MBR:              Oh, the kids went around.

DR:                 Yes. Okay. Yeah. And there would be a parade and all, and the parents would come and the whole community really for St. James May Day activities. And there would be food, you know, and it was always a very festive time.

MBR:              A big deal.

DR:                 Yeah. Most of this is gone, but they still have it here. But I’ll tell you something else that disappeared that I remember when I was a little boy. Emancipation Day.

JT:                   Juneteenth?

DR:                 No.

MBR:              Tell me about it.

DR:                 No.

MBR:              Tell us about it.

DR:                 Emancipation Day. You know what it is?

JT:                   Tell us how that’s different from Juneteenth.

DR:                 Juneteenth is June—it was the 19th of June before people in Texas realized that the slaves had been emancipated. But the date of emancipation was supposed to been January 1. And the Emancipation Day started in Charleston. Used to be a big parade even when I was about eight. Every 1st of January down Charleston and it was a—it grew out of the 54th Regiment soldiers marching down the street and the population joining behind them because they liberated. Very, very interesting.

MBR:              Yeah.

DR:                 Okay. That’s gone now, too.

MBR:              Do you remember that parade? Was it during your lifetime?

DR:                 I do remember that. And another part of that, there’s a museum on Soligry. One of the daughters is still alive. She’s about 97 now, Mary—Mamie Chavis. And remember the—What’s her name? I interviewed her. She was one of the first who went to James Island High School. Laverne?

MBR:              Lavonne. Oh, Brown. Ms. Brown?

DR:                 No, not her. No, no. Remember the first time I interviewed—

MBR:              At the—

DR:                 At Gresham Meggett.

MBR:              At Gresham Meggett [crosstalk] [01:17:16]—

DR:                 It’s my cousin.

MBR:              Your cousin, yes, the [indistinct] [01:17:17]?

DR:                 Yes, yes.

MBR:              Yes, I’m sorry. Yes.

DR:                 Her mother is the oldest living of her grandfather’s children. Grandfather’s a short guy. We used to call him Demmy [phonetic].

MBR:              What’d you call him?

DR:                 Demmy.

MBR:              Demmy.

DR:                 Okay?

MBR:              Okay.

DR:                 And he would beat a drum. He would beat a mean drum. And sometime he would have big bass drum way up over his head and—Or he would have—and the small ones that has a stick. And that used to be a parade on Decoration Day as well as down Sol Legare Road sometimes. Those [indistinct] [01:17:58] people [indistinct] [01:18:02]. Those were memorable times. I got a glimpse of some of that because of Dave’s age, and of course here’s this old man with this little boy he’s dragging around with, you know. And so—he died at 75, so I had 30-some years with him, okay.

                        And I was like a dry sponge because I appreciated and respected and learned everything that he would daily teach me. I became—at one point I was a carpenter, you know, that’s my first skill I developed. I could have done any kind of—I still can, but I’m rusty now—any kind of building construction, yeah. [Indistinct] [01:18:43] he taught me how to survive so I’ll never go hungry, even though I’m an old man now. You know.

MBR:              Thank you, David. Should we close?

JT:                   Yeah, that would be good. Most of my questions are all like geographical. We’ll get to that when we do our little tour.

DR:                 She didn’t get a chance to—

MBR:              Your adoptive parents. David?

DR:                 Dave.

JT:                   David.

MBR:              But you call him Dave, and I wasn’t sure—Okay. David Richardson.

DR:                 Dave Richardson. D-A-V-E.

MBR:              D-A-V-I-D.

DR:                 Yeah. No.

MBR:              You just don’t like the way I write.

DR:                 Is this my name you’re writing down? His name?

MBR:              No, your adoptive father’s name.

DR:                 D-A-V-E.

JT:                   Just Dave.

DR:                 She don’t hear well, does she?

[Crosstalk] [01:19:34]

MBR:              …proper names.

DR:                 Let me tell you what happened in here. It is—and this is where may be educational and cultural divide. Dave is generally a nickname for David. Okay. So that’s what you [indistinct] [01:19:49].

MBR:              That’s where I went, now…Your mother’s name.

DR:                 Harriet.

MBR:              And that’s your adoptive mother?

JT:                   Don’t call her Harry.

DR:                 No. They called her—Her name was—her nickname was Emily.

MBR:              And her maiden name, do you know?

DR:                 Robinson.

MBR:              Robertson?

DR:                 Robinson.

MBR:              I-N-S-O-N.

DR:                 Yes.

MBR:              Okay. Your biological parents’ name.

DR:                 Thomas Backman.

MBR:              B-A-C-K?

DR:                 M-A-N. And my mother’s name was Susie Brown Backman.

MBR:              Now—

JT:                   So is Dave your—so Dave and Thomas were brothers. Why did they have different last names?

DR:                 Good question.  Good question.

MBR:              That’s why we needed the name—that’s why—

DR:                 Dave was my grandmother’s oldest son. She had three sons—three children before she got married to Thomas—I mean, to Richard.

JT:                   Okay.

MBR:              Brothers.

JT:                   So technically half-brothers but—

DR:                 Yes.

MBR:              I got you.

DR:                 What else?

MBR:              I looked at Thomas Prioleau’s [phonetic] family tree that he brought, and you’re related to him.

DR:                 I am?

MBR:              Is it through Susie Shevah [phonetic]?

DR:                 No.

MBR:              Her name was in the thing though, in his family tree, that’s why I was—

DR:                 Whose name was in the family tree?

MBR:              I want to say—

DR:                 Chavis?

MBR:              Yes.

DR:                 Yeah.

MBR:              Yeah. That name was in his family tree. I was wondering if that was where—how you were related to him.

DR:                 The relationship on the side that I know was through his grandmother.

MBR:              Okay.

DR:                 His grandmother name was Mary Smalls Prioleau.

MBR:              Okay. He’s going to send me his whole—he had a whole booklet, and it’s—it was fierce, let me put it that way. I wanted to copy it, but he put it away real quick and then he [indistinct] [01:22:08]. And I was like, uh-oh. But I’ve talked with him at least twice since the interview.

DR:                 Good person.

MBR:              Yes. And he’s found more things that he wants us to look at and—but anyway—but the family tree—

DR:                 He’s at a stage of life where he realize the importance of this being recorded.

MBR:              Yes. Oh, he’s so kind. Yeah. I mean—

DR:                 And he’s written a couple of books I think.

MBR:              Yes. Oh, no, he’s got those. He has everything ready. We’re just going to wait until someone from New South has a project down there and then they’ll pick stuff up and, you know, so everything’s safe.

DR:                 Well, I go down often past his house. I just—

MBR:              You do?

DR:                 Yes.

MBR:              He’s got all sorts of stuff. And he’s looking through more stuff. He’s so—I don’t know. I think he enjoyed being interviewed and I think he enjoyed telling his story and—so that was a good thing.

DR:                 Well, you know, old men like to talk about they past because that’s all they can do now.

MBR:              All right. Can I try something else?

DR:                 Okay.

MBR:              Okay. So, you went to St. James Presbyterian first, then you go to Cherry Beam, trying that one out, and then Gresham Meggett—

DR:                 Yes.

MBR:              …all the way up. So that’s—could we try and see where the site of that school is on Thursday?

DR:                 Oh, Thursday?

MBR:              There’s also—Cutbridge is another one, isn’t there?

DR:                 What time is it? It’s 3:00 o’clock. Yes.

MBR:              Yeah, we have to—

DR:                 Yeah, you want to get—

MBR:              Yeah, we learned from traffic yesterday. Who would think there was that much traffic? It’s all the way—

DR:                 People come in here 35—

MBR:              People just—

DR:                 New residents, 35 a day.

MBR:              Oh, my gosh. I was taken aback. I mean, we ate lunch and then, you know, but we didn’t get home like 7:30 after we stopped at the store. Yeah, we’re like, whoa, we’re too young, old.

JT:                   I’m so sorry for turning the heat back on.

DR:                 [Indistinct] [01:24:00].

MBR:              I thought I was getting cold and I put my jacket on [indistinct] [01:24:04].

JT:                   I walked into the other room. It was very warm.

MBR:              [Indistinct] [01:24:08]. Dave, that’s like a fairy tale that you just told me.

DR:                 [Indistinct] [01:24:16].

MBR:              You being given to the family next door. It’s like a Grimms’ Fairy Tale but it worked out beautifully. And how did—like how did Sammy—I’m sure he loved your—his parents [indistinct] [01:24:29] like that, but you were blessed. You were blessed. And I mean that in the nicest way, you know.

DR:                 Yeah.

MBR:              And he was blessed, too. I’m not giving the wrong impression there, but—

DR:                 Sammy probably would not have gone to college if I hadn’t.

MBR:              Really.

DR:                 Yes. Because out of all our brothers—because see, I know my mother had appreciation for education, less emphasized by my dad. You know, he was gone, he was on a boat most of [indistinct] [01:24:58]. And the other piece that I didn’t tell you was my third year at Fisk, my adopted father, because I got married my freshman year, would not pay for my education. For my fourth year, okay. I didn’t get mad at him. The glass was half full. I looked at it with, look, I got three years, and it’s up to me to finish. And I wasn’t angry with him, okay.

                        Well, my biological mother, when I came home that Christmas and I had not gotten any money from him to pay my tuition, I told her and she went to the bank and gave me $500. And my dad—my father and her says, “$500 isn’t going to stop you from graduating here,” okay. So when I graduated, I also was blessed that she came to my graduation. My adopted mother is a very quiet person, didn’t travel. And my dad had bowed out because of the fact that he didn’t finish paying for my education. And then when I graduated from law school, my biological mother also was in attendance. My adopted mother was dead then, but my adopted father could have gone. But he says, “I can’t leave my property because people might [indistinct] [01:26:36].” I’m going to see the glass half full.

MBR:              Yes, I see.

DR:                 Half full, okay. What are the opportunity and advantages? There’s a story that I didn’t tell you about them [indistinct] [01:26:51].

MBR:              Should I turn this off?

DR:                 No. They got started, my biological parents, right, my dad had gotten experience from his oldest brother having shrimp boats. That’s where he cut his teeth at. But then—and this was about 1948, he was working for a white gentleman who had several boats on Folly Beach. He had gone fishing 14 days, came in early and was asked by Dodge [phonetic]—he was the only boat in the dock—“Thomas , what’s the problem?” He said, “No problem, Mr. Dodge.” He said, “Well, why you come in here early, the other boys catching shrimp?” He said, “I’m tired. I fishing 14 days and I’m tired.” He said, “You better get that boat on back out there.”

                        My dad said to him, he said, “Mr. Dodge, I told you I’m tired.” He said, “You got two choices. You can either take that boat out there yourself or you can stick it up your ass.” So he got his stuff and he left. When he got home, he told my mother, and she says, “Isn’t there a boat down there for sale?” He said, “Yeah, but I ain’t got no money.” She said, “I got $1,000 saved.”

                        That’s how they bought their first shrimp boat and eventually was replaced to a fleet of six. That was one of the largest fleet on the East Coast run by African-Americans. But that did not happen until my biological father died in ’64, so—at 43 from pneumonia. But after his death, she called my brothers and my sister together and said, “He wouldn’t expect us to fail. That’s not an option.” I think two years later, they bought the first new shrimp boat, kept—every other year, kept buying another boat.

                        I call that the thumbtack effect, okay. In all of our lives is some event that happened that get your attention. You can’t stay where you are. You got to get up. So the thumbtack effect name comes from the fact that when you’re in high school, we boys sometime would put a tack in the seat with a sheet of paper over it, okay. And whether it’s a teacher or one of the student, you sit on that tack, you ain’t going to look around and say, “Wonder who did that?” You get the hell off of that tack. So there are always experience in life that has that impact. Make you move. So the question is, what do you do with that? I say, when that happens, you look around for opportunities because it’s the Creator hands in your life. Move. Look around and see where do I go from here.

MBR:              Thumbtack moment.

DR:                 Thumbtack effect.