This episode of Back Window is intended to shake some illusions that many “incomers” have about the South. I don’t use “incomers” in a pejorative sense. We are all incomers…even those who crossed the Bering Straits over 10,000 years ago. There are some regional stereotypes that need to be addressed. I hate the notion that all Southern “womenfolk” wore hoop skirts to the cotillion at the plantation or even wanted to. Most Southern women chopped firewood, washed clothes in iron cauldrons, and worked the fields beside the men. Most of our menfolk didn’t own a white suit and while there was a bit of bourbon consumed, most didn’t even have a veranda.
That may be a tiny exaggeration of what newcomers to the South believe. It is just as exaggerated to believe that we are all ignorant and missing multiple teeth and brain cells.
We come from all sorts of roots and I want to put some fresh eyes on a couple of the real stories. These two are from my father’s family.
My paternal grandmother was Kate Lackey. She grew up on a family farm in lower Chester County, South Carolina. I don’t mean acres and acres of cotton and tobacco; you could probably encircle the entire farm on foot in fifteen minutes. Kate’s mother, my Great Grandmother, Sara Bailey Lackey took care of the children and fed the chickens and did the washing and cleaning herself. Water was pumped from a well and brought into the house in buckets. Food was cooked on a woodburning stove and the wood was cut and split by Sarah or her husband, Willam (Billy) Lackey, or by one of her older boys. There were four boys, Roscoe, Greer, William Jennings and Gib. Mamie was the only girl until Kate came along later
Besides the few acres of cotton, the family also had a personal garden to raise food for themselves. The entire farm was worked by Billy Lackey and a mule. It was the same mule he rode to church to lead the Armenia Methodist choir. The children, as soon as they were old enough, were put to work feeding the chickens or milking the cow and taking over whatever chores they were able to do.
Henry’s wife, Sara, would sometimes take his lunch to him in the field and he would sit with her under a tree for a few minutes while he ate. She would then take the plate and cup and flatware back to the house.
She did this even when she was pregnant with one of the children.
On that day, that awful day in June of 1888, she was two months pregnant with my grandmother, Sara Kate Lackey, and may not have even been aware of her condition. She started back to the house as a cloud darkened the sky to the west. It didn’t look like much of a storm, just a few dark clouds in an otherwise hazy blue June sky.
Billy Lackey continued to plow, following the mule to cut furrows in the red clay to clear weeds out from between the rows. When the rain started, Billy pushed the plow handles down to lift the blade out of the earth and guided the mule to shelter under a large oak at the edge of the field.
Sara Lackey gathered the children in the house as the rain started. It was a fast-moving cloud and she only heard one crack of thunder. She spent the next hour getting ready to put supper on the table for Billy and the five children. When he didn’t come back as evening fell, she went out into the twilight to check on him. She found him under the big oak. The tree still smoked from the lightning strike and William Henry Lackey and the mule both lay dead at the base of the split trunk. He was 28 years old. My Grandmother, Kate Lackey, was born on the following Valentine’s Day, 1889. Sarah and the older children took over the work raising the family and working the farm. Family members and friends helped and Sara and her children managed to make it through the loss.
My paternal grandfather, William Robbs Hill was also born in Chester County near Bullocks Creek. His mother died giving birth to him and he was, in his words, passed from pillar to post, living with different family members. Always called Robbs, he attended school for only about a week. There were no laws requiring him to stay in school. He was curious enough and wanted to learn to read so his older sister taught him until he had the basics. She then told him if he wanted to get any better, he would have to teach himself. He did exactly that and was an avid reader all his life even teaching an adult Sunday School class for years.
Somewhere between ages nine and eleven, Robbs began his lifelong career. He went to work in a cotton mill near Lockhart, South Carolina as a doffer along with many other children, boys and girls. Because he was a hard worker and could read and write in a time when many mill workers could not, he was promoted quickly and was a shift supervisor at age 14. Robbs was a small man at 5’ 6” and weighed around 130 pounds with rocks in his pockets. He often had boys working on his shift who were much bigger and older than he. He recalled having to fight grown men to establish his authority.
Even though Robbs had moved up to management over the years, the Great Depression showed no favoritism. When the mill announced that it was closing, Robbs Hill was 42 years old. He took his final paycheck and bought bulk supplies to prepare for an uncertain future. My father, who was only six or seven years old, remembers when Robbs and his older sons, Elmo and Ray, brought in fifty-pound bags of flour and cornmeal and sacks of sugar. There were also cans of vegetables and meats and large tin containers of cooking oil and lard. They were luckier than some families. The mill owners still allowed him to live for a time in the house they owned.
Robbs looked for work wherever he could find it, once moving the family to North Carolina. Robbs even sold insurance door-to-door for a while. The insurance job didn’t last. During a depression, nobody wants to buy something as nebulous as insurance. The recovery from the Great Depression was slow in the South and in 1939, when the mills around Union, SC still hadn’t reopened, a good friend, Loyce Bailey, wrote my grandfather to let him know that there was an opening in a plant in Fort Mill. Elliott Springs kept the mills running during the depression and with a recommendation from Mr. Bailey, Robbs got the job and moved his family to a small house on Still Street.
My father, Robert Charles Hill, was a rising senior in high school and reluctantly left the Union High Yellow Jackets to become a Fort Mill Yellow Jacket. Head football coach Troy, in Union tried to arrange for Dad to stay on his team but my father chose to be with his family. Dad tried out for Fort Mill football and was immediately part of the team. At 6’2” and 220 pounds, he was the biggest player Fort Mill had ever seen (He got his size from his mother’s side of the family. The Lackeys tended to be big people). He entered Fort Mill High School for the 1939-1940 school year and was immediately elected senior class president. He graduated, married Dorothy Case, my mother, and spent four years in the Marines before returning to Fort Mill to begin his career. The rest is his story and he told it in a book he wrote for his grandchildren. His book called, Listen My Children, is available at bookstores nowhere but every child and grandchild has one.
In reflecting on the history of my family and the South, it would be neglectful and callous not to acknowledge that millions of black Americans are descended from African ancestors who were torn from their families and homeland and sold as slaves to work the land. I am sure that some of my ancestors must have been among those slaveholders. It is a horrific legacy and cannot be either swept under the carpet of history or excused as “the way things were”.
I was born with “White Privilege” from people with the stain of red clay on their overalls and the sweat of hard work on their brows. I tell the story of my father’s family with pride but I tell it for a purpose. For those ancestors who prospered from the slave labor of black Americans, I am truly sorry that such an institution was allowed to begin and to grow so pervasive. When people argue that the South continued holding slaves long after they should have, I can only answer that the first minute of slavery was too long.
There is much work to be done to repair the injustices that linger into the present and to mend the rifts that now threaten to divide us racially and economically. I pray that we can begin to build a nation where pride and opportunity are universal, justice for one is justice for all and the road to the future is wide enough for all of us to walk side by side.
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