Dr. Robert Greene II

Once more, the American experiment in democracy finds itself in peril. Like numerous other times in our nation’s history, this peril is primarily from within. Once, it was forces such as the Confederacy, the Ku Klux Klan, or the radical opponents of the Civil Rights Movement. Now, Trumpism has scored another victory, and many Americans are puzzled about what to do next. 

Now is not the time to give into despair. History offers us something to hold on to—not a false hope that things will automatically get better, but that the hard work of building democracy has been done before. It can, therefore, be done again.

In another age of reaction and despair, Frederick Douglass counseled Black Americans to hold the line for freedom. His 1894 address, “Lessons of the Hour,” was given two years before the Plessy v. Ferguson decision enshrined Jim Crow segregation for decades. But he saw the writing on the wall, as Southern states wrote new constitutions to disenfranchise Black Americans, and Northern leaders simply did nothing in response. Wrote Douglass, “Put away your race prejudice. Banish the idea that one class must rule over another.”

Or, as W.E.B. Du Bois argued in 1946 at the Southern Negro Youth Congress’ convention in Columbia, South Carolina, “To rescue this land”—referring to the South—“in this way, calls for the Great Sacrifice; this is the thing you are called upon to do because it is the right thing to do.”

Like Douglass, Du Bois understood the uphill battle for freedom he and his colleagues faced in the South, across the U.S., and around the world. DuBois told the overflow crowd from across South Carolina and the region, that they were on the “firing line not simply for the emancipation of the American Negro…” but for “the emancipation of the white slaves of modern capitalist monopoly.”

Like both of those men, we face our own long, twilight struggle—but it is one that begins right here, in South Carolina. What we do here will impact millions across the country and around the world.

Now, we rest. Next, we strategize. But soon, very soon, we must organize and prepare ourselves to, once again, make a way out of no way.

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Dr. Robert Greene II is an Assistant Professor of History at Claflin University. He is co-editor, along with Tyler D. Parry, of Invisible No More: The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Greene II is also the President of the African American Intellectual History Society, and Publications Chair for the Society of U.S. Intellectual Historians. He also serves as the Lead Instructor for the Modjeska Simkins School of Human Rights for the South Carolina Progressive Network. Dr. Greene II also co-hosts the podcast, Our New South, for the Next Chapter Podcast Network. He has also written for various publications, including The Nation, Dissent, Jacobin, and Oxford American. Currently, Dr. Greene II is working on his book, The Newest South: African Americans and the Democratic Party, 1964-1994, which details how the Southern leaders of the Democratic Party in the post-Civil Rights era crafted strategies to attract, and hold onto, the Black vote across the nation.

For the 16th year, the SC Progressive Network Education Fund is coordinating the Election Protection Coalition’s ground game in South Carolina by training volunteers and circulating the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline number that helps voters who experience problems at the polls.

Election Protection Coalition, the largest nonpartisan organization protecting the nation’s vote, is collaborating with nonprofits like ours to ensure that all eligible South Carolina voters are able to cast a ballot in the 2024 election.

“Calls to the hotline provide the only real-time, nonpartisan statewide audit of our election system,” said Network Executive Director Brett Bursey. “The hotline not only offers voters immediate help at the polls, reports to the hotline also helps us identify and address systemic problems.”

President John F. Kennedy anticipated the difficulty of getting the old Confederate states to comply with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, so he asked the American Bar Association to form a pro-bono lawyers committee to offer legal aid to help insure all eligible voters’ ballots be counted.

In 2008, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights launched a toll-free number to provide immediate legal assistance to voters through the the Election Protection 866-OUR-VOTE hotline. Spanish speakers can call 1-888-Ve-Y-Vota (1-888-83-9-8682) for assistance.

By calling the hotline, voters can confirm their registration status, find their polling location, and ask about required identification at the polls. Voters are encouraged to report any problems so that any patterns of failure can allow for corrections before the next election.

The Network is partnering with the SC NAACP to distribute the number statewide and to post the hotline in polling sites in all 46 counties.

If you would like to help, you can print out the hotline sign and post it prominently. You can also pick up printed materials, yard signs, and magnetic car signs at our office. Call 803-808-3384 to make arrangements.

SC Progressive Network members and allies from across the Palmetto State will gather the weekend of Nov. 15–17 at historic Penn Center to network, map strategy, and build community. 

The Network was founded at Penn in 1996, and we have met there many times over the years. It is a unique place steeped in rich culture and history. We will meet in the same room where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other luminaries of the civil rights movement met to find fellowship and map strategy. We will sleep on the same campus where formerly enslaved children studied freely for the first time in America. 

Dr. King Jr. wrote his I Have a Dream Speech at Penn. We will consider the same question he posed in 1966: Where do we go from here?

We hope you will join us for some old-school grass-roots organizing, face-to-face and in the round. Come for a day or the whole weekend. We promise that you will leave more energized, inspired, and hopeful than when you arrived.

Over the weekend, we will unpack the latest election and what it means for us as South Carolina citizens and as organizers. We will update members about the Network’s ongoing programs, including our Missing Voter Project, the Modjeska Simkins School, and our SC Fair Maps campaign to end gerrymandering.

We also will enlist participants’ help map our 2025 DemocraSC campaign — a civics model that connects all of our projects — and to brainstorm about our relaunch of the Network’s Healthy Democracy Road Show. In 2014, our 10-city road show focused on Medicaid expansion. The campaign included a spirited rally at the State House, intense lobbying of lawmakers, and peaceful protests over several weeks.

In 2025, we will focus our campaign on the increasing assault on public education — and on our commitment to teaching truth.

The retreat will provide enough structure to be practical and productive, but will allow enough free time for participants to caucus on their own or explore the beautiful Lowcountry culture and landscape.

Penn’s museum will be open, as will the National Park Service’s Reconstruction Era National Historical Park office, which anchors the Gullah-Geechee Corridor. On Saturday, rangers will be on duty offering lectures and exhibits.

Hunting Island State Park is 10 miles from Penn, with spectacular, undeveloped beaches on a 5,000-acre barrier island.

Members of allied organizations are welcome to bring promotional materials to share with retreat participants about their work. Please remember that the Progressive Network is nonpartisan.

To help provide scholarship assistance, donate HERE. To request scholarship assistance, call the Network’s office at 803-808-3384 or email network@scpronet.com.

If you can share a ride to Penn — or if you need one — call 803-808-3384 or email network@scpronet.com.

See RETREAT PROGAM HERE

We invite you to join the SC Progressive Network‘s campaign to help protect the vote in 2024. As Election Protection volunteers, we support more secure, transparent, and accessible elections for all South Carolinians. We also consider voter education an important part of election protection.

The trainings will be led by Susan Dunn, former SC ACLU lawyer who for years has worked with the Network on election protection. Volunteers are required to attend one training session on Zoom:

 • Tuesday, Oct. 8, 7pm: register HERE

 • Thursday, Oct. 10, 5pm: register HERE

 • Saturday, Oct. 12, 10am: register HERE

Please share with anyone you know who might be interested in participating. Questions? Call the Network office at 803-808-3384.

The video clip below is an edited recording of the Network’s September meeting. It’s a good primer on our Election Protection work in 2024 and our broader strategy on voter education.

Click to watch on YouTube

Gabbi Zurlo

I was asked to share my recent experience at Highlander Folk School, but I hesitated for fear of being dismissed as a SC Progressive Network fangirl. Maybe that’s true, but the more I reflect on it, maybe that’s okay. There’s so much to be proud of — and to fight for — in South Carolina.

A few months ago, with no real organizing experience, I left my hospital administration career, graduated from the Modjeska Simkins School for Human Rights, and joined the SC Progressive Network staff. Just weeks into the job, Network Director Brett Bursey suggested I apply for the LIFT fund’s leadership pipeline annual convening at the famed and fabled Highlander Folk School (now known as the Highlander Research and Education Center).

Though brand new, I was accepted. And as other’s excitement for me grew, so did the looming sense that I was depriving more deserving organizers from this opportunity. The Law of Abundance meant that in this I was not only abundant in support and opportunity, but in fear. What if my ineptitude embarrassed the Network? Who was I to be among those hallowed hills in Tennessee, where Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and my personal hero, Septima Clark once gathered?

Ideally, once I arrived I would have felt a sense of purpose and belonging. For those three days, however, I struggled to make sense of what I could possibly offer the others. They were leaders of their unions and worker centers across the south, many knowing each other for years. But I stayed determined to harvest whatever I could despite the anxiety.

We spent hours huddled in the small room scribbling the essence of our individual organizations on giant sticky notes for the rest to review and question. The purpose of this convening was to identify our “needs” and “dreams” — of the movement, of our organizations, and of ourselves.

As these seasoned leaders and activists shared their dreams, I sat back in shock. They were dreaming of citizenship schools, inter-generational support, a community space for art and events, analyses on class consciousness and working outside of the capitalist system, for time and space to dream. These dreams were my dreams too — but they are also my reality.

Those three days were educational and inspiring, not because they were teaching me new things, but because I was awakened to the true marvel of South Carolina. In the Modjeska School we were warned that South Carolina is like no other state. For all of the horrors that comes with that, so too comes hope, because the Network is already manifesting what many activist organizations in other states are only daring to dream of.

So, when I think of my needs and dreams as an organizer, I dream of remembering this gratitude. I need the daily phone calls with Brett and Becci Robbins. I need the fear and anger – the thrill of still having so much to learn. I need dancing with Femi at GROW’s Jazz Nights, and I need the 50 years of activism behind me so that I can do my part for the next 50 years.

And if I come across as a fangirl or acolyte, then so be it. We have work to do. The Network allows me to fulfill the needs and to dream my dreams; and whether or not you know it, we’re working for your needs and dreams, too.

Read more about Gabbi Zurlo in an earlier blog post.

Cecil Cahoon, SC Progressive Network Education Fund Board

One hundred thirty years ago on May 11, 1894, unionized workers of the Chicago-based Pullman Palace Car Company walked off their jobs in protest of 25-percent wage cuts, terrible working conditions, and 16-hour workdays. Company owner George Pullman was their employer and landlord, as most workers lived in company-owned housing, but Pullman kept rents high and refused to hear workers’ grievances. Nor would President Grover Cleveland, who ordered federal troops into Chicago not to keep the peace but to ensure that trains continued to run. When striking workers reacted predictably, Cleveland’s National Guardsmen fired into the crowd, killing at least a dozen and injuring dozens more.

The public sympathized with the striking workers against their abusive and powerful employer, which turned the strike into a political problem. By the end of June, Congress passed and Cleveland signed an act establishing a federal holiday known as Labor Day to honor America’s working class every first Monday in September.

Here in South Carolina, the plantation model of labor management had already been perfected in the textile manufacturing industry, with its class stratification and mill villages evident in every population center of the state. Mill owners built the stores, schools, and churches in their villages, even hired the pastors and teachers and dictated what sermons and lessons would be preached and taught in them. They owned the tracts of rental houses where their employees lived, and they supplied the electricity and gas to those homes. So the meager wages paid to workers came back to the mill owners in rent or payment for groceries, clothing, and everything else.

Every aspect of life was determined, provided, or withheld by a consortium of mill owners according to their preferences, and the result was a permanent under-class of working poor. The model was so woven into the fabric of the state that political leaders trumpeted South Carolina’s “cheap labor” from advertisements in northern periodicals to speeches on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

From Cleveland’s announcement of the first Labor Day holiday through the next forty years, union organizing among South Carolina’s working class was suppressed by all legal means, and by extra-legal means when necessary. Depression-era conditions led workers to strike in protest of the “stretch-out,” a system that increased production while decreasing wages. But no state or federal law existed to protect the rights of workers against employers.

So when workers at Honea Path’s Chiquola Mill joined in the textile workers’ strike that swept from northern Alabama through Georgia and the western Carolinas in the summer of 1934, it was an act of courage. In a mill town as small as Honea Path — population 2,750 — where everyone knew everyone, where Mayor Dan Beacham was also a steward at the local Methodist Church and the mill superintendent, striking workers knew they could be fired with impunity, and that scabs — non-unionized workers who were also their friends and neighbors — could be hired to take their jobs. 

What they didn’t expect was to be assassinated by their employer, killed by men they knew personally at the orders of their manager.

This September 6 marks the ninetieth anniversary of the Honea Path Massacre on Bloody Thursday, when seven Chiquola Mill workers were murdered in broad daylight for the sin of striking for better wages and working conditions.

On that Thursday morning in 1934, as non-unionized workers on the night shift left the property and more arrived to begin the day shift, unionized workers gathered with family members and allies in front of the mill to continue their protest. None was armed; each picketer was searched by union organizers to ensure a peaceful protest. Before 8 a.m., the crowd had grown to more than 300, including some women. Each side shouted questions and comments at the other, with one argument between two men turning briefly into a physical fight.

But earlier that day, Beacham — the mayor and mill superintendent — had deputized and armed 138 men, and had stationed these “special deputies” inside the mill’s second-floor windows. Beacham did this, he said, at the instruction of Governor Ibra C. Blackwood, Sheriff W.A. Clamp, and Adjutant General James C. Dozier.

In the inquest that followed, no one could determine with certainty who fired the first shot from the mill windows, but the shooting continued for several minutes as striking workers turned and fled in all directions. Three of the workers were shot in the back. Clamp and Deputy W.J. Watson were present outside the mill, but Watson later told the media that none of the law enforcement officers present “so much as drew a gun” in the melee.

When the shooting ended, scores of striking workers lay wounded and bleeding in the street, on the sidewalk, or in yards across the street from the mill. Six men were dead: Claude Cannon, 25; Lee Crawford, 26; Ira Davis, 26; E.M. (Bill) Knight, 45; R. Thomas Yarborough, 45; and Maxie Peterson of Greenwood, 25. Two days later, another victim would die of his wounds: Charles L. Rucker, 35.

No weapons were found on any of the slain men.

As the ambulances arrived to take the wounded to the hospital in Anderson, 18 miles away, and Coroner J. Roy McCoy arrived to survey the dead, Chiquola President L.O. Hammett closed the mill for the day. From Columbia came notice that Governor Blackwood had ordered Company D of the 118th Infantry to Honea Path — not to protect citizens or keep the peace, but to protect Chiquola Mill from potential harm.

The funerals couldn’t be held in the churches of Honea Path because they were owned by the mill, W.A. Smith, who was wounded that day, told reporters 60 years later. Instead, open-air services for the first six victims were held on Saturday in a field at the edge of town, with an estimated 10,000 people attending. TIME magazine covered the event. Services for the seventh victim was held on Monday.

L.E. Brookshire, president of the South Carolina Federation of Labor, declared that it was a “cold-blooded attack on unarmed pickets exercising their constitutional rights.”

Chiquola Mill re-opened for normal operations on Tuesday morning.

One week later, a total of 317 witnesses were summoned to testify at the inquest, including 207 named by the state, and more than 90 testified. They included women widowed by the assassinations, the wounded son of a murder victim, and three physicians who attended the scene. Witness Annie May Davis was the wife of victim Ira Davis and the sister to victim Lee Crawford. Witness Jim C. Fox testified quietly and haltingly due to a neck wound. 

Through questioning under oath, Solicitor Rufus Fant determined that the shooters included Chief George Page and Officers E.T. Kay and Charles M. “Big Charlie” Smith of the Honea Path Police Department, and “Special Deputies” Robert Calvert, Lev Young, Tom Stalcup, Rob Smith, Lawrence Smith, and Claud Campbell — a 15-year-old boy armed with a .22 rifle.

According to multiple witnesses, Crawford was shot three times in the back from a yard’s distance after Crawford had been knocked to the ground. A physician confirmed that Crawford bore powder burns from being shot at close range, and that Yarborough and Knight were killed by buck shot from a shotgun.

In his testimony, mill superintendent and Mayor Beacham reported that he left the scene before the night shift departed the mill and the shooting began, went home to have breakfast, and only returned to the mill after the shooting had ended.

The hearing lasted two full days. In his summary report to the jury of nine, Fant counted the dozens of witnesses who testified that Officer “Big Charlie” Smith and Calvert shot Crawford; Officer E.T. Kay shot Yarborough; Chief George Page shot E.M. Knight; Claud Campbell shot Cannon; and Officer “Big Charlie” Smith shot Davis. The jury deliberated an hour and sixteen minutes before returning to hold the named shooters responsible for the deaths.

Fant issued warrants charging murder on the parts of Page, Smith, and Kay of the police department, and “Special Deputies” Lawrence Smith, Calvert, Campbell, Stalcup, James Smith, Floyd Smith, and Rob Smith.

In November, a grand jury indicted only Officer Charles M. “Big Charlie” Smith and “Special Deputy” Robert Calvert, finding insufficient evidence to indict the other named shooters.

At trial in the county seat of Anderson the following February, Smith testified under oath that he never took his gun out of its holster during the shooting. Calvert swore he “was not conscious” of having fired his pistol, and that two of the slain men had grabbed and beaten him until he passed out. He assured jurors he regained consciousness only after the shooting was over, and realized after returning home that his pistol had three empty cartridges in it. He denied having shot anyone.

Twenty-two witnesses for the state testified that Smith and Calvert had shot strikers without provocation. Eighteen witnesses for the defense testified that Smith and Calvert had only fired their weapons in self-defense.

Beacham, who told reporters after the shooting that he’d “deputized” 138 men on instructions from the governor, the sheriff, and the adjutant general, conceded under oath that he’d “deputized” the shooters without the approval of Honea Path city council but asserted that the “special deputies” were “sworn in to keep the peace through the town.”

After four hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted both Smith and Calvert.

In the weeks following the massacre, “the town rolled up,” said one resident.

By the end of September, union leaders called off the strike due to “force and hunger,” and when strike funds had run out.

Claude Cannon’s widow, Iona, had six small children and no income, and she lived in a rental house owned by the Chiquola Manufacturing Company. She didn’t earn enough from her job at a local shirt plant to pay the rent, power, and fuel, so the Chiquola owners sent her an eviction notice when the debt reached $115.55. She was given two weeks to vacate the premises.

Then the Chiquola owners offered her a job in the mill where her slain husband had worked, with two caveats: She could work for Chiquola as long as she wished, so long as she paid the back rent and she never mentioned a union. With children to raise and no options, she took the offer.

For decades, Iona Cannon kept the clothes her husband was wearing when he died.

For the next sixty years, no one talked about Bloody Thursday. When documentary filmmakers George Stoney and Judith Helfand began research for a film, Elaine Ellison-Rider of The Belton and Honea Path News-Chronicle published an article on the project and was warned by readers to “let people forget.”

“They were still scared after 60 years,” the reporter wrote. When the strike ended, workers had no alternative to going back to work in the same mill. Children and grandchildren of the murdered men wounded up working at Chiquola Mill if they stayed in Honea Path.

The resulting documentary, “The Uprising of ‘34,” stirred a few descendants to take action and raise funds for a monument to honor the slain men. At an event in May, 1995, Claude Cannon’s daughter and grandchildren saw a granite marker unveiled by Dan Beacham’s grandson, author Frank Beacham. The younger Beacham had been born and raised far from Honea Path and became involved only after learning from the filmmakers of his grandfather’s role.

Chiquola Mill’s new owner, Springs Industries, provided a $440 meat tray for attendees at the public service.

But the documentary also illustrated the immoral lessons that the massacre taught South Carolina’s working class: that workers should be grateful for their employment, should accept the wages and working conditions provided for them, and should expect and ask for nothing more.

Worse, if they attempt to organize through a union to improve the quality of their lives, they should know that their employer could take their livelihoods and their lives with impunity. No justice will be available to them forever. And the state of South Carolina would offer its working citizens no protection from their economic and political superiors.

Those economic and political superiors weighed in one last time to reinforce these immoral lessons when the documentary was released. Decision-makers prevented its broadcast on South Carolina ETV on June 27, 1995, the night that it aired on public television stations nationwide.

SCETV President Henry Cauthen denied that the film was censored for its content. Spokeswoman Kathy Gardner-Jones called it “an editorial decision” and explained that the program department believed “that this film didn’t represent overall community wishes of what they wanted to see.”

SCETV refused to air the documentary for three more years until June, 1998.

One way to honor Labor Day this year is to view “The Uprising of ‘34.” Another is to visit Honea Path and see the marker in Dogwood Park, a short distance from the former site of Chiquola Mill and the murder scene. The abandoned mill began crumbling in 2009 and was demolished in 2018.

Yet another is to seek out and thank the courageous men and women who are dues-paying members of their unions in South Carolina, living and working in defiance of a political and economic system designed to keep working South Carolinians productive, compliant, and unable to threaten the state’s power structure.

Perhaps the best way to honor this Labor Day is to join them in their struggle for better lives.

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Please join us for a virtual program on Friday, Sept. 6. Scan the CQ code in the flyer or click HERE to register. All are welcome.

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