Tag Archives: “Becci Robbins”

Noted Charleston activist calls “History Denied” a must-read

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Jim Campbell, a highly regarded human rights activist and recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, has been a gift to the SC Progressive Network since the group’s founding in 1996. The organization has benefited mightily from his years in the trenches – as a Marine and as a social justice warrior. (Campbell’s papers are housed at the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture in Charleston.)

Becci Robbins and Jim Campbell at the SC Progressive Network’s 2016 fall conference.

We sent him a copy of our new booklet, knowing how familiar he is with the people and history it covers. In return, he copied us on an email he sent to his comrades across the country. His endorsement is a true honor.

Campbell wrote, “I’ve just read a copy of the SC Progressive Network‘s recently published booklet, HISTORY DENIED: Recovering South Carolina’s Stolen Past by Becci Robbins. Its content is a substantive introduction to the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) and the vanguard radical labor organizing among interracial youth in the severely segregated South between 1937 and 1949. Specifically, this tells of a landmark Congress convened in Columbia, South Carolina in October of 1946. This event had in active participation such Freedom Movement notables as local South Carolina Youth Leaders in addition to Paul Robeson, Herbert Aptheker, Dorothy and Louis Burnham, Esther [Cooper] and Jim Jackson, Louise Patterson, Sallye Davis, Jack O’Dell, South Carolina’s Modjeska Simkins and the Congress’ keynote speaker, W.E.B. DuBois. His keynote speech, BEHOLD THE LAND, has been a ‘must read’ for all young activists ever since.

This landmark booklet is also a ‘must read’ for today’s activists as both struggle inspiration and primer on our long civil rights movement.”

The booklet was reviewed by Jeffrey Collins at the Associated Press.

Jim Campbell speaks at a Network retreat at Penn Center.

GET YOUR COPY OF HISTORY DENIED

Download the e-version of History Denied here. (You can also download three earlier booklets on three phenomenal SC women Modjeska Monteith Simkins, Harriet Hancock, and Sarah Leverette.)

Copies of History Denied are available at the Network’s office in the historic Modejska Simkins House, 2025 Marion St., downtown Columbia, SC. One copy is free; additional copies are $2.50 each. To order by mail, click here. To order bulk copies, call our office at 803-808-3384.

Public invited to July 23 launch of “History Denied: Recovering South Carolina’s Stolen Past”

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Book Launch
Monday, July 23, 5:30-7pm
Seibels House and Garden
1601 Richland St., Columbia

Light eats  •  Cash bar
Booklets are FREE!

Join the SC Progressive Network in celebrating the recent publication of History Denied, Recovering South Carolina’s Stolen Past by Network Communications Director Becci Robbins.

“I learned so much on this project—not the least of which is how little I know,” Robbins said. “The more I dug and read, the angrier I got about my miseducation. It’s been unsettling to know how much history we’ve been denied, and calls into question everything we’ve been taught.”

History Denied is Robbins’ fourth booklet to be funded by the Richland County Conservation Commission. She previously published a trilogy to mark the achievements of three extraordinary South Carolina women: human rights activist Modjeska Monteith Simkins, gay rights advocate Harriet Hancock, and legal pioneer Sarah Leverette. Those booklets are available free at the Network’s office, and can be downloaded online. The History Denied booklet will be uploaded after the launch.

An unprecedented interracial crowd packs the Township Auditorium in Columbia for the Southern Negro Youth Congress’ 7th annual conference the weekend of Oct. 19, 1946.

“This is a cautionary tale. It centers on the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC), a militant, interracial youth movement that thrived against all odds between 1937 and 1949 in the Jim Crow South. Its rise and fall—and the collective amnesia that followed—offers a timely warning about how history is made and unmade, and how that shapes our shared narrative.

While SNYC was based in Birmingham, AL, South Carolina activists played a key role in SNYC’s unlikely success. Early on, Columbia activist Modjeska Monteith Simkins served on its board, and was instrumental in bringing SNYC’s 7th annual conference to Columbia in October 1946.

The three-day event promised a glittering line-up of distinguished speakers—including keynote W.E.B. DuBois and internationally acclaimed Paul Robeson—as well as invited guests from around the world. The ambitious schedule included daytime workshops to hone the organizing skills of the young delegates.

It was an unprecedented gathering, yet one that has largely been forgotten. Only recently has scholarship on the radical human rights movement in the 1930s and ’40s emerged, enriching our understanding of the people who drove it and the critical ground they laid for those who came later.

SNYC is far from the only chapter of history to be whitewashed, distorted, or erased altogether. This booklet offers a few South Carolina examples: the first Memorial Day, celebrated in war-ruined Charleston after Confederates evacuated the city in 1865; the radically democratic experiment that was Reconstruction; the widespread practice of lynchings after Reconstruction’s end; and the conspiracy of silence that followed the 1934 killings of seven striking textile workers in Honea Path.

Becci Robbins

It is no accident that we don’t know our labor history or the darkest truths about the white supremacy built into South Carolina’s very constitution, and that denial carries lasting consequences. Ignorance comes with a heavy price.

This booklet is an attempt to broaden our view of the past, even if it hurts. These stories are painful, but they are also heroic. For every act of oppression, there have been acts of resistance by people willing to risk their very lives to stand for human decency and the promise upon which this country was built. Their struggles and triumphs deserve to be shared, their bravery celebrated, their work continued.

This volume is not a comprehensive telling of South Carolina’s forgotten resisters. The voices and contributions of women, workers, Native tribes, LGBTQ+ Americans, immigrants, and other marginalized communities also are missing or minimized in our textbooks and in the mainstream media. This is simply a reminder that what we’ve been taught has largely been dominated by money, war, and the experiences of white men of privilege. That cheats a whole lot of citizens from knowing that their ancestors played important roles in the making of this state and nation.

SNYC’s story lays bare the very best and worst of America. We’d be wise to know both.”

Allen University chooses Modjeska Simkins book for campus “read along”

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To celebrate Library Week, on April 11 students from Allen University took turns reading from a booklet about Modjeska Monteith Simkins that the SC Progressive Network published in 2014. Students led what they called a “read in,” and also held a campus-wide book presentation contest. Some 200 booklets were distributed free to students in the weeks leading up to the event.

“As an HBCU in Columbia, South Carolina, we chose Modjeska Monteith Simkins: A South Carolina Revolutionary because of the outstanding leadership qualities she demonstrated throughout her life,” wrote a university spokeswoman in a message inviting our participation.

Network Director Brett Bursey, who worked with Modjeska for 18 years, challenged the students to get involved in moving the state toward social, political, and economic justice.

“It was so gratifying to see students gather together to remember Modjeska’s extraordinary life,” said Becci Robbins, the Network’s communication director and booklet author. “She would have loved it.”

In its recent third printing, the booklet includes a new section on Modjeska’s involvement in the Southern Negro Youth Congress, which held a leadership training school at Allen University in 1947. You can download the booklet HERE.

Bobby Donaldson: “The legacy of Modjeska Simkins is not dead”

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In 1938, just days before her 39th birthday, Modjeska Simkins drew up plans for her own funeral. “For reasons known only to myself,” she wrote directives for a simple ceremony to be carried out “in the event of my demise.” It included a list of hymns and readings, and a note to the mortician to refuse floral arrangements.

We can only guess what prompted her to write the document, which USC history professor Dr. Bobby Donaldson shared at this year’s Modjeska party, an annual birthday celebration the SC Progressive Network holds at her Columbia home. He said it appears nobody ever read it, perhaps because it was buried in the piles of books and papers that filled her home.

This much is clear: there was much ado and flowers aplenty when Modjeska died in 1992. And for good reason.

Dr. Bobby Donaldson speaks from the back porch of the Modjeska Simkins House.

“Fortunately for us,” Donaldson said, “Modjeska did not die in 1938. If she had, we would not have a SC NAACP, established in 1939. If she had died, we would not have had an extraordinary letter written in 1944 to the governor, Olin D. Johnston, demanding he debate the merits of white supremacy. If she had died in 1938, we would not have the Modjeska in 1946 who helps organize one of the most extraordinary youth gatherings in the history of this country.”

He ticked off a list of things that would not exist were not for Modjeska, including the Harbison Training Institute that taught progressive activists in the late 1940s (with a curriculum mirroring that of the Modjeska Simkins School for Human Rights) and the 1951 Briggs v Elliott case, a critical component of what would become Brown v Board in 1954.

Donaldson ended with a call to action. “The legacy of Ms. Simkins is not dead,” he said. “And if we ever needed a Modjeska Simkins movement inspired by her legacy, you look around this world; we need it now.”

As part of the Network’s commitment to educating and mobilizing that movement, we are preparing to reprint Network Communications Director Becci Robbins’ booklet Modjeska Monteith Simkins: A South Carolina Revolutionary. It will include a new section with historical details discovered since the original printing.

The booklet, published in 2014 through a grant from the Richland County Conservation Commission, has been circulated widely in the Midlands and at no cost to readers. We’d like to keep the booklet free. You can help make that possible.

To date, we have received a generous donation from Historic Columbia and a number of individual supporters, raising $1,700 of the $3,900 we need.

Please help us reach our goal by donating at our secure site or by calling our office at 803-808-3384.

To view more photos from this year’s party, see our album.

Listen to Modjeska Simkins School graduate Vikki Perry in this clip.

Offensive monuments: should they stay or should they go?

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Becci Robbins
Communications Director, SC Progressive Network

Since white supremacists terrorized Charlottesville and shocked an addled nation, there is growing demand to take down offensive monuments in public spaces. Pressure is building in South Carolina as well, so we thought it time to revisit the SC Progressive Network‘s position, drafted after the Confederate flag was moved off the State House grounds and amid subsequent calls to remove the Ben Tillman statue.

Our position remains that instead of removing offensive monuments we reinterpret them to accurately reflect the state’s painful history. As we said in 2015, “taking them down will not change the past, nor will it help future generations understand and change the institutionalized racism they inherit. We support telling the truth about our former ‘heroes’ with additional plaques that explain their role in using race and class oppression to retain wealth and power.”

This is a teachable moment, a chance for a deeper look at these edifices we usually pass by without notice. Instead of erasing history, we should expand our understanding of it. When and why were the monuments erected? Whose interests did they serve and at what price? And who, really, are these figures occupying places of honor on the State House lawn? Chances are most South Carolinians don’t know.

We understand that our position is not shared among all of our members or allies, and we respect those who disagree. There isn’t a single valid way to respond to the assault on our shared values of equality and fairness. But whatever your beliefs, please don’t let your outrage misdirect your energy. There is critical work to be done in South Carolina to address the sources rather than the symptoms of our problems.

Our State House is littered with statues honoring the architects of systemic racism, codified in our very constitution. But we cannot wave a magic wand to make the monuments disappear. In fact, only our lawmakers can take them down, and then by an unlikely two-thirds vote, thanks to the Heritage Act they passed to ensure their enduring control.

The question activists must ask ourselves is not whether offensive monuments should come down, but how much time and energy are we willing to spend to that end.

Network bumper sticker, circa 1996

At its founding conference in 1995, the Network identified racism as the state’s most crippling and pressing problem. We joined other South Carolinians of good will and spent the better part of two decades fighting to get the Confederate flag off the State House grounds.

But all the years of heated debate and public protest did not move a Republican-controlled legislature unwilling to risk alienating its conservative base. The rallies, marches, editorials, town halls, national boycott – all fell on deaf ears.

It took the murder of nine people in a Charleston church for lawmakers to finally take the flag down. Even when the dead included one of their own, Sen. Clemeta Pinckney, debate on the floor was vicious and divided. Ultimately, it was political expediency during a campaign season that made them finally furl the flag. Photos of the killer posing with a Confederate flag forced the GOP to address an issue they could no longer ignore or defend. Make no mistake; it was pressure from the national party, not a moral epiphany, that moved Gov. Nikki Haley to act.

She is the perfect example of the liability in removing symbols of white supremacy while leaving its systems and structure untouched. Lawmakers can proudly claim the moral high ground (finally) while continuing to implement policies that disenfranchise and marginalize the least of us.

Watching the flag finally furled was a triumph, to be sure. But it came at a price. And what did it solve?

Since the flag came down, material conditions for the state’s most vulnerable citizens remain unchanged. Access to health care is uneven and inadequate. Public schools still struggle to offer our children minimally adequate education. The State House is embroiled in yet another corruption scandal. We are suffering the fallout from an irresponsible nuclear boondoggle that reflects a business-friendly political culture run amok. The state’s roads and dams are crumbling because lawmakers have starved infrastructure in the name of low taxes. The list is way too long.

So, yes, be outraged about the monuments, but choose your battles wisely. Statues never killed anyone; but public policy does so every single day.

Furthermore, symbols say a lot about who we are. As Modjeska Monteith Simkins said about the Confederate flag: Leave the damn rag up there. I’d rather see the Klan in sheets than in suits. As long as that flag flies from on top of that building you know what’s in the hearts of the people inside.”

• • •

The Network applauds those working to correct the historical narrative in South Carolina. To date, we know of plans for a poetry reading in front of the monument to Marion Sims, a visitation of the Tillman and Strom Thurmond statues by the New Legacy Project, and graduates of the Modjeska School are producing a tour of monuments on the State House grounds that is a departure from the one handed out in the gift shop.

Modjeska School graduate talks about lessons learned

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Rep. Joe Neal congratulations Kyle Criminger at the 2015 graduation ceremony for the inaugural class of the Modjeska Simkins School.

As the Modjeska Simkins School prepares for its upcoming session, we thought it timely to share Kyle’s thoughts about the school and lessons learned there.

•  •  •

We got perspective at the Modjeska Simkins School: a big-picture analysis—a Modjeska Simkins analysis—of South Carolina’s history.

We learned that there is a direct line of malice from John C. Calhoun, who defended slavery as “a positive good,” to Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman’s white supremacist state Constitution of 1895 (under which our state continues to operate to this day), to the coded racism of Harry Dent and Lee Atwater’s Southern Strategy. Always the substance of South Carolina public policies has shown that black lives don’t matter here.

The imbalance of power in South Carolina is no accident. Because of unprecedented partisan gerrymandering, we have the least competitive legislative elections in the United States. Three out of four representatives faced no major party competition in the 2014 general election.

“Most of our legislators in South Carolina are winning with 99% of the vote,” said Brett Bursey, Executive Director of the SC Progressive Network. “The old Soviet elections we used to make fun of? Well, we now have that here.”

South Carolinians have the lowest combined state and federal tax burden in the country, yet our legislature tells that us we’re broke when we’re not. In fact, we leave more money on the table in special interest tax exemptions than we take in. We get immoral budgets and refused Medicaid Expansion for 250,000 of us because of petty partisan politics.

It’s maddening, but our problems aren’t new. “The names and faces have changed,” notes Progressive Network Communications Director Becci Robbins in Modjeska Monteith Simkins—A South Carolina Revolutionary, “but the political and social dynamics of exclusion, extremism and institutional racism remain stubbornly intact in South Carolina. We share Modjeska Simkins’ frustration and sense of urgency.”

Time and again, South Carolina history shows us how Modjeska Simkins and so many others have resisted. We are not alone, you see. Have you heard of the Yemassee War, or the Stono Rebellion? Denmark Vesey, or the Grimké sisters? What about Robert Smalls and our state’s Reconstruction legislature, which was the only majority black House of Representatives in the nation? The Lighthouse and Informer newspaper, Judge J. Waties Waring, or the Rev. J.A. Delaine?

Maybe you don’t know these names, events and institutions because the “winners” have written our textbooks. Generations of South Carolinians used Mary Simms Oliphant’s infamous history text into the 1980s. The book spoke of “happy slaves,” and was sympathetic to the Ku Klux Klan. (In the 1920s, as a teacher at Booker T. Washington High School in Columbia, Modjeska Simkins refused to use the Oliphant textbook, deeming it racist.)

So we have on the one hand a state that has lived and died by the Golden Rule. Everybody knows the Golden Rule: regrettably, he who has the gold makes the rules. But beside that Rule, we also have stories of rebellion and revolutionary spirits, a South Carolina “people’s history” of organizing. And the task Modjeska Simkins and so many other South Carolinians like her have laid out before us: we must organize to form a community of shared values.

That is 24-7 work. It’s a process.

Organizing means preparing for opportunities. It entails building an organization that returns phone calls, pays staff, and fosters relationships in the community based on trust and confidence. And it is strategic, a disciplined use of collective energies on effective projects, not by simply being reactive. The best organizers leverage already-existing, well-thought-out organizing tools, and tap into the collective wisdom and experience of those who have come before, just like Modjeska Simkins did.

We must connect the dots to see that there is only one struggle, and it is for human rights. “If you have enough sense in your noggin,” Simkins once said, “you’re going to know a fight is there—and not just for black people, but for all mankind.”

The need for exploring our history has never been more critical. The Modjeska School provides an education like none other in South Carolina, one that benefits not just the students but the larger community, as well. As a graduate, I can attest to its value.

•  •  •

Kyle Criminger, a Spanish-language interpreter, serves as Co-chair of the SC Progressive Network. He was one of 35 inaugural graduates of the Modjeska Simkins School for Human Rights. You can support the school by making a secure donation here, or by calling 803-808-3384 or sending an email to network@scpronet.com.

Know your SC herstory? Download booklet profiling legal pioneer Sarah Leverette

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sarah_leverette_cvovershotThe SC Progressive Network‘s recently published profile of Sarah Leverette, which is being distributed free in select spots in Columbia – including our office at 2025 Marion St. – is now available for free download here.

The booklet is the final of a set of booklets about three extraordinary South Carolina women: Leverette, human rights activist Modjeska Monteith Simkins, and LGBT advocate Harriet Hancock. The two-year project was made possible by a generous grant from the Richland County Conservation Commission, which shares our belief that history is our greatest teacher.

For information about the booklets, call the Network at 803-808-3384 or email network@scpronet.com.

 

Network profiles three extraordinary SC women

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In 2014, the SC Progressive Network was awarded a grant from the Richland County Conservation Commission to produce a booklet about Modjeska Monteith Simkins. It was distributed free to readers in the Midlands, and was so well received that the Network ordered a second printing.

Last year, the Network received another grant from the Commission for two additional booklets, on gay rights activist Harriet Hancock and legal pioneer Sarah Leverette. The Hancock booklet came out in May; the Leverette booklet will be released in mid-August.

Becci Robbins, the Network’s communications director and author of the booklets, said of the project, “While I didn’t set out to write a trilogy, the booklets evolved into a package that now seems perfectly timed. Besides telling the stories of three phenomenal South Carolina women, they offer a chance to explore racism, sexism, and homophobia—problems continuing to fester in the nation’s addled psyche.

The booklet about Modjeska, whose grandparents were enslaved, reminds us of South Carolina’s grim past – and how it haunts us still. The booklet about Harriet went to press just days before the massacre in Orlando that left 49 people dead and 53 maimed in a gay nightclub.

And the last booklet about Sarah, who was born on the eve of women’s suffrage in America, comes out as the nation deliberates whether to vote for its first woman president. This historic election has come with the sad reminder in certain news outlets and on social media that misogyny is alive and well.

While the booklets provide no easy answers to the vexing problems we face, they give some historical context to help understand the current social and political climate in America and here at home. And they show the power a single citizen can have, given enough passion and commitment.
 
My hope is that these booklets will make their way into the hands of girls and young women who will be as moved and impressed as I have been by Modjeska, Harriet, and Sarah. It has been a great privilege to share their stories.”

Questions? Call the Network at 803-808-3384.

bookcover

Download this booklet to read about Modjeska’s extraordinary life.

hancock_covershot

Click here to download Harriet Hancock booklet.

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The Sarah Leverett booklet is at the printer, and will be available in mid-August.

University Libraries offers glowing review of Network’s booklet about Modjeska Simkins

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By Herb Hartsook
University Libraries South Carolina Political Collections
(posted June 30 on A Capital Blog and re-posted with permission)

mms cover

Modjeska Simkins was a remarkable human rights activist and a uniquely powerful speaker. Becci Robbins captures her essence in a new booklet, Modjeska Monteith Simkins: A South Carolina Revolutionary, just published by the South Carolina Progressive Network. The 38-page booklet is clearly a labor of love by Robbins, the Network’s Communications Director.

Mrs. Simkins’ voice is present throughout the booklet which features lavish quotations. Robbins places Mrs. Simkins both in time and place with a detailed biographical sketch. The booklet also includes rich illustrations and statements by people such as SC Political Collections donors Matthew Perry and Candy Waites who knew and were influenced by Mrs. Simkins.

Until a full-length biography is produced, this forms the best treatment on the life and important role played by this forceful human rights activist.

A June 26 reception at Mrs. Simkins’ Marion Street home, which houses the Network’s offices, celebrated the new publication. Brett Bursey, founder and director of the Progressive Network and devoted Simkins mentee, served as master of ceremonies and gave a stirring talk describing plans for the Modjeska Simkins School for Human Rights, a new endeavor by the Network which will train and encourage individuals to follow in the footsteps of Mrs. Simkins and “take on issues of economic and social injustice.”

3,000 copies of the booklet, which was made possible by a grant from the Richland County Conservation Commission, will be distributed to libraries around the state and interested individuals.  An electronic copy is available on the Network’s website.

Mrs. Simkins once noted, “Start each sunrise as a new day.  Start out believing there’s good to be done and people to do it for.”  That spirit still lives.