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Modjeska Monteith Simkins Modjeska Monteith Simkins a South Carolina Revolutionary

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Modjeska Monteith Simkins Modjeska Monteith Simkins a South Carolina Revolutionary Modjeska Monteith Simkins Modjeska Monteith Simkins A South Carolina Revolutionary Becci Robbins modjeska_booklet_FINAL.indd 1 5/30/14 12:21 AM Modjeska Monteith Simkins Modjeska Monteith Simkins Papers, South Carolina Political Collections, University of South Carolina In her inimitable style, Modjeska wrote this letter challenging Governor Olin D. Johnston to a public debate on white supremacy — this during a special session of the legislature, which passed 147 laws in six days to change political parties to private clubs as a way to circumvent a court order forcing parties to open their primaries to black voters. She warns that if he doesn’t respond, “it could be considered clear evidence that you have conceded that ‘white supremacy’ is a myth for which neither sensible nor scientific bases can be found.” The governor did not respond. modjeska_booklet_FINAL.indd 2 5/30/14 12:21 AM Modjeska Monteith Simkins + ank you Brett Bursey Beryl Dakers Vennie Deas Moore John Egerton James Felder Tom Felder Bob Hall Jacquelyn Hall Herb Hartsook Eunice “Tootsie” Holland Ed Madden Constance Ashton Myers Victoria Reed Jhan Robbins Historic Columbia Richland County Conservation Commission South Carolina Community Bank South Carolina State Museum South Caroliniana Library University of South Carolina Libraries, South Carolina Political Collections • • • Cover photo: Je Amberg, Je Amberg Photography, Columbia S.C. is booklet is a project of the S.C. Progressive Network Education Fund made possible through a grant from the Richland County Conservation Commission. Printed May 2014 modjeska_booklet_FINAL.indd 3 5/30/14 12:21 AM Modjeska Monteith Simkins She wore many hats in her long, busy than a few. They included governors and life. She was a teacher, banker, writer, senators, council members, and univer- campaign adviser, public speaker, and sity presidents. Titles did not impress her health care worker. She was a tireless so much as provoke her, and she was not advocate for the poor, the mentally ill, the shy about speaking her mind. incarcerated, and the disenfranchised. “I’ve never had an inferiority complex,” The title she gave herself most often was she said. “And I’ve never seen anybody hell-raiser. in the world I was scared of — I’m just that big a fool.” “I’m a creature of confrontation,” she said. “My first name is fight. My middle That fighting spirit was woven in the odjeska name is fight. And my last name is fight.” DNA knitting one generation of her fam- Monteith ily to the next. “Stand up for yourself,” And fight she did. South Carolina has she said. “I was brought up that way.” SimkinsM was bigger than not seen the likes of her, before or since. any box anyone tried to put Over the more than half-century that Family Roots her in, broader than any she was politically active, Modjeska belonged to dozens of organizations Modjeska was named after the Polish label anyone tried to pin on — and left nearly as many. Some she actress Helena Modjeska. “My mother’s her, more fearless than any simply outgrew; some edged her out. The baby sister thought it was a beautiful power elite, white and black alike, were name. She loaded me up with that, and politician who dared take threatened by her radical politics and I’ve been toting it all these years,” she no-nonsense, no-holds-barred brand of said. her on. diplomacy. When she was born on Dec. 5, 1899, the She was uniquely a product Fuelled by a lifelong sense of passion state constitution legalizing segregation and urgency, Modjeska had no use for was four years old. That document didn’t of her time and place, a making nice. “You don’t need no mealy- just condone racism, it codified it. well-educated, well-off, mouthin’ and messin’ around,” she said. “If something needs to be done, it’s got to Not so many years removed from the light-skinned black woman be done.” turmoil that followed the Civil War, the with a spine of steel and an Palmetto State was suffering an identity Modjeska didn’t suffer fools gladly, and crisis, reluctantly reinventing itself as appetite for justice. Lord knows she crossed paths with more the political and social landscape shifted 2 modjeska_booklet_FINAL.indd 4 5/30/14 12:21 AM Modjeska Monteith Simkins The eldest of eight children, Modjeska was treated like an adult long before she was one. South Caroliniana Library 3 modjeska_booklet_FINAL.indd 5 5/30/14 12:22 AM Modjeska Monteith Simkins Modjeska’s mother, Rachel Hull Monteith, was a prominent educator and community activist who fashioned big shoes for her children to fill. Here she sits with Modjeska, Rebecca and baby Henry. South Caroliniana Library 4 modjeska_booklet_FINAL.indd 6 5/30/14 12:22 AM Modjeska Monteith Simkins radically. By the end of Reconstruction, Her life spanned a remarkable chapter SHESAID South Carolina had the only majority- in American history, decades marked by black House of Representatives in the great tragedy and great promise, and by “We must pay the world for country, a diversity of members not seen extraordinary change. Modjeska’s grand- the space we take.” before or repeated since. parents on both sides of her family were enslaved, their stories heartbreaking and “I lived in the lynching era, Local and state governments — peopled triumphant. and powered by and they are still lynching, wealthy white men but it’s now a lynching of — resisted change at the mind.” every turn. The threat of emancipated blacks “There is no more debased to the established order and groveling a slave gave rise to extrem- than one who sees what is ist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the wrong but who fears man Red Shirts, determined so much more than he does to preserve the status God that he cannot gather quo at any cost. By the strength to speak out the turn of the century, loudly against that wrong.” any progress made by blacks in South Caro- lina had been crushed. “I don’t want to see anybody suffer. You These were grim know we are all a part of and perilous days to humanity, and when one of be born black in the us loses, we all lose. When American South. In one human being dies, each hindsight, however, of us dies a little bit, too.” Modjeska’s birth seems perfectly timed, a fortunate convergence “Until the silent majority of talent, passion, and takes over from the vocal opportunity in exactly Members of the first S.C. General Assembly after the Civil minority, nothing in this the right place. War comprised a body that has never been as diverse. state will change.” 5 modjeska_booklet_FINAL.indd 7 5/30/14 12:22 AM Modjeska Monteith Simkins sin, and here come my pretty, and her mother was a quarter slave — brown-skinned daddy. that is, lived in the quarters with what they call the servant slaves. She was very “My daddy’s daddy never devoted to her mother, and after dark disowned his flesh. We ad- would slip to the quarters to see her. Her mired him for that, although mistress found out, and had her whipped I’m not proud to say that the next morning. I understand she was South Caroliniana Library things came about that way. undressed in the presence of some of the My father never lost the sting people on the plantation.” of how he came about. Humiliated for what she vowed would be “Here is what he resented his the last time, Sarah ran away to Columbia mother more for: this old man to find her grandmother. On the highway had a daughter by another from Sumter, she saw Union soldiers in colored woman in Columbia, the road, and fled into the woods to hide. and he gave money to edu- They told her not to run because she was cate both of these children. as free as they were. Like many emanci- But my grandmama was one pated Americans, she wouldn’t find out “My grandparents, they were all slaves,” of them going-to-heaven Baptists, so she about her changed status until months Modjeska said. “My daddy’s mother was gave it to the preacher, and [my father] after the fact. black as three midnights. She was born in never got through the third grade.” 1840. When freedom was declared, she Modjeska’s father was the son of wealthy was working in the home of this white Of her maternal grandmother, Sarah, white Columbia lawyer Walter Monteith family, kind of well-to-do. As the old Modjeska said, “She was a house slave, and his family’s hired nursemaid, Mary folks used to say, the head of that family bedded my grand- mother, black as homemade Modjeska’s father, Henry Monteith (above) was a master brick mason who oversaw construction projects across the South, including the Olympia cotton mill in Columbia. 6 modjeska_booklet_FINAL.indd 8 5/30/14 12:22 AM Modjeska Monteith Simkins Dobbins, who was formerly enslaved. The eldest of seven siblings (an eighth “The movement rises up She gave birth to Henry in 1870. died in infancy), Modjeska was treated when the pressure comes like an adult long before she was one. down.” Henry Monteith would be forever As a young girl she took on responsibili- haunted by the circumstances of his birth, ties that required her to travel alone into “I believe in fighting against and vowed that his own children would Columbia to pay bills and run errands. never work as hired help in a white home, injustice: Black, Indian, then one of the few ways black females Modjeska’s mother, Rachel Hull Monte- Chicano, Mexican-American could earn money.
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