Modjeska Monteith Simkins Modjeska Monteith Simkins A South Carolina Revolutionary

Becci Robbins

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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The eldest of eight children, Modjeska was treated like an adult long before she was one. South Caroliniana Library

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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

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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

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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

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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. ith, and several of her aunts were leaders — it doesn’t matter to me.” in the Niagara Movement, founded in He was strong-willed and fearless, 1905 by W.E.B. DuBois and named for “I think if the Southern Modjeska said, recounting a time when the “mighty current of change” the group Negro Youth Congress could he faced down an Alabama redneck who envisioned. They called for full integra- taunted him with the severed finger of a tion and voting rights, rejecting the path have gone on, there would black lynching victim. of conciliation advocated by prominent have been great change in the South because younger

Although schooled only through the South Caroliniana Library people would have worked third grade, Henry was ambitious and together better. But the quick with figures. “He had a marvel- power structure doesn’t lous mind,” Modjeska said. When she want that. They don’t want was young, he taught her how to read blueprints and make complex calcula- poor whites and Negroes tions, nurturing in her a confidence with getting along. There’s numbers and a love of math that would always been the effort by stay with her. “I was always interested in the reigning element to exactness,” she said. keep the forces of blacks and whites apart.” Henry was a master brick mason who built a solid professional reputation in the region, heading up construction projects “I remember telling the across the South during the burgeoning mayor: I’ve been begging industrial revolution. He worked long you all these years, and I’m hours and was often on the road, leaving not begging anymore. I’ve Modjeska to assume the role of parent got the vote now. See you at when he was gone. the ballot box!” 7

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black leaders such as Booker T. Wash- that was so, Modjeska had her theories. Modjeska’s mother was one of those ington who favored slower, incremental “It has always been said that the only two women. She was a community activist change. classes of people free in the South are and a prominent, well-respected educator white men and black women,” she said. in Columbia. In 1932, to recognize her “Simkins denounced her fellow Carolin- “The mother instinct in them is one thing long service as a teacher and principal ians’ confidence in the normal evolution — you know, a cat or a bird will fight there, the New Hope School — opened of society and urged extreme self-sac- for its children. The other is that in very in 1890 — was renamed the Monteith rifice to alter history’s course,” writes few instances have Negro women been School in her honor. David Chappell in A Stone of Hope: lynched; they lynched black men. Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Education, both biblical and secular, was Crow. “Her witty, withering denuncia- “Women got away with things that a man a priority in the Monteith home. Rachel tions of white gradualists and the black wouldn’t have gotten away with saying made a habit of reading books to her ‘ain’t ready yet conclave’ are prophetic or doing. Take the case of Rosa Parks. If children, all of whom would go to col- in tone. In dangerous times like hers, that had been a Negro man, they would lege. She read fairy tales and children’s Simkins had no patience with liberal have thrown him out on his can. They put classics, as well as movement newsletters gradualism.” her in jail, but they certainly didn’t abuse and stories from the daily newspaper, her.” sparing them none of the chilling details Modjeska inherited that radicalism from of the day, including lynchings. (South her mother, who made her firstborn a In Southern Black Women in the Modern Carolina recorded 186 lynchings between Niagara member when she was a tod- Civil Rights Movement, Merline Pitre 1880 and 1947.) In reading the horrific dler. Young Modjeska was used to going writes, “Throughout the South, black accounts and showing them graphic to meetings with her mother long before women were crucial to the civil rights photographs, Rachel was preparing her Rachel helped start the Columbia branch movement, serving as grass roots and or- children for the cruel reality of living in NAACP in 1917. These experiences ex- ganizational leaders. Ignored at the time dangerous times. posed Modjeska to people and ideas that by white politicians and the media alike, would help shape her social and political with few exceptions they worked behind Modjeska’s mother was practical and consciousness. Her mother and aunts the scenes to effect the changes all in the tough, the family disciplinarian. The fostered a sense of responsibility to the movement sought. “ Monteiths lived on a small working farm community, and a belief that she had the on the outskirts of Columbia. With her power to change it. Pitre notes, “Until relatively recently, husband often on the road, Rachel was historians, too, have largely ignored their left alone for long stretches of time with While the men in the family were accom- efforts. It was African-American women, their small children. Not one to leave plished professionals, it was the women collectively and individually, who had to things to chance, she had a gun and knew in Modjeska’s family who were more challenge the racial status quo in South how to use it. More importantly, every- spirited and boldly political. Asked why Carolina.” one else knew it, too.

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Although Modjeska was born in the city, who came into the South to educate black relationships, broadening her view of when she was still young her family students when the state school systems history and her place in it. moved to the country because Henry failed to do so. didn’t want his daughters to work in a Modjeska’s passion for public service, white home, the kind of arrangement that “I revere their memories,” Modjeska said. her lifelong habit of caring for “the least had put his mother at risk. “They came down and taught for years, of these,” was instilled in her as a child. some of them for nothing. They gave us She was raised in a Baptist church that “So, he bought land outside of Colum- a type of training that you just don’t get preached doing good works, and in a bia,” Modjeska said. “He wanted his chil- today. There was a certain stamp of cul- family that practiced it. The Monteith dren to learn how to work and to know ture that was required before you made home often served as a refuge for neigh- the value of a dollar. the mark. It was a polishing process, and bors down on their luck. It was custom- every day you got a little brighter.” ary for the family to visit people in the “We raised cotton, and we raised all hospital and in nursing homes, to reach our foodstuffs except perhaps rice and The irony and out to neighbors in sugar. And we made our own molasses, unintended conse- crisis and provide white potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, quence of South them with practi- vegetables for canning. My mother would Carolina’s policies cal and financial corn beef and kill pork. We had smoke- of exclusion was support. house arrangements, and we had our own that Modjeska and well. So we were self-sustaining.” her classmates re- “My mother ceived a superior and father were Through her chores on the farm, Modjes- education, not just always inter- ka learned to pull her own weight as well in academics but ested in helping as the satisfaction of self-sufficiency. But in race conscious- people. They were she was no country bumpkin. She was ness. Things concerned when smart and well-read, with dreams of liv- were not simply somebody was ing in France. She also wanted to become black and white; taken advantage a lawyer, but her father thought such the world, and of, and my mother pursuits unsuitable for a young woman. its people, were was very sensitive shades of both. to people’s prob- Coming from a family of educators, lems. Very often Modjeska could already read when she That perspective we would leave entered first grade at Benedict School, so would inform the fields and my was immediately advanced a grade. She Modjeska’s politi- Modjeska Monteith Simkins Papers, South Carolina Political Collections, University of South Carolina mother would say, was taught by “Yankee teachers,” whites cal and personal ‘Well, we’ll have

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modjeska_booklet_FINAL.indd 12 5/30/14 12:22 AM Modjeska Monteith Simkins “I don’t know how it is in to go and see Mrs. So-and-so, white churches; I know she is sick.’ how it is in the black “I can remember those sick churches. They get the rooms, you know; they didn’t women to do the hard have electricity, no electric work, but when officers fans, and windows were made are elected, it is very of wood. They didn’t have seldom that they put a any way to cool people. They woman in position. That’s would have a sheet wrung out of water and hang it up also true in almost any over the bed, and as that sheet organization.” would dry, it would cool them. “They tried to get me to teach South “Some people are just like “My mother would say, ‘You go out Carolina history but I didn’t want to — in contented cows. Their there and get some leaves off that peach fact, I refused to use the textbook,” she eyes and mouths are wide said, deeming it racist. Modjeska was tree and beat them so I can put them on open, but their minds are Sister So-and-so’s head.’ The men in the already finding her voice, speaking up at rural area in those days didn’t think that faculty meetings and school board func- sound asleep.” a woman got through the week unless tions. she got a whipping. And so my mother “The masses are crushed anointed many of them where they were She was also becoming increasingly by politicians who don’t whipped.” involved in the community outside of understand poverty or school. And so began her journey as an homelessness.” Finding Her Voice activist — as well as her lifelong habit of making some of her colleagues uncom- fortable. “I cannot be bought and In college, Modjeska concentrated her will not be sold.” studies on history, world religions, and On the eve of the Great Depression, in mathematics. After graduating in 1921, 1929, Modjeska married businessman “If you’ve got enough she stayed on at Benedict for a year, Andrew Simkins over the Christmas holi- sense in your noggin, teaching ancient history. She then was days. She was forced to quit teaching, as you’re going to know a hired at all-black Booker T. Washington in those days only single women were al- School in Columbia, where she taught lowed in the classrooms. “I got a husband fight is there — not just for algebra. and lost a job,” she would quip. black people, but for all mankind.” 11

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Modjeska Monteith Simkins Papers, South Carolina Political Collections, University of South Carolina

Modjeska (in flowered dress) was the first African-American to hold a full-time, statewide public health position in South Carolina.

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The twice-widowed Andrew was 16 years While the new couple was financially “I can always look through older than Modjeska. A former college secure enough that Modjeska didn’t need muddy water and see dry professor and insurance salesman, he was a job, she wasn’t one to sit around the ground ahead.” a capable carpenter, owned real estate, house — much less tend to it. In fact, she and operated a service station. Social by wasn’t domestic at all, proudly claiming “Start each sunrise as a nature, Andrew was a card player who to never having ironed even one of her new day. Start out believing loved parties but usually went alone, as husband’s shirts. A housekeeper and a there’s good to be done and Modjeska hated small talk. “I don’t want relative moved in to care for Andrew’s to be bored just to give people the plea- five children, leaving Modjeska free to people to do it for.” sure of my company,” she said. support various causes with her time and money. “War makes killers. Their marriage was unconventional for War hardens men. War the times, but of course Modjeska would Fighting for Their Lives unbalances men, for war is not have entered into any arrangement a type of insanity.” that would diminish or define her. “Some- In 1931, Modjeska was hired by the S.C. times a woman is kind of curbed by her Tuberculosis Association as Director of husband’s thinking,” she said. “I was just “We must remember that as Negro Work, making her the first black to as free to follow my interests as if I had long as one man’s liberties hold a full-time, statewide public health not been married.” are restricted, all men’s position in South Carolina. She spent 10 years working liberties are imperiled.” an aggressive campaign to improve the health and quality “Be careful not to throw of life for the state’s poorest, out bad vibes. We paint a most vulnerable citizens. picture as we go along. We want to be remembered for At the time, the death rate contributing something.” from tuberculosis for blacks was three to four times that of whites, a crisis compounded “I’m not going to say that by the fact that it took decades there hasn’t been change; for hospitals to allow black I’m saying that it all came patients full access. One of the as a result of struggle. The poorest states, South Carolina power structure doesn’t In the 1950s and 1960s, Modjeska and her husband was suffering from the deep- owned and operated the Motel Simbeth on Hwy. 1. rooted problems of poverty give anybody anything.” 13

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and poor health. In the cities, low wages, the better jobs in all the relief programs the state in a daunting effort to stanch the high unemployment, bad sanitation, and almost always went to whites.” sharp rise in deaths from tuberculosis and substandard housing were widespread. other illnesses ravaging black communi- Rural areas, already reeling from the Botsch continues, “In 1935, Modjeska ties. financial uncertainties of sharecropping Simkins and other black leaders attended and declining cotton sales, were now fac- a meeting called by WPA officials con- “At that time, the incidence of tuber- ing a full-blown economic depression. cerning prospective jobs. Learning that culosis was very high among blacks,” the WPA officials planned to offer blacks Modjeska said. “The South Carolina Bad as things were for the country at only low-skilled manual labor positions, Tuberculosis Association decided that large, they were much worse for African- Modjeska and another leader, Dr. Robert the problem was so real that they wanted Americans. Mance, to set up a special program for blacks. Writer Carol demanded The rate was very high because of the Sears Botsch better jobs conditions under which they were forced notes, “As for African- to live: open houses, open wells, of- whites lost Americans. ten no toilets, unscreened houses, poor jobs, they The result incomes.” moved into was that the

positions that South Caroliniana Library WPA hired Describing the diet of blacks in rural had tradition- black teach- South Carolina, she added, “I can re- ally been held ers for the member when we moved to the country, by blacks. schools and the chief food was cornbread with some In the first black profes- fatback grease poured over it and some nine months sionals for a black molasses. Now, blackstrap is the of 1930 state history worst kind of molasses you can get. It’s alone, jobs project and what they used to give to the animals — for South an anti- like the dregs after you get through all the Carolina’s tuberculosis barrels. African-Americans dropped by nearly 35 project in Columbia. These reforms were percent. unique.” “Cotton was king. I’ve seen cotton planted right up to the back steps because “Federal jobs provided through the New With meager funding from the state, the planters wanted that cotton for the Deal helped, but in most places in South Modjeska was tasked with raising money money. So they didn’t have any garden Carolina whites received preference. Al- herself, all while setting up and managing space, and if they did they didn’t have though the WPA, a federal relief agency, health clinics in classrooms, church halls, time to take care of it, so they didn’t did not discriminate in terms of salary, cotton mills, and tobacco fields across know much about vegetables.”

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modjeska_booklet_FINAL.indd 16 5/30/14 12:22 AM Modjeska Monteith Simkins “Men have messed up the Her travels across the state lecturing, cate matters of public health that raised world. Women produce the running workshops, and raising money the eyebrows and ruffled the feathers of sharpened skills that would serve her her white colleagues. babies and then men send well the rest of her life. The work was de- them off to die in places like manding, but gave her a deep and abiding She did more than talk about tuberculo- Vietnam. It’s a shameful understanding of the gap between rich sis. She also was talking about politics thing — and for what?” and poor, the powerful and powerless. — getting people registered, making sure The relationships she built with people at they got to the polls, discussing the days’ “We are in an era of radical both of those extremes — and in between issues, and demystifying the mechanics revolution of thought. We — gave her a unique perspective that of voting. made her a valuable liaison. must keep an eagle eye Modjeska’s increasing involvement with out for ‘misleaders’ within “I guess at one time I have known more politics and the NAACP became a prob- our own ranks. There are black people in South Carolina than any lem for her boss, Chauncey MacDonald, demagogues, self-seekers, other woman that wasn’t in politics,” who also didn’t like it that Modjeska was and crooks in every race.” Modjeska said. “So I was able to reach holding meetings on Sundays, a practice them.” She could speak to any audience she thought ungodly. When she asked “America’s slumbering mil- with authority and firsthand experience that she do as the white ladies did and about a rural South Carolina unknown to meet on weekday mornings, Modjeska lions — as much brainwashed lawmakers crafting policy in Columbia icily reminded MacDonald that the white and hoodwinked on the viola- and Washington. women were able to do so because black tion of their liberties as any people — must be awakened to While Modjeska was the onslaught on the bedrock hired to reduce the of their liberties.” incidence of tuberculo- sis, she took a broader and practical approach, “We have a job laid out for teaching women about us, ladies and gentlemen; sexually transmitted this is no sitting-down diseases and other deli- time.”

Back of palm card “I’m 92, but I feel like I’m Modjeska used when 27. I tell folks, ‘Don’t start she ran for the S.C. nothing, ’cause I ain’t near House in 1966. dead.’” 15

modjeska_booklet_FINAL.indd 17 5/30/14 12:22 AM Modjeska Monteith Simkins THEYSAID women were at their homes taking care of ity, and what she meant by that was that “There were people in the their children. I had made myself so close to the people that maybe it could create a problem. I civil rights movement The relationship between Modjeska and said, ‘I think anybody that builds a public who were not afraid of the her boss soured, then became impossible. relations program builds it on personality. police dogs or going to jail, The cultural divide between them was too Jesus Christ built his on personality, so but being called a traitor great, their motives too divergent. I don’t see why you should fault me for to your country, that’s that.’ a scary thing. There are “She came from a highly religious different kinds of courage family,” Modjeska said. “I didn’t say “They never had another director of Negro program after that. They tried, but — there’s physical and Christian; I said religious. She thought quite often that I was an awful creature. they could never get the Negro populace moral. But Modjeska had She did not want me to work with the to accept a person in that position. So both. I don’t think she ever NAACP. I said, ‘Am I bringing produc- that’s the milk in the coconut.” feared anything — man or tion?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Well, beast.” what’s the gripe?’ She just thought that I “A Need So Cruel” ought not be in it. Anne Braden, civil rights activist Modjeska worked closely with the “I said, ‘Well, if that’s the way you feel Birmingham-based Southern Conference about it, I’ll tell you how I feel: I’d for Human Welfare, which operated be- rather all Negroes die and go to hell with “She probably will be tween 1938 and 1948 to bring New Deal- tuberculosis than go through some of the remembered as a woman inspired reforms to the South. One of the things they’re suffering right now.’ Why, who challenged everyone. most prominent organizations to grow out she just came near having 10 kittens! She challenged the white of the movement for racial reform, the political leadership of the “She had her qualms about venereal SCHW laid the groundwork for much of state to do what was fair diseases, had the old-time idea that the the civil rights organizing that followed. and equitable among all way you get venereal disease is a sin. She people, and she challenged always connected it with illicit sexual “The Southern Conference for Hu- man Welfare was organized as a direct black citizens to stand up activity and did not want me to talk about venereal diseases at all. I refused.” outcome of the Roosevelt recovery and demand their rightful program,” Modjeska said. “My husband place in the state and “I quit working for them because the didn’t have work; he worked on the bread the nation.” conditions became untenable. She told line serving soup and apples to people Judge Matthew J. Perry me I built up my program on personal- here. 16

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“People were just on their knees, and Inside and Outside the she would keep for 16 years. She was many of them were in abject poverty. S.C. NAACP the only woman holding elected office in I’ve ridden into certain sections of this that organization, and did so during what state where I wondered if South Carolina was arguably its most productive years in would ever come back. I’ve seen pot-bel- In 1941, Modjeska left the Tuberculo- South Carolina. lied children eaten up with hookworms, sis Association, and began serving as rickets, impetigo, scabies, every earmark secretary of the South Carolina State During her tenure, she traveled widely of malnutrition, and nothing to look for- Conference of the NAACP, a position giving lectures, holding meetings, and ward to — nothing. mapping strategy with some of the brightest minds of the times. “You’d walk in some houses and In the mid-1940s, Modjeska you wouldn’t see anything — worked with national NAACP nothing. There was just a need lead counsel Thurgood Marshall that was so cruel it would be hard to win equal pay cases for black for the average person to realize. public school teachers. It was an I realized it because it was my issue close to her heart, making job.” the victories all the sweeter.

She added, “The most pitiful Years earlier, when she was human being in the world is what teaching, Modjeska was in line Negroes call a ‘po-tacky,’ a very, behind a white teacher at the very, poor white person, like we bank one day, and was shocked found in mill villages. I used to to discover the difference in their ride through these towns where paychecks. “I saw she was mak- the factories were, the cotton ing absolutely twice as much as I mills, and see those poor little was making,” she said. “I know children, barefooted, bare-legged, she wasn’t a damn bit better bow-legged, razor shins and teacher than I was, and I know I pigeon breasts. You could just had as good an education as she look at them and tell they were had, but she was getting twice as infested with hookworms. much as I was getting.”

“So I say that the Roosevelt pro- That bitter memory would fuel gram came as almost a program her passion for working to secure out of the hands of Jesus Christ.” equal pay in South Carolina

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“No one can deny that schools. In 1943, she became secretary skinned George Elmore successfully Negroes are entitled of the Teachers Defense Fund, set up to registered, the state legislature met in a to representation in raise money for court costs. In 1944, a special session to craft a way to cir- government, irrespective year after teachers in Charleston won cumvent the Court’s legal directive by of whether office-holders a case for equal pay, Modjeska’s sister deeming the parties private clubs, free to be white or colored. The Rebecca Hull Walton, a teacher at the operate under whatever exclusive rules ultimate test of their Monteith School, won a similar lawsuit in they wished. Columbia. civic responsibility lies in “Even though the Supreme Court had the nature of the persons South Carolina’s school districts slowly given us the right, these cats started they select to represent began to equalize salaries, but the battle making up new rules that you couldn’t them. Modjeska Simkins over education equity was far from over. vote,” Modjeska said. “We had to con- represents trouble.” In fact, 20 years later Rebecca would tinue wrangling around here because again enlist Modjeska’s help to craft a they didn’t intend to do anything but run The State editorial, 1966 legal case to integrate the University the business like this is a white man’s of South Carolina. In 1963, Rebecca’s country.” daughter Henrie was one of three black “She was a fearless students who were the first to enroll at In face of continuing subterfuge by the warrior for justice. the university. She would be the first to Democratic Party, the state NAACP again Through her deep graduate. went to court. The all-white primary finally was struck down in 1948, with concern and involvement The NAACP’s next target was the state’s Charleston Judge J. Waties Waring writ- in human and civil rights all-white political primary system. In ing in his ground-breaking opinion, “It issues, she has touched South Carolina and other Southern is time for South Carolina to rejoin the the lives of many people states, black voters were systematically Union.” across this state. She has excluded from the Democratic Party’s never been afraid to take primaries. Because these were essentially The ruling ended the white-only primary, one-party states, the policy kept black galvanizing civil rights activists to take on battles, even when voters from any meaningful participation full advantage of the new political reality. the odds were very much in the political process. They wasted no time organizing in black against her. She has been communities. “We had a big registration a source of inspiration to When the Supreme Court struck the prac- campaign as soon as we had the decision all of us.” tice in a Texas case in 1944, Modjeska against the primary,” Modjeska said. “We and her allies began challenging the registered 150,000 people, enough to turn Henry Cauthen, policy in South Carolina. After light- a politician wrong-side outwards.” The State editor, 1992 18

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Momentum was building, and South on a probation violation stemming from start in 1944 to put black candidates in Carolina activists knew it was criti- questionable libel charges. the field. Modjeska worked as the party’s cal to harness and focus that emerging lead strategist and adviser. While the energy. “We were getting ready to open “McCray served time on the chain gang,” party struggled to get candidates elected, the statewide fight about the ballot, and I Modjeska said. “This was in the ’50s. it became a voting bloc sought after by said we needed a newspaper,” Modjeska When he was convicted, the lawyer gave white candidates in the Democratic Party. recounted. him time to call me asking me for help. He begged me to see that his family had Modjeska herself became sought after She helped recruit from Charleston the food and to see that the paper got off the because of her connections, skills, and talented journalist John McCray, who press. I did both, without him giving me increasing political clout. Black activ- set up shop in office space her husband a quarter. ists relied on her leadership, financial owned in Columbia. Along with Osceola resources, and legal savvy. Her home McKaine, they managed a merger of two “When McCray came back, he came by on Marion Street, just blocks from the newspapers to launch The Lighthouse and the office. He walked by and didn’t even State House, became a hub of activity, Informer in 1941. say, ‘good morning’ or ‘thank you,’ and an unofficial headquarters for grass roots walked on out. I never saw him again. I organizing. Until it folded in 1954, it was the lead- ran the paper a little bit longer, and then ing black newspaper in South Carolina. he just closed it down. He was a good Because motels that would serve black Modjeska, who also worked as a stringer writer. Those papers were priceless.” people were few and far between in the for the Associated Negro Press, regu- segregated South, Modjeska opened her larly wrote articles and edited copy. At When McCray was convicted and sent home to visiting lawyers, community or- the end, she briefly took over managing away, he was serving as chair of the S.C. ganizers, and national leaders when they the newspaper while McCray was jailed Progressive Party, which he had helped were in Columbia.

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“If Modjeska had been a “Thurgood Marshall always stayed in my Three years later, the U.S. Supreme man, she would have been home,” Modjeska said. “We had two ex- Court, in considering Briggs and four right up there with Martin tra bedrooms. Some of the lawyers stayed other segregation cases, delivered a unan- Luther King. She was there, and the others stayed across the imous verdict that “separate but equal” street, but they would have their meals public schools were unconstitutional. The the conscience of South and jam sessions around the table in my landmark Brown v. Board ruling in 1954 Carolina. home.” has been called “the dissent that changed Nathaniel Abraham, America.” newspaper publisher Modjeska worked with Marshall and the Rev. Joseph DeLaine on the Clarendon None of these monumental changes County case that would become part of came easily or without sacrifice. People the U.S. Supreme Court decision to inte- who testified in court risked trouble at “Mrs. Simkins was one grate public schools. Judge Waring, who home, with their businesses and families of the little people who heard the original case, was the first fed- targeted in a vicious backlash. White decided to wear big shoes.” eral judge to challenge the 1896 “separate Citizens Councils were organized to put but equal” doctrine that institutionalized economic pressure on blacks who dared Henrie Monteith Treadwell, racial segregation in the South. challenge long-held social order. Many Modjeska’s niece black farmers found themselves unable A system that spent $10 on white children to buy feed or sell their tobacco. Teachers for every dollar it spent on black children and public employees risked losing their “The description that would seem a basic violation of rights. jobs and homes. fits her best is that she And indeed it was ruled so, but not with- is indeed a citizen of the out a fight. Victory Savings Bank in Columbia world.” played a critical role during these dark In the 1951 Briggs v. Elliott case, Judge days, stepping in to help support the peo- John Roy Harper, Waring wrote, “Segregation in education ple who paid the price — many of them civil rights lawyer can never produce equality, and it is an quite literally — for education equality in evil that must be eradicated. I am of the South Carolina. opinion that all of the legal guideposts, “Modjeska Simkins is expert testimony, common sense, and “Victory Savings Bank was the first reason point unerringly to the conclusion and only black-owned bank in South synonymous with struggle.” that the system of segregation in educa- Carolina,” said bank President and CEO Ben Chavis, tion adopted and practiced in the State of Tom Felder. “It was founded in 1921, civil rights activist South Carolina must go and must go now. and has weathered the storms of several Segregation is per se inequality.” depressions, wars and down times in our

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economy, and remains one of the oldest was pooled into this bank to help save as some white grocers flatly refuse to sell black-owned banks in the country.” In crops and farms.” to Negroes. It is all part of a vicious hate 1999, the bank changed its name to South boycott sponsored by the White Citizens Carolina Community Bank. When the White Citizens Councils started Councils to ‘starve’ some 3,000 Negroes to pressure politically active blacks by in the two counties who are NAACP Modjeska was one of the co-founders of refusing them service and denying them school petition signers, members or sym- the bank. It was managed by her brother credit, Modjeska and her allies pushed pathizers. Fear has caused 20 of the 58 Henry Monteith, and her family held a back. They knew the fight wasn’t just NAACP school petitioners to withdraw majority on the board for more than 65 black and white; it was green, too. They their names to save jobs or homes.” years. organized a boycott. The national spotlight on the fight being “When the NAACP was asking us to push “We are not angry with anyone,” said waged in South Carolina generated mon- forward for integration in the schools, state NAACP President James M. Hinton, etary and material donations from around economic pressures were put on blacks in “but we are fully determined to spend our the country. Some came with handwrit- those areas,” Modjeska said. “And from money with those who believe in first- ten notes like the one that read: “Dear various parts of the country, the money class citizenship for everyone.” Mrs. Simkins, My wife and I just read of the Citizen Council’s inhuman attitude They targeted certain products, including toward South Carolina Negroes in Jet Coca-Cola and Sunbeam bread. “We said, Magazine. May God help the suppressed if they can put on a squeeze, we can put colored people in your state and else- on a boycott,” Modjeska said. where in the sleeping South. Sincerely, Mr. and Mrs. William Stewart.” News of the boycott ran in Jet magazine, the nation’s leading black weekly. The After having served its purpose, the story began, “In South Carolina’s sparse, boycott was ended in 1956. “It was most cotton and tobacco-producing lowlands, effective, child,” Modjeska said. a new danger threatens the welfare of thousands of Negroes even worse than Black, White, and two consecutive years of poor crops. It is a slow, gnawing hunger. Red All Over

“For five weeks now, Negroes have In 1957, after serving for 16 years as been forced to search for milk and state secretary, Modjeska was edged out bread outside of their neighborhoods in of the NAACP, purged because of her Orangeburg, and in Clarendon County, radicalism and unapologetic associa-

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“She was one of the rare tion with socialists. Although she was know Communism from rheumatism. It ones who left so much never a member of the Communist Party, was a buzz word, a scare word. Anything more on this Earth than she worked with people who were, and was Communist if it was advocating any she found.” openly supported allies blacklisted at the kind of change.” Brett Bursey, height of the red scare. S.C. Progressive Network “Sure, I signed some petitions,” Modjes- Director While she was working with the NAACP, ka said. “I’m against transgressions on Modjeska also was involved with a civil liberties. I’d do it again. But I’m number of more militant reform move- no Communist, and never have been. I “When Modjeska spoke, ments at the regional and national level. belonged to all kind of things that were everyone listened. I was They included the Southern Negro Youth called Communist fronts, so I’ve been inspired by her strength Congress, the Southern Conference for red-smeared up and down South Caro- and courage. I always Human Welfare and its successor, the lina. listened carefully to Southern Conference Educational Fund. whatever she had to Because of these associations, she was “If you worked for peace,” she explained, targeted by the House Un-American “you were supposed to be Communist. say because I knew she Activities Committee, which in the ’50s I always told them, ‘If Communists do spoke the truth from created a list of targets in an effort to all the good things you all say they do, it the heart.” threaten and neutralize left-leaning activ- looks like to me that it would be good to ists and groups. be one. If they want peace, there is noth- former S.C. State Rep. ing wrong with that.’ Although they did Candy Y. Waites “I’m up on that list, along with hundreds all kinds of things, they never were able of organizations,” she said. “Why? Be- to faze me.” “The pioneering work cause we didn’t follow like sheep in the by Simkins and her path of the people in power. Nobody — In 1960, Modjeska delivered a speech in black or white — wants to be called red.” Washington, D.C., at a national celebra- colleagues in the 1940s tion of the Bill of Rights, which she and 1950s laid the Civil rights activist Anne Braden de- called “the bedrock upon which the foundation for radical scribes the atmosphere during the McCar- prestige and protection of civil liberties changes in the political thy era as a political pathology. “In the are based.” Reporting from the front machinery operating the late ’40s and early ’50s, there was a real lines, she reminded the audience that civil state.” sickness in the country of very hysterical liberties in America were under assault. anti-Communism which had very little Barbara A. Woods, to do with Communism, really, because “Tonight, 169 years after Congress ad- historian most of the people caught up in it didn’t opted the Bill of Rights, the constitutional

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modjeska_booklet_FINAL.indd 24 5/30/14 12:22 AM Modjeska Monteith Simkins liberties embodied in them are being accusers. I need not give you a history the rest of her life. But she never bowed trespassed upon with contemptuous disre- of the Un-American Committee or a to pressure to distance herself from her gard, even by agents and agencies of the biography of its patron saint, Joseph Mc- radical activist friends such as the legend- very government which itself guaranteed Carthy, who being dead, yet speaketh. It ary Paul Robeson, Harlem councilman these liberties. Various loyalty boards is unnecessary to elaborate on the dogma Benjamin Davis, or the Marxist professor along with the most dastardly culprit, the and slimy claptrap of McCarthyism that Dr. Herbert Aptheker, who invited her to Un-American Activities Committee, have is masticated and regurgitated by the big speak at a dinner in New York to cel- hounded to social annihilation, physical and little loyalty boards and investigating ebrate his 50th birthday and the publica- suffering, emotional instability, death, committees. tion of his 20th book. South Caroliniana Library and even at times worse than death, hun- dreds of honorable citizens.” “America’s slum- That trip in 1966 became bering millions, as fodder for a smear She continued, “Add to these, hundreds much brainwashed campaign to discredit of thousands who have trembled in stark and hoodwinked on and silence Modjeska terror of character assassination, guilt the matter of the vi- during her run that year by association, social ostracism, loss of olation of their lib- for a seat in the S.C. work, with the blackest terror being the erties as any people, House. Governor Robert refusal of the guarantee to be confronted must be awakened McNair and Democratic with accusers. to the onslaught on Party Chairman Earle the bedrock of their Morris Jr. issued a pub- “Witnessing the struggle in the South- liberties. lic call for her to leave land, the civil liberties of those seeking the party because of her civil rights are under attack. The Dix- “Our forefathers, “association with self- iecrats are solidified in their determina- recognizing fully avowed Communists.” tion to exert road-blocking interference the prime necessity against civil rights advances. Just as de- to guard jealously the elemental rights of “At the time when many of our young termined are similar forces elsewhere in even the least among men, and know- men are waging a deadly struggle against the nation who aspire daily to nullify all ing only too well that tyrants of greater the encroachment of Communism in efforts on the part of liberals or progres- or lesser breed had trampled upon these Southeast Asia,” the Democratic leaders sives to enjoy their already guaranteed liberties through countless generations, pontificated in the newspaper, “such an civil liberties. clearly stipulated certain definite funda- involvement by a citizen of our state de- mentals in the Bill of Rights.” fies reasonable explanation.” “The blackest trespass in the last two decades has been that of not allow- For her high-profile defense of civil Not cowed by the party brass, Modjeska ing those under attack to confront their liberties, Modjeska would be red-baited replied that if they found her position in

23 Modjeska Monteith Simkins the party untenable, then they would have They have gotten kind of washed out. to leave because she was going nowhere. You see, organizations grow old just like And she didn’t. people, and the fighting and revolutionary spirit that the NAACP had in those years While she did not budge from the is no more.” Democratic Party, she was booted from the state NAACP in 1957. Perhaps it In an open letter to the NAACP in 1981, was only a matter of time before they she again took the organization to task. would part ways. Years before she left, Modjeska had grown frustrated with the “Why is the SC NAACP conference organization, accusing it of getting stale not arrayed in full force against brazen and selling out. State leadership, not dar- inequities forced upon Negro people of ing to risk the mainstream power it had the State by the State power structure? managed to carve out for itself, edged Will the general membership continue to Modjeska out. allow high NAACP officials to herd them perennially into compromising situations The NAACP added insult to injury when with every element of the State power it issued a press release stating that structure? Modjeska had not offered for re-election, implying that the shake-up was of her “The fact is the Conference is not making. She fired back in the press,“This performing fully and effectively. It has deliberate untruth naturally could have abandoned historic objectives. It has led my hundreds of friends and acquain- been made the ‘KEPT WOMAN’ of the tances throughout the nation to believe Democratic Party. Its high officialdom is that I had turned my back on my people so close to that crew that its performance and our cause in this needy time.” is a sham — effervescent nothingness.”

It was a bitter separation. The unfortu- Deep as her disappointment ran, she nev- nate ending to Modjeska’s years with the er fully severed ties with the organization NAACP left a bad taste that lingered. The that she helped build. “I pay my NAACP stagnation she accused it of in the 1960s membership every year,” she said. “I only got worse. send them a little note: I’m paying this under protest, but I want my membership In the 1970s, she said, “The NAACP in because when I get ready to raise hell I today is very much different than it was. don’t want to raise it free of charge.”

24 Modjeska Monteith Simkins

Modjeska in 1982 at the Grass Roots Organizing Workshop in Columbia, where she was an adviser and frequent visitor. GROW was the precursor of Sue Bowman the S.C. Progressive Network, which was launched at Penn Center in 1996.

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Losing Faith in the bust by a bus driver here. Did any preacher tell the Negroes to walk like Modjeska was brought up in the Baptist they did in Montgomery? No! church, studying the Bible at home and at school, where it was part of the curricu- “I have lost faith in the institutionalized lum. Her mother taught Sunday school. In black church. Most of the black churches college, Modjeska studied ancient culture are shut all week. They go there on Sun- and world religions. Academic curios- day and warm the chairs about two hours. ity and personal experiences informed And the outreach programs are no good. her relationship with organized religion, Every church ought to have a social which deteriorated over time. activities program, a social consciousness program or something like that. She said, “I’ve had a running fight with preachers. I’ve always said, ‘You spend “Churches ought to know how to tell too much time on your knees praying and people how to get food stamp benefits not enough time on your feet fighting.’ and Social Security supplements, but a You see, the church (I’m talking about lot of these preachers don’t give a damn the black church here, as I know it) has whether they’ve got money to buy milk become mercenary. They build churches, for the baby on Monday morning, just so they have anniversaries, they have reviv- they get their assessments on Sunday and als. And they become mercenaries, a kind get their salary. That’s what I’m talking of religious Mafia with no socio-commu- about. I’m not disillusioned; I’m just nity outreach. Now I know they’ll want disgusted. to kill me for saying that, but that’s just what I believe. “I think in some places they’ve done salient service. Around Columbia they “The church could be a great leavening gave little or no assistance. We never force; in fact, that’s what it ought to be. got very much out of them here in early But I don’t see around here where it is. times. We still don’t. Every now and then Now, I do know that in some cities — for one of them would light up kind of like instance, in the Birmingham movement you see a lightning bug light up at night, and in Montgomery — they showed it. and that’s it.” But we had our state conference secre- tary’s home fired in. Do you think they For her, religion was found not in mind- said anything? We had a woman bashed less ritual but in Christ’s teachings.

26 Modjeska Monteith Simkins

“Some people think that if they don’t go to church every Sunday they’ll go to hell, but I’m not even worrying about whether there’s a hell or not.

“I’ve lived every day and tried to do what I can following the philosophy and the teachings of Christ to do unto others as you desire they do unto you, and help those who can’t help themselves. And I let heaven and hell take care of them- selves. That’s my philosophy.”

Her Mind Still “Set On Freedom”

After leaving the NAACP, Modjeska took a full-time job at Victory Savings Bank, where her brother Henry was still president. She stayed until 1982, doing bookkeeping and later managing a branch office.

While working at Victory, Modjeska started the Richland County Citizens Committee, which successfully pushed to integrate the city’s parks and buses, and fight “urban renewal” that threatened black neighborhoods.

Activist Merll Truesdale and Modjeska Kathy McCaston in 1985 in Columbia at a GROW- organized march against U.S. intervention in Central America.

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The RCCC exposed the disparity in con- are now on file at USC’s South Carolina ditions for white and black patients, and Political Collections. They are fiery, di- forced the integration of the state mental rect, and slam everyone from do-nothing hospital. It also helped organize a series politicians to deadbeat parents. She calls of sit-ins in Columbia. the Orangeburg Massacre a tragedy wait- ing to happen that was “absolutely no For seven years, the RCCC paid for a surprise.” She challenges elected leaders regular time slot on a black radio station, to address police brutality. She speaks out a soapbox Modjeska used to maximum early and stridently against the Vietnam advantage with a weekly program called War. “I Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Set On Freedom.” For the most part, Modjeska was given free rein to express herself, but one Transcripts of those shows, typed pages broadcast was censored completely. In laced with Modjeska’s handwritten notes, a single radio bit, she thrashed NAACP head I. DeQuincey New- man, U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings, and the entire military-industrial com- plex. Scheduled to run on Jan. 24, 1968, here are

excerpts from the show that never aired:

“Lawlessness and the rapid increase in the crime rate are perhaps the most striking problems now facing the American public. Many are puzzled

I. DeQuincey Newman Papers, by the great number of SC Political Collections,USC killings. A pointed ques- tion is: ‘How can we Sen. Fritz Hollings and S.C. NAACP head I. DeQuincey train killers in all types Newman on what Modjeska called their “slum parade.” of brutal destruction of

28 Modjeska Monteith Simkins

“So we go on perfecting killers in the most expert killer methods, and foolishly expect them to return to us as angels. Many of them will not. They will be ready to kill on the spur of the moment.”

Modjeska then turns her attention to U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings’ “Hunger Tour,” a high-profile campaign that she dismisses human lives and expect them to return to “War makes killers. War hardens men. as an empty political stunt orchestrated America ready to act like angels?’ War unbalances men, for war is a kind of by NAACP operatives and the state insanity. It makes insane killers of men Democratic Party. “In the crystal clear memory of hundreds by training them in the fine art of killing. of thousands now living are the hap- It places them lower than the beast, for “Perhaps the hottest topic of discussion penings of two major declared wars and no beast has been known to try to fashion has been, ‘What are NAACP bigwig I. other confrontations that were either not the most devastating types of killer meth- DeQuincey Newman and Senator Fritz declared or not clearly declared. ods to utterly destroy other beasts. Only Hollings really putting down?’ The man does that. RCCC could ask why the Senator has “The war in Vietnam, an undeclared become so interested in slums now when war — which is conceded to be the most “Hundreds of thousands of Americans the same slums have been in Charleston brutal, genocidal and devastating in the today are working in plants where the all the Senator’s life and, while he served history of man — is training almost a purpose is to manufacture equipment to in Columbia both as Lt. Governor and as million men in the vilest types of human kill other God-made creatures — other Governor, he was in spitting distance of destruction. Will those who return home men who have done nothing to anyone, some of the worst slums in the country, be free of the vile killer infection? Will as helpless civilians are being slaughtered the same he just found out about. they leave the killer techniques and the in Vietnam today. America the so-called expert guerilla-type training in Vietnam? great God-fearing nation is bypassing any “Negroes should stop meekly suffering efforts at securing peace, and playing the insults and forgiving these politicians “Will these men, no matter what their war game to the fullest. that want to come fawning back to say race, but particularly black soldiers, whatever they have to say to hold the be content to fight through the vicious “The U.S. has not called one national white vote.” battles in Vietnam and be content to fall meeting in an effort to study methods of easily back into the situations that they achieving peace. Even to mention interest She ended with a final barb:“One of the left behind — where color determined in peace is to be classed immediately as great tragedies of this decade is the fact the rights of men? anti-American. that the NAACP on both the state and

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of Citizens Councils when he was candidate had been elected to the state Lt. Gov., and his long-standing Senate in the 20th century, so it was tar- callousness toward the sufferings geted by the U.S. Justice Department for of the masses of disadvantaged and violating the 1965 Voting Rights Act. utterly deprived.” The State newspaper in Columbia ran She continued, “Add to that Hol- a photo of Modjeska with the caption: lings’ lengthy and unnecessarily “Longtime civil rights activist Modjeska bombastic, exhibitionist effort to Simkins of Columbia points to a reappor- prevent the seating of Thurgood tionment map of the state Tuesday as she Marshall on the US Supreme speaks to the Senate Judiciary Commit-

Becci Robbins Court bench. This pompous act is tee. She declared ‘war’ if the committee etched in high relief on the minds does not vote to reapportion before the of black South Carolinians. Even Modjeska’s portrait in the S.C. State House. 1980 elections.” though you and your faculty may have wizened memories, there are At age 87, she was part of a group of ac- local level has become a namby-pamby, tens of thousands of blacks who refuse to tivists from South Carolina who drove to apologetic group — saying more and forget.” Washington, D.C., for the national March more about less and less.” for Women’s Lives to protest the rash of In an ironic twist, many of Modjeska’s regressive laws rolling back rights it had Modjeska had a long memory, and was papers, which she donated to the Univer- taken decades to secure. slow to forgive. She cancelled plans to sity of South Carolina, are housed in the attend Benedict College’s commence- Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections. Modjeska knew from personal experience ment in 1971, on the 50th anniversary of A library brochure features her photo just what was at stake. She had registered her graduation there, because of its plans prominently. to vote just after women were granted to bestow Sen. Hollings with an honorary that right in the United States in 1920. degree. “Ain’t dead yet!” Keen to cast her first ballot, she was thrilled that women at long last were In a letter of regret, she wrote, “Hollings’ Modjeska stayed politically active into becoming full partners in American recent charades of smooth talk on poverty her late 80s, speaking at anti-nuclear politics. Or so she thought. and hunger, and his belated slum strolls rallies, testifying at hearings against the and ghetto walks cannot erase from my death penalty, and fighting polluting “I had great hope when women won the memory the treatment of protesting State industries in poor neighborhoods. In the vote,” she said. “You know those early College students during his gubernato- early 1980s, Modjeska waded deeply into women went through hell. The greatest rial administration, his praise and support the fight over reapportionment. No black disappointment of my life was that

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women did not take hold right away. I Columbia NOW organizer Eunice “The first day of the national convention, was so sure that they’d take what they’d “Tootsie” Holland remembers getting we found out that the Mississippi delega- worked so hard to earn, and turn this a call from Modjeska in the early ’70s. tion had sent several KKK members as world around.” “Modjeska said she wanted to be part of delegates,” Holland said. “They were the fight to get the ERA passed in South quite open about it. Modjeska found a While Modjeska never called herself a Carolina. She told me her mother was a Xerox machine, made a petition to have feminist, she acted like one her whole suffragette and would be very disappoint- the Klansmen removed, and got just life. Often the only woman at the table, ed if she didn’t do her part. Modjeska got about everyone at the convention to sign she could more than hold her own with involved and stayed involved.” it. The convention chair ruled that the anyone, anywhere, about nearly anything. Klansmen were duly elected and couldn’t In 1977, Modjeska was among 800 be removed, but everyone sure knew that “I’ve never really considered myself a people gathered in a Columbia hotel to Modjeska was in the house.” woman so far as being apologetic about elect delegates to the National Women’s it,” she said. “I just was like an old, blind Conference in Houston, a federally She was “in the house” until the end. At mule; I just didn’t give a damn. If I saw funded event that grew out of a United age 91, she spoke to a college assembly. something that needed to be hit, I just hit Nations call for gender equality. She reminded the students about their it.” history, and warned them not to take for Most of them supported the ERA, but granted the rights so many had fought so Modjeska worked to pass the Equal an organized and loud opposition led by long to secure, telling them, “The vote is Rights Amendment, first introduced in the John Birch Society tried to hijack the the thing that makes a difference between 1923. It says simply: “Equality of rights process by obstructing what they called a free man and a slave.” under the law shall not be denied or a “federally imposed feminist agenda.” abridged by the United States or by any They protested Modjeska’s election as Modjeska’s Legacy state on account of sex.” a delegate, passing out flyers on pink paper — like ones circulated during the Even before her death at age 92, Modjes- Such a modest, even obvious amendment McCarthy era — detailing her association ka was recognized for her service. In took 50 years to pass Congress when, with “known communists.” 1990, she received the Order of the Pal- in 1972, it finally was sent to the states metto, the highest civilian honor awarded for ratification. Congress extended its In spite of being targeted, Modjeska by the governor of South Carolina. original seven-year time limit to 1982, received the second-highest number of but by that deadline was still three states votes, and was among 20,000 women At her funeral, dignitaries from across the short of the 38 required for inclusion in from across the country who went to state came to honor a woman they may the Constitution. True to form, South Houston in the fall of 1977 to mark In- not always have agreed with but always Carolina was among the states to say no ternational Women’s Year with a spirited respected. No matter their politics, to gender equality. four days of debate and sisterly solidarity. nobody could deny Modjeska’s integ-

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ing members of the S.C. editor than all of the civil rights groups in Conference of Branches South Carolina combined. of the NAACP. I remember Modjeska, who had a great I remember Modjeska sense of humor and was quite a crowd for serving as the first pleaser, but she was a fierce warrior for field secretary of the S.C. preserving freedom for all of us. NAACP and receiving no pay for her work. I remember Modjeska, who was just at ease registering winos to vote on Read I remember Modjeska for Street as she was entertaining Thurgood discovering that white Marshall at her home on Marion Street.

Becci Robbins teachers were earning more than black teachers And I will remember Modjeska as a leg- in 1943, and she pushed end in her own time. She was our Harriett James Felder reads from his book Civil Rights in South for litigation that led Tubman and our Sojourner Truth. She Carolina: From Peaceful Protests to Groundbreaking to Thompson v. Gibbes was a woman who woke up every morn- Rulings at a birthday party for Modjeska, which the and the equalization of ing with freedom on her mind. S.C. Progressive Network holds each year at her former teachers’ pay in South home on Marion Street in Columbia. Here is that Carolina in 1945. So after today, when you happen to be passage. passing the State House one evening and I remember Modjeska the lights are flashing and the building is n April 25, 1995, Modjeska giving civil rights seminars to students shaking, do not be alarmed, for that will Monteith Simkins’ portrait from Allen University and Benedict Col- just be Modjeska debating with Edgar was Ounveiled at the South Carolina lege from behind the teller cage at Vic- Brown, Sol Blatt, Marion Gressette and State House. In my capacity as tory Savings Bank on Harden Street. Ben Tillman, and she will be winning the executive director of the NAACP at argument.” + that time, I delivered a tribute to Ms. I remember Modjeska, who would drive Simkins on that occasion. alone to Clarendon County for a mass meeting and then would have the last It is only fitting and proper that a portrait word in the debate after the meeting in of Mary Modjeska Monteith Simkins be Billy Flemming’s house at his bar. unveiled here today in this State House in remembrance of her. I remember I remember Modjeska, who cranked out Modjeska for being one of the found- more press releases and letters to the

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rity and lifelong life and history, the powerful, for the powerful. Cultural dedication to was nearly lost, but revisionists and opportunists of all stripes South Carolina’s a group of histo- often remake dead revolutionaries for most vulnerable rians, community mass public consumption in a practice citizens. activists, and civic Cornell West calls “Santa-Clausification.” leaders saved it, It happened to Martin Luther King Jr. “Mrs. Simkins finishing restora- It happened to Jesus. It could happen to always told it like tion in 2002. Modjeska. it was,” NAACP

Board Chair Wil- Becci Robbins The property is Already, the state NAACP has revised liam Gibson said now owned by the its history with her. It invites contribu- at her funeral. “You never had to wonder city and managed by Historic Columbia, tions to its annual King Day at the Dome where you stood. In her weekly radio which rents it to the S.C. Progressive program, with the $5,000 level being the broadcasts for the Richland County Citi- Network, a coalition of advocacy organi- “Modjeska Simkins Circle.” zens Committee, or at the many marches zations. A historical marker out front lets and conferences she attended, her voice passersby know the importance of that Sanitizing Modjeska’s history isn’t the rang true in its call for social and racial address. It also reminds those working only danger. Another is that her legacy equity. Forever impatient with injustice, and meeting inside that they are part of will be diminished or erased altogether. if the cause was right, Mrs. Simkins was something larger and, with care and com- In 2013, as the country celebrated 50 there.” mitment, something lasting. years of civil rights history, Columbia’s high-profile program included a web site In 1995, a portrait of Modjeska by South To carry on Modjeska’s work, the S.C. marking milestones in the city’s fight Carolina artist Larry Lebby was installed Progressive Network Education Fund for racial equality. Modjeska was not in the S.C. State House. The artist was has established a school in her name to included in the historical timeline. The a perfect choice: unconventional and teach and nurture a new generation of omission was characterized as an over- known for using unorthodox mediums South Carolina activists. The Modjeska sight, but the error was not corrected. like Worcestershire, berry juice and a Simkins School of Human Rights is a simple ballpoint pen. civic engagement institute to help citizens The Network, through the school and its build strong communities and promote ongoing work in the streets and in the After Modjeska’s death, the house she sound public policy in South Carolina. State House, is committed to keeping had shared with her husband since 1931 (For details, see page 39.) Modjeska’s memory alive — and keep- fell into disrepair, in spite of being in the ing it true. There is much work still left National Register of Historic Places. The How Modjeska will be remembered undone. As Modjeska said, “Ladies and modest structure at the corner of Marion remains to be seen. She knew better than gentlemen, this is no sitting down time.” and Elmwood, the address of so much most how history is usually written: by Join us! +

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Modjeska Simkins, Joe Vaughn, Brett Bursey, Coretta Scott King, and the Rev. Fred Reese at Columbia Masonic Temple in 1983.

rett Bursey, director of the S.C. I know a different Modjeska than a politics and detail. Modjeska is revered Progressive Network, met Modjes- lot of people do. I’d be reading about now and known in South Carolina for her kaB when he opened an account at Victory “some splinter group in Angola, and I’d go work during the civil rights era, but what Savings Bank for GROW, which served to Modjeska’s and we’d open a bottle of I want to see captured about her is the as the hub of South Carolina’s social port. We’d be talking about the events of consistency and continuity of her global justice organizing in the 1970s and ’80s. the day, and she would know the names analysis of the problems. Modjeska became his mentor, and they of the people who were negotiating with remained friends until she died. the Texaco oil company rig that the An- She would bridle at being called a civil golan rebels had seized. She was amaz- rights leader; she was a human rights He offers this remembrance. ing in her international understanding of leader. In the ’40s she was involved in

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liberation movements that understood im- fore a recognized civil rights movement. about American efforts to destabilize perialism and capitalism, and those clas- Modjeska comes out of that school. Nicaragua. She marched with us in front sic economic and social political forces, of the banks when we were protesting and how they affect societies. Modjeska I came in on the tail end of the civil apartheid. got that early in the game. rights movement, having been a Southern Student Organizing Committee travel- She never lived in the past; she was The “forgotten years” of King after the ler in 1968 and ’69. There was a strong always moving ahead and applying what March on Washington, when he became anti-racist movement inside the anti- she’d learned in the past to that which she more radical — Modjeska had those for- war movement that Modjeska was very was doing in the future. gotten years almost throughout her whole much aware of. She had one of her radio life, in terms of her analysis putting off speeches censored in its entirety when she Modjeska and I fought the whole time her contemporary allies. came out against the Vietnam War. I knew her about the Confederate flag. I was a big advocate for seeing it come In 1946, she helped put on the Southern When I met her in the late ’70s, the issues down off the dome; and she disagreed. I Negro Youth Congress at the Township weren’t a whole lot different than those had been arrested in 1969 for burning a in Columbia. W.E.B. DuBois gave one of her youth: imperialism, American in- Confederate flag, and to me the flag was a of his last and most important speeches, volvement in Central and South America, clear symbol of white supremacy. “Behold the Land.” [The 78-year-old told and in South Africa, with the anti-apart- the packed hall, “It would be a shame and heid movement. Modjeska would come She had a position about it that I remem- cowardice to surrender this glorious land to the GROW building and offer strategic ber well because she said it so often, and and its opportunities for civilization and thoughts, and I’d go to her house and I had occasion to say it at the unveiling humanity to the thugs and lynchers, the enjoy much the same discussions. of her portrait at the State House in 1995. mobs and profiteers, the monopolists and The flag was still flying at the time and, gamblers who today choke its soul and The fighting spirit and analysis that led when it was my turn to speak I said I had steal its resources.”] her into and through the civil rights era to share what Modjeska said: ‘Leave the was the same analysis and insight that she damn rag up there. I’d rather see the Klan DuBois had a global perspective and applied to American ventures in El Salva- in sheets than in suits. As long as that flag pieced it all together. The involvement of dor, and to what we called environmental flies on top of that building, you know socialists was very prevalent in the civil justice. We were protesting the chemical what’s in the hearts of the people inside.’ rights movements in the ’30s and ’40s. dumps being sited in poor black neigh- There was a movement before the in- borhoods, and she was involved with that. They did bring the flag down in 2000, volvement of black ministers going back and they put it on the front lawn. She to the ’Teens and ’20s when unions were She spoke at a rally at the bomb plant wasn’t around then, but I’d be interested organizing against Jim Crow and fighting against nuclear weapons and nuclear to know what Modjeska would have for integrated workplaces — decades be- waste. She marched in demonstrations thought about the “compromise.” +

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Author’s Note In Modjeska I find a kindred spirit — whenever possible. Who better to tell her both of us journalist-activists living in the story than Modjeska herself? Pardon the indulgence, but I feel com- heart of Dixie, where too many children pelled to say a few words about this are poor and poorly educated, where It has been a privilege to work on this, project. It was personal, and it seems only prison is often the first resort rather than even as I found it impossible to do her fair to say so. While I never got to meet the last, where the plantation mentality is justice in this slim volume. She felt very her, Modjeska feels like a member of my very much alive. present throughout, guiding me in a family. When I was dating the man who rather loud voice. I learned a lot. I hope would become my husband, he kept on The names and faces have changed, others do, too — not just about South his fireplace mantel a framed photograph but the political and social dynamics Carolina history and one of its finest of an old woman in a flowered dress. of exclusion, extremism, and racism characters, but about living true to your It was his mentor, Modjeska Simkins, remain stubbornly intact in our home convictions and making your time on this whom he talked about often and with state. I share her frustration and sense of Earth matter. obvious affection. urgency. Thank you to everyone who helped: the Over the years, but especially since 2009, So this is not a detached account; I’ll historians who captured Modjeska’s when the S.C. Progressive Network leave that to the scholars and historians. stories on tape (especially Jackie moved its offices into While to date there is Hall, whose interviews are masterful), her home on Marion no full biography of Vennie Deas Moore for research help, Street, Modjeska has Modjeska, much has Ed Madden, Victoria Reed and Herb become an ever-larger been written about her. Hartsook for lending their expert presence in my life. Not wanting to repli- editing and proofing skills,Historic Now, after listening to cate what is already Columbia for its commitment to hours of her voice on published, I’ve focused preserving Modjeska’s home and history, tape, after reading all on her activism so that and Richland County Conservation the books and newspa- it might inspire those Commission for its generous support. per clippings about her of us living in her tall that I could find, after shadow. Finally, thanks to my partner, Brett, for sifting through boxes teaching me what Modjeska taught him: of her personal papers, Because her voice is so You don’t do this work because you think I know her even more strong and her lan- you’re going to win. You do it because intimately. It has deep- guage so colorful, I’ve you think it’s right. Sue Bowman used extensive quotes ened my respect for her Becci Robbins throughout, letting extraordinary life and Communications Director, her carry the narrative work. S.C. Progressive Network 36

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RESOURCES University of South Carolina Libraries, South Carolina Political Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina Collections at Chapel Hill, Southern Oral History Program, Modjeska Simkins: Nov. 15, 1974, Jacquelyn Hall South Caroliniana Library July 28–31, 1976, Jacquelyn Hall, Bob Hall May 11, 1990, John Egerton NewsBank, Richland Library “Black Woman Activist in Twentieth Century South Carolina, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, Modjeska Monteith Simkins,” Thesis Abstract, Barbara Woods Aba- David L. Chappell, University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Mecha, Emory University, 1978.

Civil Rights in South Carolina: From Peaceful Protests to “Makin’ a Way Out of No Way — Modjeska Simkins: Portrait of Groundbreaking Rulings, James L. Felder, The History Press, 2012. the Human Rights Activist,” produced and directed by Beryl Dakers, South Carolina Educational Television, 1990. Democracy Rising: South Carolina and the Fight for Black Equality Since 1865, Peter F. Lau, University Press of Kentucky, 2006. Jet magazine, Oct. 20, 1955.

Southern Black Women in the Modern Civil Rights Movement, Mer- line Pitre, Bruce A. Glasrud, Texas A&M University Press, 2013. Support the Modjeska Simkins School South Carolina Women, Their Lives and Times, Volume 3, Marjorie Julian Spruill, Valinda W. Littlefield, Joan Marie Johnson.“Modjeska The Modjeska Simkins School of Human Rights is Monteith Simkins — I Cannot Be Bought and Will Not Be Sold,” a civic engagement institute to help citizens of all ages Cherisse Jones-Branch, University of Georgia Press, 2012. promote democracy and justice in South Carolina. The school is located in Modjeska’s house at 2025 Marion St. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Richard Wormser, Macmillan, 2004. in Columbia. Call 803-445-1921 to arrange a visit. View Women and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1965, Davis W. Houck, David E. Dixon, University Press of Mississippi, 2009. the school’s programs at www.scpronet.com.

Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, The school is a project of the S.C. Progressive Network 1941–1965, Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, Barbara Education Fund. Contributions are tax-exempt. Send Woods, Indiana University Press, 1993. checks made out to the Modjeska School to S.C. Com- munity Bank, 1545 Sumter St., PO Box 425, Columbia, Constance Ashton Myers Oral History Collection: Modjeska SC 29201. Credit/debit card donations may be made at Monteith Simkins Interview, June 11, 1977. scpronet.com. (Select Modjeska School after clicking on the Donate link.) Or call 803-808-3384. Oral History Interview with Modjeska Simkins [cassette] produced by Richland County Public Library, Jhan Robbins, Oct. 28, 1985.

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Brochure from Modjeska’s campaign for Columbia City Council in 1983. She ran again for Council and a seat in the S.C. House of Representatives in 1966. She lost each time, but claimed that was beside the point. “I never really wanted to hold public office,” she said. “You could do a gang lot more free-lancing. I did it more like being a gnat, a flea — just worrying the politicians.”

GROW archives

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