HOW ABOUT THOSE SOUTH CAROLINIONS

As you already know, we spent a few years in South Carolina where we learned lots of things about the Southern mentality.

We had made friends with a gentleman from the North who had just moved there a year before us. He was an executive with a small company based in Columbia. He told me the story of the day he had gone to lunch and an elderly woman who was on the board of directors of his business sat down with him because she was alone and recognized him. During their conversation, she asked where his wife was employed and he told her the name of the school where she taught. The woman said “isn’t that a Catholic School, are you Catholic? He said yes. She told him she had never met a Catholic before and after that day she never spoke to him again.

The oldest country club in the area never allowed a black man to use their front entrance. Only black employees were allowed in it and they used the back door. When the Catholic Church was going to hold an event in their dining room, they were told the black priest from their parish was not allowed in their facility.

A woman we knew from Pennsylvania moved into the area, also before us. Her husband, a doctor, was stationed there with Air Force. The home they purchased was situated on a lake where all the neighbors were longtime residents; all of them part of the local gentry. As the only northerners in the enclave, the neighbors never introduced themselves. She was totally disillusioned having come from the upper class themselves.

We had fortunately moved into an area with many families from other states as well as various southerners who embraced us. Our country club had black members including an NBA star. Also, the theater I was working with was in the University area and many of the professors we met were also members, so we made many friends from the college not seemingly bigoted.

Many of the old time Carolinians cared a lot about family silver, china patterns and ancestral names. New born girls were given their fathers first names, so when meeting someone for the first time, it became a little confusing, but reading about all their debuts was fun. One southern gentleman we knew had two daughters, the oldest refused to become a debutante, which pleased her mother, but the second wanted to be presented to society so the pleased father who took her to New York to have a gown designed for the occasion. Mom actually wanted no part of it.

All this was twenty five years ago, lots of things have changed, but according to what you see on the GOP TV debates there, you see the old prejudices are still a large part of the state residents’ mentality.