Everything Matters
Things Are Changing in the South
By Patrice Gaines
Thursday, January 31, 2008

I have lived in South Carolina for three years now and everyday I learn something new about the place I vowed never to return to. Leading up to the Democratic presidential primary, I was stunned--and delighted--to hear the predictions that Sen. Barack Obama would carry the state. But where, I asked myself, is the old South Carolina that was part of my childhood?

I was in seventh grade when my family moved from Beaufort, S.C. to Washington, D.C. in 1962. We had lived in Beaufort for about three years, while my father, a Marine, was stationed at Parris Island. The South Carolina primary was my wake-up call.
  
Suddenly, I was the little Black kid I saw on television being taunted by jeering White crowds. At my school, while we sat outside eating our lunches, White kids on shiny new buses passed by, leaning their heads out the windows screaming racial epitaphs.
  
In my South Carolina, we Black children rode buses so old they sometimes broke down on the way to school and we had to wait until another bus completed its route and could come to fetch us.
  
In my South Carolina, we wore our coats to school in the winter because some days the radiators stood by us cold and silent.
  
In my South Carolina, being Black felt like living in a boxed in void without hope. I was in love with my classmates and the first Black teachers I had ever met, but on some levels, living in South Carolina was like standing on a hyphen: I was standing on the link between the life I had in an integrated military community and the life I would have in the Chocolate City of Washington, D.C., where we were headed.
  
It never occurred to me that I would one day return to South Carolina to live. But after some unexpected twists and turns, my road led me back again. Of course, it has changed considerably. Yes, there is still racism. After all, this is America. And I do live in another part of South Carolina, in Lake Wylie, which is closer to Charlotte, N.C. than to any other city. But my next door neighbor Martha, who warned me early on that I had moved to "Republican territory," told me she and her husband George are "crossing over to the Democrats.”
  
"George told me he voted for Romney in the primary," she said. "But he said, 'Martha, I think I'm going to have to vote for Obama in the election.'"
  
I was stunned. George is of Polish decent. He grew up wealthy in Poland and lost everything when his country was invaded during World War II. His life has made him guarded, hawkish and conservative. He needs military security to feel safe. He is in his 80s and for years, he has loved the way Republicans talked about safety and security. But now George has heard something in the way Obama is talking that has caught his attention--and his vote.
  
I have been delightfully stunned by the happenings of this New South -- more in these past few weeks than I have in many, many years. Sure, I lived here three years once before, and my parents and grandparents were from this land, but most of my years were spent farther north. So I am figuring that if I feel invigorated by a South Carolina that can deliver a win to Obama, those brothers and sisters who have remained here and who have fought the good fight, must be rising in the morning with new energy, broader smiles and yes, a much greater audacity to hope.
  

Patrice Gaines is an author, a commentator for National Public Radio’s “News & Notes”and a Certified Life Coach, who specializes in assisting writers.  www.patricegaines.com.