We Charlestonians bask in the glory of the prominent role played by the Pinckneys, Lynches, Middletons, Rutledges, Draytons, and other famous surnames of our celebrated past. But until recently few Americans bothered to read the life stories of the black men and women who, though present at every step, were relegated to the back seat of society. Let Karen Fields, Ph.D., the great-granddaughter of Middleton family slaves, tell you her memories of that wonderful Charlestonian, Mamie Garvin Fields. Furthermore, if you seek a page-turner of a book that reveals a seldom-seen slice of Charleston’s past, then you must get a copy of Lemon Swamp And Other Places: A Carolina Memoir by Mamie Garvin Fields with Karen Fields (1983: The Free Press, A division of Macmillan, Inc.). Many schools across the USA use this little treasure to help with presenting a more balanced look at the times between the 13th Amendment in 1865 and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Just how the great-granddaughter of Charleston slaves breaks out of a three-century ordeal of captivity, poverty, and illiteracy is its own fascinating story, but Brandeis University professor Karen Fields chooses instead to recount a local history using the words of her grandmother, Mamie G. Fields, whom the state of South Carolina saw fit in 1971 to name “SC Senior Citizen of the year.”

For Charlestonians Karen Fields’ book is a much better primer on African-American culture than is the more famous Roots by Alex Haley. Mamie Garvin Fields’ recollections touch us deeply with stories of people, places, and events that are seldom mentioned in books lauding our local heritage.

Most of us who have a hankering for history know nothing of a place called Lemon Swamp, the title of Karen Fields’ book about her Grandmother Mamie’s memoirs. Lemon Swamp is a dismal bog southeast of Bamberg and it bordered the plot of land given to Mamie Fields’ grandparents by the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1866. In February of 1865 there were tens of thousands of former slaves milling around the coastal south with no idea of how to begin life as free citizens. A great American diaspora resulted from the Civil War’s chaotic aftermath. Freed men wandered far from their accustomed plantations. It appeared that the Federal government had made no plans for following-up the victory that was certain to be theirs. The Washington government seized rebel property throughout the area and the Freedmen’s Bureau resettled the ex-slaves, giving them 20 acres of confiscated land and a mule. The Fields, formerly slaves of the Middletons, were transplanted miles away from an area they were familiar with. Karen Fields, narrating her grandmother’s recollections, reveals the pathetic story of an elderly and illiterate black woman friend of the family begging her grandmother Mamie to write letters in a vain attempt to locate her loved ones. This story recalled a time long ago when Mamie was a young school teacher. The poor woman was dying and wanted to be buried with her kin, but the confusion of the 1860s separated them. The Freedom Jubilee of 1865 was bitter sweet because the struggle for self-sufficiency was made even more brutal by the lack of education coupled with the resentment that existed between the races. Even the occupying Federal troops attempted to round up the freedmen and move them back to their old plantations as day laborers. Lemon Swamp near Bamberg was a hideout for black men fleeing Federals who seemed bent on revoking their freedom. Mamie G. Fields, ancestors of the Fields and Fieldings, taught these lessons to young blacks at Miss Izzards’ School downtown.

The Fields were always an educated family it appears. Even during the colonial era they had training and skills reserved for the most trusted of the servants. One distant relative of Mamie Garvin Fields accompanied the Middleton boys to Oxford University in the 1700s. He attended lectures and tutorials, and even learned Greek and Hebrew as he waited upon his young masters! A direct line of descendants from this unique black man has yielded South Carolina leaders in the legislature, legal and judicial arenas, as well as academia and business. Many American success stories chronicle rags to riches -- Carnegie style, but you’re not likely to see another story like this one.

All those years that Karen Fields listened to her granny, Mamie Fields, she filed away the stories pledging some day to write them down, if for nothing else than to perpetuate the memory of her family’s triumph over adversity.

There are so many stories here, some quite humorous, that reveal the subtleties of culture existing between the races throughout the era of segregation. In the early 20th century South many of the master carpenters, bricklayers, and metal workers were descendants of former slaves who’d learned their art on the great plantations. When these skilled black men moved up north in the 1920s they often encountered white resistance, for in the North the master craftsmen were white men.

In 1924 Charleston celebrated a labor day decades before there was a national labor holiday. The white guilds, forerunners of unions, sauntered along in random fashion waving nonchalantly at the crowd, but bringing up the rear were the black men’s craft unions colorfully outfitted according to their trade, stepping out smartly to the omm-pah-pah sound of the Jenkins Orphanage Band! According to Mamie’s memoirs the white craftsmen thought that their “black brothers” had gone too far to outshine them, so that was the last labor day march in Charleston!

Mamie Garvin Fields’ memoirs span the years 1890 through the 1940s, and this book, Lemon Swamp and Other Places, is an oral history of these parts unlike any other you’ll ever read.

(Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud School. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant. See more columns at www.moultrienews.com.)

Title:


Comment:


Your Name: (optional - shown on website)

Enter text seen above:

---