This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.
Students from the Anderson County School District worked with the Belton Area Museum Association in South Carolina to produce oral history interviews related to the Smithsonian traveling exhibition "Hometown Teams: How Sports Shape America," which toured South Carolina in 2016 and was on view in Belton.
Narrator: (00:24): After the Civil War, the leaders of the south attempted to restore "order" by putting in place Jim Crow Laws restricting access and associations between the races.
Narrator: (00:36): Sports were no different at the textile mills. As textile mills sprang up in the upstate, this separation of the races was still evident in the jobs offered to African Americans.
Joe Atkin (00:52): They were kind of out in the yard, bringing the cotton all in and they had houses built right up above the old town for them. They had about eight or 10 houses.
Narrator: (01:01): Sports were no different at the textile mills. At Chiquola Mill, there was a white base team and a separate team for the African American workers.
McDavid Carr (01:12): They had their own league. They played ball when we were out of town and the all stuff like that. Just like us, the mill furnished them uniforms.
Narrator: (01:24): While they each had their own organized ball team, whites have certain advantages.
McDavid Carr (01:28): All the mills had a African American team and they were good ball players back then. They were good enough to play on the white team, but that didn't do it back then.
Narrator: (01:47): It almost seemed as if the Jim Crow Laws applied to women too. Women's sports were also separate, but not equal.
Viola Thompson Griffin (01:55): Boys’ equipment was much superior to the girls. And I think we had to buy, I'm sure we did, our own gloves and the shoes. It's outrageous what they paid those some of the men now, I think, because we would've played for nothing. It was that much fun for us. We felt liberated. We were, but these men, they really, and truly, I think that some of them are spoiled to death.
Narrator: (02:29): Community members still had a pre-19th Amendment philosophy. People were not used to women “acting” like men playing sports.
Viola Thompson Griffin (02:37): My parents wanted me to come home and do the “normal” things that “normal” girls do like get married, and have children, and get in the kitchen.
Asset ID: 2022.23.09
Find a complete transcription at www.museumonmainstreet.org
