Native Drums
Explore the powerful symbolism of drums in African American culture, once tools of communication and resistance during the darkest times of slavery. We confront the lingering shadows of economic exploitation and the pervasive influence of media and religion in controlling black narratives. Let’s reexamine the role of the black church and its mission to fight systemic injustices, urging a return to prophetic ministries that prioritize humanity and community over material wealth. This podcast episode is not just a reflection of the past but a call to action for the future, urging us to build a more just and liberated world.
Native Drums
When One Rocks, We All Rock: Celebrating Our Shared Legacy
"We be sisters. We be the same, coming from the same place, going through." The powerful poetry of Lucille Clifton opens this profound exploration of sisterhood, collective power, and remembrance during Women's History Month.
What happens when women recognize their shared journey and lock arms together? The answer transforms families, communities, and nations. With women comprising 55% of Florence's population and 52% of America's citizens, we hold numerical strength that becomes transformative when united around common purpose.
This journey through Women's History Month celebrates the "Queens of the Grove" at Savannah Grove Baptist Church—women like Miss Gladys Jackson, the entrepreneur and mother of prosperous Black farmers, and First Ladies who led with grace and wisdom. These local heroines shared space with national icons like Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, who rose from nearby Maysville, South Carolina, to advise presidents and befriend Eleanor Roosevelt. Dr. Iola Jones, whose memorial plaque now stands in Florence, brought these world-changers directly to segregated schools, showing children possibilities beyond their immediate circumstances.
The most urgent message emerges when examining today's challenges: our children are struggling with reading fundamentals while parents substitute screens for bedtime stories. The greatest disservice we do to future generations is failing to teach them their history—for as the wisdom goes, "If I do not know from which I have come, it is extremely hard to develop directions to where I want or need to go."
As we face increasingly complex challenges, remember these words: "When you rock is the only time I can rock." Our strength has always been in our unity. Let God's word light your path, then go forth and let your light shine brightly wherever you find yourself. The time for sisterhood is now.
Me and you, we be sisters. We be the same. Coming from the same place, going through Me and you, we be sisters. You hear me? Me and you be greasing our legs and touching up our edges. Me and you be scared of rats and stepping on roaches. Now, me and you come running hard down our streets. Mamas look at us and shake their heads and smile and say we act like we be sisters. And say we act like we be sisters, me and you got babies, got 35, got black. Let our hair go back. Me and you be loving ourselves and understanding our people. But then you and me found God and now we be understanding ourselves and loving our people Because you and you and you and you and you, we be sisters. We be the same, coming from the same place, going through. So to my sweet, sweet black sisters, let God's word be a light unto your path and let your little light shine wherever you are. So now, if you can accept and believe that, then black women can rock together continuously.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, these are the words of the late Lucille Clifton, another one of those great poets and authors of our time, and I fell in love with this piece the very first time I read it and I have to admit that was some time ago, very long ago, but it is what today really has become, what must become foundational for us. We've got to realize and act like we be sisters. Every last one of you, our black sisters, asian sisters, mexican, hispanic, all women must recognize and understand the kind of power we have when we do indeed rock together. We all have to recognize and understand that when you rock is the only time I can rock, and that applies individually and collectively. We are celebrating Women's History Month and the wonderful gentlemen and I do mean that sisters and I think you all know what I mean by that Mr William here, and he recognizes the importance of saying something about us sisters in this month of celebration. In this month of celebration, that means that some other sister has done an excellent job and she has given to not only this community, to this nation and world, the kind of young black men that are required for our overall survivor. So, mrs Stutz, thank you, thank you for the young man you have given us. Now, as the point indicates, I think that as we celebrate, as we celebrate, the entire month of March has been designated for that appropriate and certainly at a time such as this that we acknowledge our ancestors, that we acknowledge those women, those sisters, right here in Florence, florence County, right here in Effingham we're at Savannah Grove Baptist Church where we are now doing this podcast. We have got lives, our lives have been because of those mothers, those sisters who came along before us.
Speaker 1:I'd like to start by calling a small role and, ladies and gentlemen, please understand, I could call names, this entire podcast and still not mention many that should have been. So I'm going to tell you that up front, this is but a smidgen, a smidgen of the names that I could call. But I want to talk about and celebrate today the women of the Grove. First of all, let's start with the First Ladies. We had First Lady Johnson, who, as a child, was the First Lady as I grew up here with Reverend Johnson as our pastor. Then there was First Lady Lund, reverend Lund's Queen, and then we had First Lady Jackie Canty and now First Lady Toy. We have to give those queens their just due, because those women, those women, became exactly as they are called first ladies, first ladies here in the grove. But they too have to say and agree that they owe a lot to the other queens and mothers that were here in the Grove Just off the top of my head.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking about Miss Allardyce Johnson, miss Gladys Jackson, entrepreneur supreme. That's always how I remember Ms Gladys Jackson. First of all, the mother of some of the largest and richest black farmers. Her husband, mr Sid Jackson, was one of those farmers here in this community. Anytime there was a Women's Day celebration or anything and we were collecting money, everybody knew right off the bat Miss Gladys Jackson was going to win that honor. Then we had Miss Fannie, nyland, easter Benjamin, miss Mady Staten, sister Perkins, Ruth Hawkins, and, like I said, the names could go on and on and on. But let's give respect, as there are names that my sisters, each one of you, you have a list of names. Call them, share them, talk about them at your dinner table, share them with the young people in your home and in your contact space. Please do that, because all too often we don't and we don't tell this present generation how it is that we got to this point.
Speaker 1:It didn't just one day it was slavery, jim Crow, and then the next. Ah no, nothing in life is quite that simple. There was a process, there were plans, there were. You know, sometimes those plans didn't turn out the way we wanted them to them too, but there was a price paid for these young ladies, our daughters here today, to be able to get here and enjoy the things that they do. And they need to know and they won't know if you, you who had shared space and time with these queens, don't share that information. They have made our lives better that you do them and you do yourself a disservice by not passing it on to your children. We cannot maintain the strongness of a race if the race children don't even know what. What am I talking about? Let me share with you, uh and experience. Many of you know.
Speaker 1:I worked at Morris when I left the General Assembly and I never shall forget a 20-year-old student, young black man. I was trying to help him get an internship for that summer and we were filling out the application and we got to the point on in the application and I asked him, I said what is your mother's maiden name? And I didn't hear anything. And I looked up and you know deep thought, and he was looking at me and he said well, doc, I call a mama. And I looked at the young man but I did not blame him because if he had never been told that, how was he supposed to know and name? That wasn't something he, as he told me later, he'd ever heard. That wasn't something he, as he told this world, into this world, ill-equipped to handle the complexities of today. They got to know, first of all and foremost, who I am, and they won't ever know that Unless you take the time to do that and now also understand.
Speaker 1:This is not something Maggie is asking you to do because Maggie thinks it's a good idea. Far from it. My sisters, I am asking you to do this because God, your creator, commands that of you. You are told to teach the children when you get up in the morning and when you go to bed at night. Teach the children and mamas, my sister, are considered first teacher, first teacher teacher and unfortunately, my generation dropped the ball, my generation of parents. I'll be honest and own up to that. We dropped the ball because we got so excited and happy about what our ancestors had gotten for us.
Speaker 1:Now remember we're talking 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was passed in this country. It was passed here in America. That gave us the right to be able to sit where our money could take us. We can live right on, do anything that we wanted to, because Dr King and thousands upon thousands of other brothers and sisters who marched, spat on, beaten with billy clubs and and brutalized by police officers and all other people in their communities and towns, they paid a price and many, far, far too many of them lost their lives. Getting us the right to full participation in our communities, our state and nation, our state and nation. That's what they did and it was put into law 1964. And we took those gains and got our little job and got our little education and bought us whatever we wanted, and we did the same thing for our children and unfortunately, to this day, we're still doing that.
Speaker 1:You don't think so? Go in any mall, any building anywhere, and you will see toddlers walking around with a cell phone. And you will see toddlers walking around with a cell phone yes, toddlers, and they know how to use it. Report the scores. The educational scores for the state of South Carolina says once again, our fourth graders and our eighth graders, national and state testing says that our kids are not good readers. Our scores, our reading scores, are down once again this year. And why Parents no longer read to their children. There are no bedtime stories anymore. They are on Facebook, where you don't have to read, you just have to have good eyesight and the ability to hear. And, sisters, we got 50 inch widescreen TVs in our kids' rooms, mounted on the wall, so there is no talking going on.
Speaker 1:As I bring this to a close, I want to share this picture with you of Dr Mary McLeod Bethune, and I know you will find this kind of hard to see, but it says and I want you to go to NCNW, national Council of Negro Women, an organization started by Dr Mary McLeod Bethune, and this says Tigers. Dr Mary McLeod Bethune visits Wilson High School. Yes, ma'am, yes sir, this lady Mary McLeod Bethune out of Maysville, south Carolina, right up the street. Right up the street, you go down 76, just before you get into something and veer off to your right and you are already in the downtown area of Maysville, south Carolina. In this picture there is a picture of Gerard A Anderson.
Speaker 1:The principal Bethune is a local, dr Iola Jones. Dr Iola Jones and her husband, the Reverend Jones. This and this is another queen, our queen. Both of these women, dr Mary McLeod Bethune, who now has a statue on the Bethune out of Maysville y'all, our neighbor. This is a woman we had the opportunity to see and to touch, to hear her literally speak to, at that time, a segregated Wilson High School. You had no other choice. If you lived in the county, it certainly if you lived in the city, if you went to school Wilson High School. And this woman, who went on to serve as eyes and ears to the President of these United States and his first lady, became her Dr Bethune's best friend, eleanor Roosevelt, and who brought her to Wilson, our very own beloved Dr Iola Jones. Beloved Dr Iola Jones. They have now erected a plaque in the park on Oakland Avenue, directly across from the house where she resided here in Florence.
Speaker 1:These are women who spent every day, every hour, thinking and planning and working so that their children and their people and when I say their children, that meant all of us, because that's what they were doing making sure that little black boys and girls got to hear things, see things, do things that would make them stronger in this world, so that you had a foundation that would propel you into knowing, if I can dream it, I can achieve it. That's the sisterhood, that's the village that brought us here, the village that brought us here, and as we close out the celebration of Women's History Month, what I want you to leave this podcast? Knowing, and I mean truly knowing. I don't look around, don't see it. I, man in the mirror, sister in the mirror, I have work to do, what he commands of each and every one of us. No, they don't have to be your biological children. These women were not just working for their own biological, they work for all of us. We are better off. We are better off because of what they did, and you deny your own when you don't let them know their history.
Speaker 1:If I do not know from which I have come, it is extremely hard to develop directions to where I want or I need to go. So let's don't just celebrate this year. Let us come together, arms locked, where it is obvious that when one rocks, we all rock. I need us to understand 2025, and you have to be completely blind, deaf and a little mentally deficient If you don't see that these are some unbelievable times in America, when the leader, the leader of America, calls for the dismantling of the Department of Education. Sisters and brothers, they are not playing. So why are we? Oh, these people are going to do whatever they want, of course, if there's no opposition, if they know you will sit quietly on the same side talking about Lord, help us. The Lord requires you to get up, help yourself. And then, because he blesses us, to be a blessing, so let's get up, sisters, as only we can get up. Do you realize that right here in Florence 6,000, there are 40 rounded, 41,000 of us that live in the city, in the city of Florence, 55% of them are women, 55% in the nation, in the nation, brothers and sisters, we are 52% of's over half city, the state, the nation.
Speaker 1:You don't squander that kind of power. You use it to build and to build a generation of new soldiers, cemented in the Word of God, strengthened to go forth and to love ye one another Time out for who she thinks she is. I can't stand. Ah, we don't have that kind of time. You may not always agree, but that's life. But it should not make you disagreeable. You're never going to no Use the strength God has blessed us with. Why? Because you and me, we be sisters, we be the same, coming from the same place, going through. Only when you sing, I pull it. So, my sweet, sweet sisters, let God's word be a light unto your path and you go out there, sisters, sisters, and let your light shine and you tell it, tell it everywhere you go.