Early thoughts on Gaffney History Museum New Montgomery Wing

   Two days after my 70th birthday I drove to Gaffney to see the new wing of the History Museum located at what was my Elementary School Central. At the time I was there early 60s  it was one of the best Elementary schools in the state with a strong faculty and maybe even stronger one through six grade student body.

    Very Proud of what Pam and Matt and Dinah and other staff have done there. Was great to talk to Pams Mother and sister at some length as their family early on was active at my Dad's church, Bethany, especially Vacation Bible Schools. Pam and Kathy Jo's Mother was a niece of a Deacon at Bethany, Mr. E T Moss and it was delightful hearing her stories of that generation of nine brothers and two sisters one of which was her father. There is not a bad looking female in the entire bunch of the extended family of cousins that I am aware of including at least one classic beauty and a Miss South Carolinian of the third generation.

     Got to visit my third grade classroom of Miss Mattie Mae. The tiny bathroom is still there and the one way mirror where the teachers could observe from the faculty room. First time back in that room in sixty years my first class in the third grade when our family moved in 62 from Hayesville, NC.

        Was great to talk to Gaffney's legendary Golfer Stan Littlejohn, boxer and my classmate Terry Medley who kept our little league team in 65 the Lions respectable, Abbie Sossamon of the Ledger and my friend Matt on staff who helped get some bricks placed properly.

       I was surprised but delighted to see a fairly honest and transparent depiction of the Civil Rights era in Gaffney, even a plaque about the 1957 bombing of Dr. Sanders home on College Drive. However the display suggests it was all on the Klan and does not mention Tim Tyson of Duke and his work in Jumpn Jim Crow collection about how for the most part the so called good people of Gaffney in 57 were struck mute on the matter even to the point of complicity with the bombing.

  His essay Dynamite and the Silent South is an easy google. His research was on site in Gaffney in the early nineties. 

    I am hoping a professional examination of the Textile Mill Strike in Gaffney in the late forties is soon in the Museum. In a summer school class at Furman in 1976, Political science proff and upstate civil rights activist Ernie Harrill a native of Rutherfordton said the Gaffney Strike was one of the most notorious and undereported episodes of all the strikes in the Piedmont Carolinas from 1929 to 1950. Same was said by GC Waldrep who has written strongly about the strike at the Converse Mill outside Cowpens just ten miles away.

      Interesting to note that is the Sanders  home Governor Riley spent the night in while running for Governor in 76. By that time it was the home of his good childhood friend from Greenville Don Gantt who was in business in Gaffney. Gannt the grandfather of Socon basketball player of the year a decade ago, App State Donald Simms. His Uncles were our neighbors out on Wilkinsville Road and part of some family drama our last years there.

      I was talking a good bit and didn't take careful notice of every exhibit in the Sports Room,   seeing a  nice display on Gaffney's Olympic Hurdler Charles Foster. In fact you can see Foster plaque in the picture behind golfer Stan Littlejohn in today's Gaffney Ledger.  Would be proper for  Tim Montgomery, at one time the fastest human in the world according to Sports Illustrated deserves notice. 

    On the whole great work with the museum with Dee Gee McElveen's landscaping yet to come. I hope to go back soon and give it more  attention it deserves.