Symposium celebrates S.C. women through the ages

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Symposium celebrates S.C. women through the ages
June 1, 2009
BY KRISTINE HARTVIGSEN
The State



You might never have heard of abolitionist Sarah Grimke, the daughter of a Charleston plantation slaveholder, whose earliest criminal deed was covertly, by the light of a fireplace, teaching a slave to read. Or her sister, Angelina, who joined Sarah in the 1830s, speaking out against slavery and later championing the causes of equality and women’s rights.

And you might never have heard of a young runaway slave named “Dolly,” for whose return in 1863 her Charleston master offered a $50 reward, asserting the light-complexioned female with a “fine set of teeth” certainly must have been lured away rather than fled of her own volition.

Had they not spoken out or taken action within the confines of their respective circumstances, we might never have learned about Julie Frances Webb and Alice Delk Ray, “the Delk Sisters,” who donned dungarees and welders hoods to toil in the Charleston Navy Yards during World War II. Or Vicki Eslinger, a Columbia attorney whose lawsuit during the 1970s ultimately won women the right to serve as pages in the State House.
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Dr. Matilda Evans, the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in South Carolina.

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Rebecca Motte

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Justice Jean Toal

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Alice and Julia Delk , later known as Alice D. Ray and Frances D. Webb, worked as welders at the Charleston Navy Yard during World War II.

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Louise Smith, the first lady in racing and the 1999 inductee into the International Motor Sports Hall of Fame. Handout Photo

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A depiction of the Lady of Cofitachequi.

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Elizabeth Evelyn Wright

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Marion B. Wilkinson

Marion B. Wilkinson

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Ethel Bolden

Ethel Bolden

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Harriet Keyserling

Harriet Keyserling

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Polly Woodham

Polly Woodham

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* Marion B. Wilkinson
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If you go

South Carolina Women: Their Lives & Times Symposium

WHEN: Thursday

WHERE: Belk Auditorium, Moore School of Business, USC

COST: $20, or $40 including lunch

INFO: (803) 777-9444, or http://saeu.sc.edu/reg/symposium

ALSO: For women’s history buffs, the Eighth Southern Conference on Women’s History follows the symposium and runs through Saturday at USC. The Historic Columbia Foundation also is celebrating 10 decades of women’s history with “Women of the Hampton-Preston Mansion” from 2 to 4 p.m. each Tuesday through July at the mansion. Call (803) 252-1770, Ext. 33.

They are among the women profiled in a new three-volume anthology titled “South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times.”

Co-edited by University of South Carolina professors Marjorie Spruill and Valinda Littlefield, along with Joan Marie Johnson of Northeastern Illinois University, each volume of the anthology contains 18 essays penned by professors, graduate students and senior scholars from all over the world.

“Most of the pieces are brand-new scholarship written particularly for this book,” Spruill said. “We focused on people’s lives in order to better understand the times. We think, collectively, it gives a whole lot better understanding of South Carolina history.”

The first volume of the anthology, which covers the 1500s through the Civil War era, is being introduced during a daylong symposium on Thursday at USC. The program, co-sponsored by the Southeastern Institute for Women and Politics and the Alliance for Women, will present mini-biographies of notable South Carolina women, including some who will be in attendance.

Few of the women depicted in the anthology are famous. Personalities range from quietly obscure matriarchs to groundbreakers — Louise Smith of Greenville, the first lady of racing and Dr. Matilda Evans, an African-American doctor — and prominent activists.

“We tried to ensure that there was a balance among the women we included and tried to avoid giving the impression that they walked on water,” Littlefield explained. “They were human and had the same frailties of all people.”

The women profiled in the first volume did very little to upset the social and conventional bounds of etiquette. They strategically chose when to use their feminine wiles and when to be more direct.

“For these women working for change in the South, it was expedient to go about it in a lady-like way or they wouldn’t get very far,” Spruill said.

Julia Frances (Delk) Webb, 88, will be at Thursday’s conference wearing her “Rosie the Riveter” T-shirt to reminisce about her days as a welder in the Charleston Navy Yards.

“I had a brother in the Army/Air Force and another brother in the Navy, and I wanted to do something for my country, so I applied at the Navy Yards,” she said. After taking welding classes, she and her sister soon were commuting the 78 miles each way from their Orangeburg home to work for the war effort.

“I was a third-class welder, because they didn’t let you be a first-class welder if you were a woman,” she said. “There were a lot of women in the Navy Yards, in shipbuilding and welding and all the different departments. Some of them were called ‘midgets’ because they were such little people. Some of them didn’t even speak English.”

Vicki Eslinger, a trial lawyer with the Nexsen Pruet firm, is an honoree and will speak at the symposium. In the 1970s, she applied for one of the page jobs in the Legislature only to be turned away by a clerk who said they were reserved for males.

“He said it was because the senators would hire their girlfriends,” Eslinger recalled. “It had never occurred to me back then that any girl my age would have anything to do with any of the men of their age.”

Represented by another symposium honoree, attorney Jean Hoefer Toal (who later would become the first female chief justice of the S.C. Supreme Court), Eslinger sued. Ultimately, the case was decided in the U.S. Court of Appeals 4th Circuit in favor of Eslinger and women who would be pages.

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg was head of the women’s rights project at the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) then, and she handled my appeal,” Eslinger said. “Women who were trying cases then were inspirational to me. I look forward to the day when they don’t have to count the number of women on the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Spruill would concur.

“Historically, South Carolina has the worst representation of women in its appointed and elected offices in the whole country,” she said. “Currently, there is not a single woman in the South Carolina Senate.”