HAMPTON — Lately, when people talk about this part of the Lowcountry, they talk Alex Murdaugh. But the 4½-square-mile town, where the convicted murderer’s great-grandfather started the family law firm, is also home to nearly two dozen churches.
Step into one of these unassuming houses of worship and you could bear witness to an important part of African American history. These middle-of-nowhere, one-room churches routinely offer a stage for Black gospel quartets.
While this genre of music has been abandoned in much of the rest of the country, it is still alive in rural South Carolina. Hampton County pastor Charlie Grant is working to preserve the legacy of this music.
“When you start talking about the Black gospel quartet genre of music, you have to think about the struggle that a race of people was going through,” said Grant of the Wilkerson Missionary Baptist Church in Early Branch.
The roots of this music can be traced back to the spirituals sung by the enslaved on plantations. Quartets helped shine a light on African Americans’ plight during the Reconstruction era. They served as beacons of hope through Jim Crow and added fuel to the civil rights movement.
Through a grassroots campaign, which will start with the creation of a mobile museum and an accompanying documentary film, Grant hopes to generate enough momentum to have a monument erected in the nation’s capital.
First time seeing Black people
During Reconstruction members of the Klu Klux Klan routinely burned down Black schools in the South.
George White, treasurer at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, had the idea to build a fortress-like school with thick stone walls, which Klan members would be unable to set ablaze.
Fisk’s original wooden structure opened shortly after the Civil War, to educate Black children and newly emancipated adults. In addition to serving as school treasurer, White was the director of the choir, the Fisk University Jubilee Singers.
To raise money for the new school, White took the Jubilee Singers on the road. Singing classical tunes in the European style, the Jubilee Singers’ fundraising efforts fell flat.
Many of the members of the choir were former slaves. One day, White overheard them singing spirituals they learned on the plantations. So moved by the music, he incorporated it into their routine.
The new repertoire was so successful, the Jubilee Singers embarked on a world tour.
For many Europeans, the singers would have been the first Black people they had ever set eyes on. They were well dressed, had beautiful voices and sung about the hardships of plantation life.
“Europeans were moved by the emotion and got to see a glimpse of what it was like to be Black in America at that time period,” said Birgitta Johnson, associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of South Carolina.
In addition to raising awareness to the cruel reality of Black life in America, the Jubilee Singers raised what would be the equivalent today of millions of dollars.
Construction on the new school was completed in 1876. It has since been designated a National Historic Landmark.
As members of the choir graduated, they moved back to their hometowns and many started quartet groups.
Empowerment and hope
Hampton County is named after Wade Hampton, a Confederate general and key figure in turning back the clock on the progress Black people had made during Reconstruction. In 1876, the same year construction was completed on Fisk’s fortress-like building, Wade’s political group, the Redeemers, overtook the state government.
“They basically took control of the state and imposed a White democratic government,” said James Shinn, assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina Beaufort.
The state constitution was rewritten and Jim Crow became the law of the land. One place Black people could safely congregate was church.
“Coming out of reconstruction and into the 20th century, the biggest public and social institution for Black people is the Black church,” Johnson said.
At most church functions, entertainment was provided by Black gospel quartets. As the popularity of these groups grew, they began writing their own songs.
While the spirituals sung on the plantations promised freedom in heaven, the quartet singers, many of whom got a taste of freedom during Reconstruction, wrote songs about how it could be obtained here on earth.
“It doesn’t have to come in the hereafter, it can actually happen now,” Johnson said.
At this time, quartets made an effort to be more professional. They started wearing matching suits on stage and they went on tour, playing in Black churches and the gymnasiums of Black schools.
They became the rock stars of gospel music. Their style and sound would later be borrowed by groups like The Four Tops and The Temptations.
“Bringing these quartets to schools would be the equivalent in the ’60s of taking Motown artists to schools. It’s just sort of saying, look what you can achieve,” said Bob Marovich, editor of the “Journal of Gospel Music.”
But as Grant points out, in order to make change, people have to first be empowered.
“That’s what that music was doing, empowering people,” Grant said.
Revolution on the B-side
During the civil rights movement, the message shifted from one of hope to a call for action.
By this time, gospel quartets had picked up instruments like electric guitars, keyboards and drums. A hard gospel sound had developed. The lead singers, influenced by Pentecostal preachers, injected their performances with intense energy and exaggerated gesturing.
“Sometimes they’d even have two lead singers playing off of each other, and that would drive the emotional intensity even further,” Marovich said.
These singers would influence artists like James Brown and Little Richard. Even Mick Jagger’s charismatic stage presence can be traced back to Black churches in the American South.
Although the quartets were offering the freedom fighters of the civil rights movement an overt message to continue the fight, it was, in many cases, hidden from White people.
Thanks to furniture retailers, who wanted to give consumers a reason to buy record players, just about every major city in the country had a recording studio, where anyone could go and cut a record. The Black gospel quartets would record 45s, which they would sell to help fund their tours.
The A-side on these records would offer an uncontroversial message of hope and faith. But the B-side was often a radical call to action.
“By and large, they didn’t play those B-sides on the radio. You heard them if you owned the records or if you were in the spaces where they were performing,” Johnson said.
Because these groups both performed and sold their records in segregated venues, most White people were never tuned in to the B-side.
The road to preservation
The official kickoff to Grant’s campaign to preserve the legacy of this music was on March 12, at Mount Olive Baptist Church. Mount Olive is a modest brick building with a white steeple.
Although it is only 3½ miles from Hampton’s historic downtown, it is surrounded by pine forest and empty grass plains. The only building in sight is the church’s neighbor, a small house with four tall satellite dishes in back. It is home to two radio stations: WBHC-FM, which specializes in soft contemporary hits, and WHGS-AM, which has gone silent.
Inside the church, two rows of wooden pews are separated by a red carpeted aisle. The stained glass windows depict the crucifixion. Mount Olive is just 15 miles from the hunting lodge where Alex Murdaugh shot and killed his wife and youngest son.
The Gospel Proclaimers of the Lowcountry were first to take the stage. They wore matching black suits with velvety red ties. They kicked the afternoon off with a slow soulful song.
Speaking over the intro, the lead singer warned the audience that he would not be able to make it through the song without crying.
“Because it’s a song that touches my heart. And I hope it touches yours, too,” he said. With both hands held out, as if he were trying to embrace the entire congregation, he sang, “Show me the way. Lord I need you, Lord I need you to show me the way …”
Grant said that getting a monument erected in Washington, D.C., is some very heavy lifting. His plan is to first build a credible body of work, to help legislators understand the importance of this music.
He has started talking to the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, on Hilton Head, about getting a fund designated specifically for this project.
“We’re definitely very interested in these sorts of preservation projects,” said Jill Dawson, program associate at the Community Foundation.
Meanwhile, Grant is on the hunt for historical artifacts for the mobile museum he is curating.
“We’re going to get one of those 40-foot trailers, with a goose neck. It’ll take a big truck to pull it. It’ll be driven and set up at schools and libraries, and rural events. The utilization of grants, donor support and fundraisers will help us achieve our goal,” Grant said.
Grant has also enlisted the help of friends like the Rev. Jesse Black, president of the Palmetto State Gospel Music Association. Black said this music can serve as a powerful tool for educating young people. When children sings these songs, he said, they are literally putting history in their mouths.
“When someone is singing, the words are so clear you can see bodies hanging from the tree. You can see injustices being done. You can see crosses being burned,” Black said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)