Ruby Cornwell (1902 – 2003) recalls her early life in South
Carolina, and her experiences with segregation. She talks about
her grandmother, Isabella Reeder Chavis, who graduated from
Avery Institute in 1873, and her roots in Charleston. She
discusses issues of class and colorism and her experience
growing up as a light-skinned person coming from a free black
family background with mixed white and Native American heritage.
She recalls growing up as the child of an American Methodist
Episcopal minister, Durant Percival Pendergrass, who was
educated at Hampton Institute and worked as a wheelwright and
latrine cleaner before entering the ministry. She refers to her
first school experiences and what it was like to live in the
country-side, where life was still organized around a race-based
economic system like share-cropping. She describes attending
religious revival meetings and how her father dealt with root
medicine and other non-Christian spiritual beliefs. She
discusses moving to Charleston to live with her