This past weekend I was able to do something that I’ve been wanting to do for years: drive around my hometown of Anderson, South Carolina with my now 86 years old grandmother and my mom. It was a trip down memory lane that’s been a long time coming. How I even managed to convince her to get in the van is still a bit of a mystery to me, but there we were, all eight of us (myself, Samantha and our kids, my mom, and my grandma). She insisted that we all drive in the same vehicle so we made it work. Before we knew it, we were off on a ride to places that I’d only heard about, not actually ever visited in the town that both of my parents grew up in. Alice Walker says, healing starts where the wound began. Sometimes you have to go back to the places where it happened to understand the full story.

Though I didn’t grow up in Anderson, it’s still home for me. It’s the place where I can trace both sides of my family back multiple generations so it’s a part of my own orgin story. This trip was as much for me as it was for the girls. As I drove with my grandma in the front seat next to me, I pointed out key places to my daughters. There’s M&J barbershop, the first place I remember getting my haircut. It’s where both of my grandfathers and my dad used to take me when I visited as a kid. It’s where I remember seeing my first Jet magazine (and Jet beauty of the week!). It’s where I heard my first conversations about politics. Turning the corner was the site of a former housing project where my paternal grandparents used to live, but now is the site of newly redevoped housing.

At the intersection of West Franklin Street is the site of the Westside Community Center, formerly the site of Westside High School. I spent the summer after my senior year of high school working as a camp counselor here. According to school records, the school was officially opened in September 1951 as Reed Street High School.  Westside High School was one of the all-black schools in Anderson.  The first principal was Bowen Wakefield (a distant family relative on my father’s side). We passed a few houses that I remembered fondly growing up, including my paternal great grandmother’s house where I lived briefly in between stints in Germany and Georgia, and my paternal grandmother’s house. Along the way my grandma pointed out one of 2 black filling stations that existed in the county.

We stopped at the site of my paternal grandfather’s house which was right across the street from the house I lived in during middle school. It was also next door to St. Paul’s church, which I later learned was the first black church established in Anderson County immediately after emancipation in 1865. I remember walking to church on Sunday mornings with my mom and great grandma. Next to St. Paul’s was the site of Reed Street High School (partially funded by the Rosenwald fund), later renamed Perry Street Elementary. My grandmother shared how she went to school there when it became Perry Elementary before my great aunt brought her down to Orangeburg. I still remembered the abandoned Perry Elementary building when I lived on Reed street in middle school.

It was remarkable to see how much life occurred in such a small area. Within one block, we’d seen the Anderson Lumber Company where my maternal great grandfather worked his entire career, the building where my grandmother was born, the Rosenwald school she attended until high school, and the county’s first black church that helped organized all of the civic engagement that ultimately led her into a career of education. We crossed over into East side where she showed us property our family still owned, vacant lots in the middle of a dilapidated neighborhood. From there we crossed into Southside where my mother showed us the home that she remembers the most fondly growing up in (even if only for a brief time).

I got lost several times, no wonder because I did only live in Anderson for part of middle and high school and it’s been nearly 25 years since I’ve lived there. Each time I remarked, I have no idea where I am, my grandmother reminded me, she knew where we were. So I just followed her lead, sometimes driving painfully slow. What I noticed as we stopped at various places was just how enthralled she was at the trip. That was probably the most surprising thing to me. I suspect that for a woman who prefers to look forward, she enjoyed looking backward. And I was here for all of it. There’s a lot of pain in many of her stories about the past, and I can understand why it’s hard to revisit them sometimes. At the same time, her life is my history, you know what I mean?

One of the last places we visited was the Anderson cemetery where we have a family plot of gravestones. The last time I was there was after my great aunt’s funeral. I asked my mom when the last time she was there and she said a few months ago. My grandmother noticed a ribbon still on one of the gravestones and she made a mental note to come back and take care of it when she brings fresh flowers. I guess both of them are more frequent visitors to the past then either of them let on.

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