MLK Dreamkeepers recognize first black people to hold positions

ANSONVILLE — The MLK Dreamkeepers and their partners led a Black History Month discussion on Zoom to celebrate leaders who were the “firsts” of Anson County and the legacies they created.

Music and renditions of poems written by prominent black artists such as Langston Hughes and Amanda Gorman accompanied the discussion. Future events this month were also announced including the New Rural Project’s canvassing of black voters and HOLLA! passing out free masks and COVID-19 at-home rapid tests at their center.

MLK Dreamkeeper Winnie Bennett said the discussion was to acknowledge Black History Month and how it continues to be important as there are still black history achievements that fail to make the history books, like Anson’s and “firsts” still happening today.

“We’re here to recognize trailblazers who faced danger and scrutiny in being Anson’s first,” she said.

In Anson County, the Civil Rights Act took effect in the ’70s and ’80s as schools integrated and people were given positions of authority in society. While lots of change happened, more still needs to happen, Bennett says.

“We have come a long way but we still have a long way to go,” said Bennett.

Angela Caraway, the founder of The Caraway Foundation, hosted panelists.

“I’m excited to talk to the wonderful shoulders I stand on … this is just a conversation about how you shattered the racial barriers and broke the glass ceiling. We want to hear how you felt because we are on the outside looking in,” Caraway said to panelists.

Panelists included Sheriff Landric Reid, who was the first black sheriff; James Bennett, who was the first black interim county manager; Lynette Covington Hicks, the first black Miss Anson High School Homecoming Queen; Judge Sophia Gatewood, the first black district judge, and district attorney; Betty Huntley, the first black Wadesboro housing director; Lula Jackson, the first black Social Services director; and Police Chief Thedis Spencer, the first black Chief of Police for the Wadesboro Police Department.

Gatewood was also the first female district court judge and district attorney in Anson, and she says she feels enormously grateful and humble to have that role. She also feels surprised because “we’re still talking about firsts in a black community today.”

“We need to have more than firsts. [There’s an] expectation for us to succeed and fail. We’re watched to [see if we can succeed] and be the seconds and the thirds,” she said.

Sheriff Landric Reid agreed, saying Anson needs more than firsts and that it’s important to highlight black accomplishments.

“It’s not just February … there’s something every day of the year that we have to remember,” he said.

Housing Director Betty Huntley says the education of black history is what kept her going.

“I was expecting many closed doors [but not from lack of education] but from the color of my skin,” Huntley said. “[Learning black history] made me stronger to keep pressing forward to tomorrow.”

MLK Dream Keeper Bernice Bennett’s concluding statement was from educator and activist Joyce Johnson Rouse’s song titled “Standing on the Shoulders” that summed up the discussion quite well:

“I am standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before me. I am stronger for their courage. I am wiser for their words. I am lifted by their longing for a fair and brighter future. I am grateful for their vision, for their toiling on this Earth. We are standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before us. They are saints and they are humans, they are angels, they are friends. We can see beyond the struggles and the troubles and the challenge when we know that by our efforts things will be better in the end. They lift me higher than I could ever fly carrying my burdens away. I imagine our world if they hadn’t tried. We wouldn’t be here celebrating today … I will stand a little taller, I will work a little longer, and my shoulders will be there to hold the ones who follow me.”