Benjamin E. Mays Historic Preservation Site
Our group of young men missed a few of our Summer Institute participants who have begun to play little league football. Way to go guys!!! We look forward to going to our different CLF Summer Institute participants’ football games to support them.
The CLF Summer Institute traveled to the Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Historical Preservation Site in Greenwood, SC. The site featured three primary buildings of interest that our youth took full advantage of and thoroughly explored: The Birth Home of Dr. Mays. He was born in this home on August 1, 1894 in the Epworth community of Greenwood County. He shared this home with his parents and his seven siblings.
The original Burn Springs African American School that was moved to the Historical Preservation Site from the Epworth area. It contains 19th Century original school desks, a period piece wood stove, and blackboards rendering simulated assignments for upper and lower grades.
The “faux” barn serves as the Interpretive Center/Museum for the Historical Site. A large collection of rare photos, books, recorded speeches not found anywhere else, films, and some personal items belonging to Dr. Mays are housed here. The Museum includes a forty six seat HDTV Theatre featuring the notable documentary of Dr. Mays’ life, “A Change In The Wind”, produced by Dr. Andrew Young, the former Mayor of Atlanta and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
The surrounding grounds provided the CLF Summer Institute participants with a hands on experience of the agrarian life of rural Greenwood and the early life of Dr. Mays circa. The grounds included a harvesting garden that had grown silver queen corn as well tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupes, okra, speckled butterbeans, and watermelons. Some of our youth even harvested a few, small watermelons as memorabilia of their interactive field trip! Our group also saw a washing pot, rinsing tubs, chopping block and cotton field that are representative of the Mays’ sharecropper farm circa 1900. An original outhouse and cedar post clothesline added additional authenticity to the site.
Although Dr. Mays died in 1984, his immortal spirit lives in many places especially at Morehouse College, the annual class reunions of Mays High School in Spartanburg and of course, in his birth place of Greenwood, South Carolina. A marker stands near the field in Epworth where his home stood for over 100 years before it was relocated to the Historic Preservation Site.
Benjamin E. Mays Museum
The project to restore and interpret the Benjamin E. Mays home is now complete. The site highlights the contributions of Dr. Mays to the dialogue about education and race in the United States and is a key focal point of understanding the struggle for civil rights in the American South. The Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Historical Preservation Site is THE destination for individuals and groups interested in learning about the life of Dr. Mays and his African American experience in South Carolina. School children , groups, and individuals can tour the childhood home of one of the nation’s most influential civil rights leaders, a man who has been referred to as the “Father of the Civil Rights Movement.” Walk the grounds and see first-hand how life would have been around 1900: an old wash pot with rinsing tubs, a chopping block with ax, a cedar post clothesline adorned with freshly washed sheets and clothes, the summertime garden with corn, tomatoes, okra, butterbeans, cantaloupe and cucumbers, and a cotton field all add to the ambience and feel of days gone by. Bring a lunch and eat on the picnic benches under a nearby stately oak tree.
