I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: The Way Life Is

Meet Me at the Rocket!
The South Carolina State Fair is in town thru October 22nd. and Friday night at the Fair with three granddaughters was a memory maker. Our core group pictured above: four year old Ella, six year old Collins, Kitty before face paint, and Kaka who has a long tradition of State Fair attendance. Ella adores Collins who is the granddaughter of our best friends Kitty and Kaka. Our group also included Nana Pretty, Pretty Too Caroline the mother of Ella and Molly who spent much of the evening being whirled around in a stroller on loan from Grant who works with Kaka. The stroller was a lifesaver!

Molly and me at the Fair

before getting in better mood with bucket of Fiske Fries and corn dog

yeah, it’s a corn dog on a stick

and this is how it all went wrong

face painting not for the faint of heart – who is this Joker?

Collins wisely wore hoodie which came in handy as soft rain drizzled on us –

raspberry/blueberry snow cones not disturbed by rain

as girls take break from slides, monster rides, bumper cars and Big Ferris Wheel

pony rides always popular during rain

it’s okay for me to pet Lucy

ducks anyone?

Hey, I had a GREAT time, too, once they let me loose

Caroline texted us after getting Ella and Molly to bed much later than usual following our big evening at the Fair: “Ella told me on the way home she wanted the Fair to be her home and wanted Collins to live there, too. She said she’d sleep on the rides, and they’d pee in the grass. Lol. I was like there are bathrooms, Ella, and she said fine we will use the bathrooms.”

When can we go to the Fair again, Nana?

**************************

For all the children everywhere. Please stay tuned.

P.S. Thanks to Caroline who is responsible for most of these photos. Thanks to all our followers in cyberspace for going to the Fair with us!
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October 14, 2023
on the outside – looking in
I don’t understand the world I live in today, so please don’t ask me to explain anything.

***********************

For all the children.
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October 10, 2023
while I breathe, I hope – can I get an amen, sisters?
ticket never used – ERA defeated in South Carolina

In 1972 the United States Senate approved the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution and sent it to the states for ratification. The following is the gist of the amendment according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

Despite the best efforts of many women (and a few men, too), the state of South Carolina failed to become one of the thirty-eight states needed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment by the 1979 deadline (later moved to 1982) that was approved in 1972 by the SC House of Representatives in a unanimous vote but blocked in the state Senate primarily through the deception of the most powerful Senator Marion Gressette who advised supporters they had his yes vote if they wouldn’t create chaos in the state with their protests. Led by the South Carolina Coalition for the ERA organized in 1973, attorney Malissa Burnette who was president of the newly formed Columbia Chapter of the National Organization for Women, two women from the national leadership of NOW sent to South Carolina to help with lobbying in the Senate in 1977, activists relied on the word of Senator Gressette who ultimately voted against ratification to block the amendment.

Virginia became the 38th. state to ratify the ERA in 2020, but unfortunately the deadlines for ratification were long gone, and today controversy remains in Congress over whether they can change the deadline to accommodate the Virginia vote.

When Pretty and I toured the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D. C. in 2003, we saw this quote of his that best expresses my social justice activism over the last fifty years:

“We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.”

While we breathe, we hope. Can I get an amen, sisters?

Onward.
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October 7, 2023
what have you done today to make you feel proud?
writer Dottie Ashley did groundbreaking reporting

in The State newspaper on December 10, 1989

Four years later co-founders Freddie Mullis, Dan Burch, Jeff Plachta and I returned home from the March on Washington in April of 1993 with a vision shared by many members of the queer community that South Carolina deserved a seat at the table with our brothers and sisters on the west and east coasts who were motivated to make a collective economic impact that would effect positive changes for justice, inclusion, and prosperity for everyone. We were ready to organize, and the Guild was formed to focus on these economic issues, to work alongside the already functioning Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement, to create a safe space to gather socially outside the bars – a revolutionary concept in South Carolina at the time.

First business meeting of the Guild in September, 1993

The first Palmetto State Business newsletter published by the Guild featured a photo of co-founders Dan Burch (l) and Jeff Plachta (r) with James Carville at the annual Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in Columbia.

Guild members marching in Pride Parade in Columbia

Growing yellow with age in a folder in my office was this typed note from a 40 year old woman in Florence, South Carolina who wrote to us in the first year we began our meetings:

I became aware of your organization via your Internet website…I would very much like to join your organization and look forward to meeting other members from the various businesses and professions represented in your organization. Would you please send me information as well as an application for membership so that I may join the Business Guild? I think it is wonderful that the Gay/Lesbian community of S. C. has a Business Guild. Thank you…

British soul singer Heather Small’s lyrical question what have you done today to make you feel “Proud” is one we must answer for ourselves not only in the queer community but also as a country. I feel proud of the Guild that touched the lives of so many people during its nearly thirty year history. The torch was passed to a new generation of Americans according to President John Kennedy in the early 1960s, but our generation probably wasn’t what he hoped we would be. With our last breaths, however, we have the opportunity to make ourselves feel proud again.

Onward.
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October 4, 2023
one lesbian’s journey for a simple matter of justice (part 1)
30 years later we remain people you know and like

thanks to Pretty for taking these pictures

(we were there with different partners and friends – she saved pictures)

When I left Columbia, South Carolina in April of 1993 to drive to Washington, D. C. with my partner and two gay friends to participate in a weekend known as the 1993 March for Gay, Lesbian and Bi Equal Rights, I had no idea my life would be changed forever by the events I took part in. Change was in the air – I could feel a seismic shift from my personal shame and fear to a collective sense of pride as I walked with the South Carolina delegation in the middle of this mass of humanity that championed a cause I had needed since I was a child growing up in the piney woods of rural southeast Texas, thinking I was the only one with feelings I dared not express. At forty seven years of age I felt a sense of belonging, a feeling that this wave of a million people marching for a simple matter of justice had finally brought me home.

the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt on display that weekend –

next to the Washington Monument

Onward.
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October 2, 2023