11/30/2024
A Reflection on the Reverend David Carter
A little over a year ago I published my book “With All Deliberate Speed” about school desegregation in Newberry in the 1960s and the student boycott at Gallman High in protest of the desegregation plans. I interviewed some of the student protesters, some Gallman teachers, and others who observed the events of this period. I spent long hours poring over newspaper articles. A name that appeared frequently in my research was the Reverand David Carter who, during the boycott, was pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church. The student boycott leaders discussed tactics with him and his church hosted meetings and served as a site to begin marches the students organized to publicize their position. He often attended school board meetings to offer his thoughts on desegregation plans and to oppose steps he thought were inappropriate. He was arrested in the fall of 1969 for disrupting the school system by participating in and speaking at one of the student marches. A federal judge in Columbia earlier had issued an injunction against such disruptions. I could find no coverage of what happened as a result of this arrest.
I bring his name up now because of a news story in the State newspaper on October 30 about sit-ins at Columbia lunch counters over two days in March of 1960. Seven students from Benedict and Allen colleges were arrested and charged with breach of peace and trespassing. The story states that on a recent Friday, October 25, 2024, Judge Robert Hood in Columbia ordered that these arrests be removed from city and state records. One of these seven protesters was the Reverend Carter, now deceased. Two of the seven are still living and attended the announcement. Simon Bouie, one of the two, stated that “To know that just two of us remain alive to experience what we have today — I would have hoped that all of them could have been here.”
Some in our community still remember Reverend Carter. Mr. Henry Reeder, long-time educator in the Newberry School system, went to Allen with him and participated in some civil rights protests with him. Ms. Pat Caldwell remembers when he was the Pastor at Bethlehem Baptist, where she remains a member. She stated that “He was not a man to lead others into trouble. He was just a good man who wanted to do the right thing.”
Some in the community accused him of controlling the Gallman protesters, telling them what to do. The judge in the firebombing case against the students told them that he believed some adults or adult had led them astray. The students deny this as do others who knew Reverend Carter. One of the teachers at Gallman during the boycott stated that “These were good students, informed. There had been two previous protests in 1967 and 1968 involving decent water fountains for the school and barriers around athletic fields. The students knew what they were doing.”
Another connection between Reverend Carter’s participation in the sit-in in 1960 and the Gallman protest in 1969 is that Mr. Matthew Perry defended both groups, as legal counsel for the NAACP. He came to Newberry several times in the late 1960s to bail student protesters from jail and he defended the ten who were accused of firebombing. Today, the federal courthouse in Columbia is name after Perry.
Reverend Carter’s story reminds us of all the people over the years who have taken risks, spoken out, and acted in defense of the rights we all should have but, at times, have been denied. The students at Gallman High are among these people. And Reverend Carter is among them. Many of those who have raised their voices and acted for justice are known but many more are not. Reverend Carter is a name we should now acknowledge as an important figure in Newberry and South Carolina civil rights history.
