Thanks for your continuing support of the Clemente Course and Clemente Players

by Sharon Willis and Mary Ann Kohli

Our TTC family is renowned for its generosity, and following is another example. We would like to thank everyone who helped make the production of this year’s Clemente Players production a success. Each and every one of you had a hand in achieving our final total of $13,381.64, which will go a long way toward helping the Charleston Clemente Course. The future students of the program thank you, as do the Clemente Players. Since its 2005 inception, the Clemente Players have, with your help, raised a whopping $95,000. You can follow the Clemente Players on Facebook to continue your support.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

 

Celebrating our East Side Community: 44 America Street

Photo provided by Susan Williams

by Susan Millar Williams, Ph. D.

No, that’s not a historic single house. It’s a work of art: House of the Future by David Hammons.

In 1991, during the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo, Spoleto Festival U.S.A. mounted an ambitious art exhibit called Places with a Past. Twenty-three artists chose locations across the city and created art installations that would lead people to explore parts of the city and its past that were little known to the average visitor.  

Assisted by contractor Albert Alston, David Hammons chose two vacant lots on America Street and worked with members of the Eastside community to construct an extremely narrow rendering of the classic single house, featuring architectural elements and identifying plaques in the hope that if neighborhood children recognized that their homes were similar to those downtown, they would “take pride in the place in which they lived and in their place in history.” One side of the building was left windowless to accommodate a quotation from African-American author Ishmael Reed. 

Across the street Hammons and his helpers constructed a small park featuring a flagpole flying the Black Nationalist flag. A billboard behind it still shows African American children gazing up in “a pose of hopeful determination.”

For a longer description of the original installation, see Places with a Past: New Site Specific Art at Charleston’s Spoleto Festival, edited by Terry Ann R. Neff. New York: Rizzoli, 1991. Also, the installation is now maintained by the Charleston Parks Conservancy.

 

Stop the Violence "Unity Day" in Philip Simmons' Park coming up Sept 17

Test Taking Strategies Workshop July 20th on Palmer Campus

Celebrating Our East Side Community: 66 Hanover Street

Photo provided by Susan Williams

by Susan Millar Williams, Ph. D. 

Just three blocks north and west of the Palmer Campus, Vanderhorst Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church was built in 1883 as a “mission chapel” to “meet the wants of Methodists living in the northeastern portion of the city,” especially workers in the new cotton factory that had recently opened its doors. (The cotton factory is now the building we know as the Cigar Factory.)

It was named Cumberland Methodist Church after the first Methodist church built in Charleston, which was located on Cumberland Street, downtown. That church had burned in the early nineteenth century, but the cornerstone was salvaged and re-installed in the new building on Hanover Street in a ceremony attended by the Mayor of Charleston and many other dignitaries. This “new” Cumberland Methodist Church was a large frame structure with a tin roof on four-foot brick pilings. The congregation was white.

In 1912 the building was purchased by a black congregation affiliated with the C.M.E. church. It was renamed in honor of C.M.E. Bishop Richard H. Vanderhorst, 1813-1872, who was born in Georgetown, South Carolina.

Want to learn more?

• For more on the history of the Hanover Street church, go to Vanderhorst Memorial’s website. 
• For a history of the C.M.E. denomination and a short biography of Richard Vanderhorst, see AfricanAmerican Religious Cultures by Stephen C. Finley and Torin Alexander (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2009), which is available online through Google Books. 

New Food Bank to Open on Main Campus

Future TTC Student Chosen for GED Graduation Speaker

Octavia Johnson. Photo by Phoebe Williams.

Future Trident Technical College student Octavia Johnson will graduate from the GED Program at 7:00 pm, Thursday, July 14^th, at West Ashley High School. She came to Palmer Campus for the program, and we are proud to say she is one of the graduation speakers. She completed the program as part of a busy schedule. She is a single mom of 5 children ages 15, 10, 9, 4, and 3. In addition, she is the assistant manager of the Family Dollar in West Ashley.

She is very excited to be attending TTC in the fall. She plans to pursue the 2+ 2 Mechanical Engineering program with the Citadel.

Summer School Session 2 Starts Today

Welcome back from the July 4th Holiday. Summer School Session 2 starts today, Monday, July 11th. We are also registering for Fall, and all campuses are open. Come by!

"Take Some Notes" Palmer Student Services Newsletter Published for July