Heritage Gives Way to Hope
Caitlin Carter
February 16, 2010
Filed under Community, News
Allan Attaway, Jim Cook, Albert Myniart, Moses Parks, David Phillips, and Hampton Stephens—six names very few people know—are tied to a past injustice too many people refuse to remember.
These men were the black victims of the Hamburg Massacre. TYJ’s last edition featured an article about the white obelisk in J.C. Calhoun Park; this obelisk commemorates the death of the only white casualty in the group that violently disbanded Hamburg’s black militia.
There is hope that the grievous error still memorialized in our town may yet be corrected or, at the very least, acknowledged.
One of NAHS’s own alumni, 2007 graduate Elizabeth Layne, has done a significant amount of research on the topic. “My dad had a Reconstruction textbook from college, and he let me use that while I was in Mr. Gill’s AP US History class. I had heard my dad talk about the incident, and how it took place in what is today North Augusta. It was not until I read about what happened that it made me upset that there was a monument still dedicated to the one white person that died while part of a white mob trying to kill the black soldiers and terrorize the town of Hamburg, but none for the black soldiers that were killed doing their duty,” she explains.
Elizabeth noted the acceptability of racism in 1916, saying, “An article in the Aiken Standard (then the Aiken Journal and Review) suggested to the townspeople of North Augusta to go see Birth of a Nation, a silent film about the Ku Klux Klan, after they were done with the festivities of unveiling the monument.”
However, the current Standard has certainly recompensed for this action by their recent barrage of articles about the injustice. A new development recorded by the Standard is the commitment by the North Augusta Heritage Council to create a new monument for the ignored black victims of the Massacre. The new monument, already funded through donations, will be located near the site of the actual Massacre near the river.
Although the inscription of the current monument (singing the praises of “the superiority of the Anglo-Saxons”) is severely racist, the new tribute would be inclusive, adding the name of the white casualty (McKie Meriwether) to the list of victims.
Elizabeth says of the new monument: “Originally, I wanted the (original) monument torn down. However, I do respect that is was a part of history, and it can serve as an important reminder to people today that racism was more violent than some believe.”
