like mecca . . . we make our pilgrimage here

Can LANCE ARMSTRONG
win a sixth Tour de France?
It’s all
about peaches
in Gilbert today
SPORTS, C1
METRO, B1
113TH YEAR, NO. 185 • SOUTH CAROLINA’S LARGEST NEWSPAPER
Saturday, July 3, 2004
COLUMBIA, S.C. • WWW.THESTATE.COM • CAPITAL FINAL
++
S.C. plan to help
poor quit smoking
MARLON BRANDO
1924 | 2004
Medicaid
will pay
for
anti-smoking
products for
low-income
residents
TRAILBLAZING ACTOR DEAD AT 80
He was ‘a quintessential original .æ.æ. mean, moody and magnificent.’
Brando’s life, his loves, his lines, his legacy — and a tribute poster.
MORE INSIDE | LIFE&STYLE
By JENNIFER TALHELM
Staff Writer
Poor South Carolinians soon will be able to
use Medicaid to pay for the nicotine patch and
other products to help them stop smoking.
The state Department of Health and Human
Services approved the program with little fanfare Tuesday, saying it expects the $500,000 annual cost to be offset 3-to-1 by a reduction in the
cost of treating smoking-related diseases.
“This is a wonderful proposal to decrease the
number of Medicaid recipients who smoke,” said
Warren Derrick, a USC pediatrician and member
of the HHS Medical Care Advisory Committee.
The state still must get approval from the federal agency that oversees Medicaid, the govern-
ment health insurance program for the poor. But
it is unlikely the state will be turned down, state
health officials said, since 39 other states already
pay for anti-smoking efforts with Medicaid.
Under the program, Medicaid would cover
any stop-smoking product prescribed by a doctor, including patches, inhalers, sprays, prescription drugs, gums and lozenges.
Most states started covering such products
with Medicaid in the late 1990s, said Sara
Hutchinson, federal and state policy director for
the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Tobacco
Cessation.
But so far, about 10 percent of Medicaid recipients nationwide take advantage, often be-
‘LIKE MECCA . . . WE MAKE
OUR PILGRIMAGE HERE’
Lang Syne Plantation reunion draws descendants of slaves, sharecroppers back to the land
SEE SMOKING PAGE A9
Mansion
mold
problem
severe
Sanford family must
stay away till fall
By AARON GOULD SHEININ
Staff Writer
The mold problem at the Governor’s Mansion is worse than previously thought and will keep the
first family away at least until September.
The consultant hired by the
state to fix the problem said Friday that mold also has been found
at the Lace and Caldwell-Boylston
houses in the mansion complex.
Consultant Rick Bennett said it
will be another eight weeks before
Gov. Mark Sanford’s family can
move back into their official residence in Columbia.
It will take a total of 12 weeks
to complete the entire project, he
said.
ABOVE: This is
the tombstone
of Jackie
Whitmore’s
great-greatgreatgrandmother,
Anniker Bryant,
who was once a
slave.
SEE MOLD PAGE A5
RIGHT:
Whitmore clears
the weeds and
debris around
the tombstones
in the Lang
Syne Cemetery
where his
ancestors are
buried.
SUNDAY
PHOTOGRAPHS BY RENEE ITTNER-MCMANUS/THE STATE
By CAROLYN CLICK
Staff Writer
FORT MOTTE — For all their long
years of toil, in slavery and in freedom, Jackie Whitmore’s people
possessed only a smattering of the
distinctive red clay soil of Calhoun
County.
Yet it is, somehow, theirs.
Years ago, they laid spiritual
claim to this land that rolls up and
away from the Congaree River and
spreads out in fields of corn and
cotton. First as slaves, then as
sharecroppers, they came to call
Lang Syne Plantation home.
There are stories here, real and
imagined, that draw descendants
back — in the old Lang Syne
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‘We take pride in that, despite slavery,
like Maya Angelou says, still I rise.’
JACKIE WHITMORE | who traces his ancestry back seven
generations to a slave woman named Anniker Spann Bryant
cemetery, where the remains of
ex-slaves mingle with those of
midwives and farmers and soldiers, in the stone baptistry that
sits behind a small Baptist congregation, in the shuttered storefronts of Fort Motte.
“The place is like Mecca to us,”
said Whitmore, a Columbia social
worker who traces his ancestry
CLASSIFIED
G5
TV
C7
South Carolina deaths, B1
back seven generations to a slave
woman named Anniker Spann
Bryant. “Every now and then we
make our pilgrimage here.”
This weekend, several hundred
descendants of Lang Syne Plantation gather to celebrate their
shared past and return to a place
illuminated by writer Julia Mood
Peterkin in her stories of 1920s
INDEX
7 SECTIONS, 76 PAGES
ABBY
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LIFE&STYLE D1 OPINION
METRO
B1 SPORTS
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C1
black rural life.
The United Family Reunion, in
its 10th year, brings together descendants of those who lived on
the plantation before and after the
Civil War.
Peterkin, winner of the Pulitzer
Prize for her 1929 novel “Scarlet
Sister Mary,” was a white Southerner who came to Lang Syne as
a bride in 1903. But she gained
fame for her gritty, evocative portrayals of the black people who
resided along “the street,” a row
of makeshift wooden slave cabins
just steps from her house.
Immersing herself in their language and society, Peterkin es-
Questions of Innocence:
Sometimes the bad guy
isn’t the one doing time.
PAGE A1
About
100,000
hungry,
sharptoothed
predators
prowl
S.C.’s
waters
LIFE&ARTS
SEE REUNION PAGE A7
W E AT H E R
METRO
Chance of rain
A stray storm possible this
afternoon. High 89, low 72. A
chance for a storm Sunday
afternoon. High 93. See Page A2
Police not charged in raid
S.C.’s attorney general criticizes,
but will not charge, Goose Creek
police for their aggressive high
school drug raid. See Page B1
NEWS 771-8415 • HOME DELIVERY 771-8380 • CLASSIFIED 771-SOLD • INTERNET www.thestate.com
INFORMATION FOR LIFE
WWW.THESTATE.COM
THE STATE, COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA
SATURDAY, JULY 3, 2004
A7
LANG SYNE PLANTATION
REUNION
FROM PAGE A1
PHOTOGRAPHS BY RENEE ITTNER-MCMANUS/THE STATE
Descendants of those who worked and lived on the Lang Syne Plantation conclude the
United Families Reunion this weekend with worship at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in
Fort Motte. The church is the first organized by African-Americans in Fort Motte.
‘IT’S SO MUCH HISTORY’
THE STATE.COM | Read more about Lang Syne’s Julia Peterkin
and her award-winning book, “Scarlet Sister Mary.”
who spent Saturday morning
clearing the family cemetery. “It’s
so much history. As a black man,
you don’t know much history.”
Tangled underbrush and fallen
pines obscure some of the gravestones, but in the days before each
biennial reunion, Whitmore rallies
a small cadre of relatives to tame
the growth and carve paths
through the cemetery.
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around her tombstone .
“That was the first thing they
did,” their father, Donald Whitmore, said.The children are the future of the reunion. So activities
that began Friday with a fish fry
in Columbia included opportunities for young people to display
their talents through music, art,
drama and dance. The family also
has established a scholarship.
“Oh, if these stones could talk,”
Whitmore said. “A lot of stories
live here. A lot of stories live here.”
His nephews, Dayton Whitmore, 13, and Demetrius Johnson,
11, know the stories, feel the connection to Lang Syne. Their
mother is buried here, and they
come regularly to tend her grave.
On Saturday, they painstakingly
raked and groomed the ground
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Whitmore was a teenager when
he read “Miss Julia’s” stories. But
as a child, he listened as his maternal grandmother, Lucinda Jackson, wove accounts of life on Lang
Syne before mechanization and
migration emptied the old cabins.
Since then, Whitmore, 35, has
become the family’s unofficial genealogist, excavating information
from his elders and setting it down
for future generations.
“It’s awesome,” said Stanley
Davis, a descendant by marriage
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chewed stereotypes and wrote of
her subjects as complex human
beings.
She based her fiction on the
lives of people she knew — Lavinia
Berry, Mary Weeks Bryant, Frank
Hart, Daniel Anderson and others.
The novels and stories mirror,
remarkably, the real stories of
Lang Syne handed down from
generation to generation, said Peterkin biographer Susan Millar
Williams of McClellanville.
“You go there and you listen to
people talk about their past, and
they are clearly describing the
same personalities,” she said.
For African-Americans, who
face daunting challenges in tracing their genealogy, the Peterkin
stories provide a starting point,
Whitmore said. But many descendants never have read the novels,
choosing instead the oral culture
of the family.
Today,
other family
relatives
reunions
travel
to
throughout
Fort Motte,
the state, rethe
tiny
flects the
hamlet near
power of
Lang Syne
the human
that was the
connection,
scene of a
said
RevolutionWilliam
ary
War
Hine, hisJackie Whitmore
siege, for the
tory profesannual Fort Motte Community sor at South Carolina State UniFestival.
versity.
The reunion concludes with a
Despite the isolating pull of
Sunday church service at Mount television and other mass media,
Pleasant Baptist Church, organized “people want to get together,” he
in 1867 by ex-slaves and built in said. He sees a similar connection
1869 on land donated by Augus- to college homecoming events
tus and Louisa McCord Smythe, staged around sporting events.
Lang Syne’s antebellum owners.
“The football game is just an
The service draws black and white excuse,” he said. “It’s sharing the
descendants of Lang Syne, in- past and experiencing the past.”
cluding Bryants, Keitts, CheeseHine recognizes the power of
boros and Whitmores, Peterkins, reunions by the clothing of his stuMcCords and Smythes, who share dents — all through the year they
bonds of blood and spirit extend- sport T-shirts touting their family
ing back 200 years.
gatherings.
Allen Conger, who is married
The United Family Reunion will
to Julia Peterkin’s great-grand- be no different. This year, the Tdaughter, attended his first re- shirt will bear the slogan “From
union in 2002.
Lang Syne to Me,” an acknowl“It’s such a joyful crowd,” he edgment, Whitmore said, of the
said.
past and an emphasis on today.
“We take pride in that, despite
MOVING FORWARD
slavery, like Maya Angelou says,
Lang Syne itself has been still I rise,” he said, recalling Anspared from extensive alteration gelou’s poem by that name.
or development and remains in the
The time of slavery on Lang
Peterkin family. The 1,000-acre Syne is the “foundation for movspread is farmed by William Pe- ing forward,” he said. “It’s not one
terkin III, grandson of Julia and of the things that are thrown away
William Peterkin, who is mindful or cast aside.”
of its history and attentive to the
descendants’ sense of place.
Reach Click at (803) 771-8318
The gathering, like so many
or cclick@thestate.com.
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