The Spirit of an Activist: The Life and Work of I. DeQuincey Newman

Isaiah DeQuincey Newman: The Servant Leader

8 Isaiah DeQuincey Newman The Servant Leader Sadye L. M. Logan Blacks have battered down walls of segregation in many instances and while we are not yet as a people, on the inside of the political arena, we are not altogether on the outside either. I. DeQuincey Newman Isaiah DeQuincey Newman’s life embodied many contradictions. He described himself as a country preacher, though he graduated from an esteemed theological seminary. He was an intellectual and so to speak, “walked with kings, but never lost the common touch.” Like most educated African Americans of his generation or earlier, he was taught that it was his duty and mission in life to uplift his less fortunate brothers and sisters. This essay serves as an introductory framework for this book, an exploration and tribute to the life and work of I. DeQuincey. It explore Newman’s life as a servant-leader who was as comfortable making the case for equality and justice in the streets as he was behind the scenes forging unity among South Carolina’s black and white leaders. His ability to work seamlessly in multiple ways over a lifetime is important in appreciating and understanding what it means to be in the struggle for a just and equal society. This is relevant in that Newman’s life and work are a microcosm of the civil rights movement covering this incredible arc of the twentieth century. He was a key player during the early 1940s through the 1970s in much of the state’s dramatic racial and political history. He effectively used the political and legal systems to change the quality of life of all Americans but especially African Americans, Isaiah DeQuincey Newman 9 including where we lived; where and how we participated in recreation activities ; how we ate, slept, and studied; and how we interacted with each other. The Person The Reverend Isaiah DeQuincey Newman was born on April 17, 1911, to Reverend Melton C. and Charlotte Morris Newman. He was often referred to by friends and colleagues as South Carolina’s twentieth-century patriarch of the civil rights movement. He was described as courtly and courteous. His voice was resonant, deliberate, and measured.1 His mother died of tuberculosis two weeks short of his sixth birthday, leaving him and three older sisters at home.2 While his sisters stayed with their father, Newman was raised in the home of his maternal grandmother in Hartsville, South Carolina. During one of his visits to his father’s home in Kingstree, he witnessed an event that left an indelible impression on his consciousness and spurred his commitment Newman’s mother, Charlotte “Lottie” Elizabeth Morris, daughter of RebeccaTiller King Morris and Robert Dempsey Morris, Jr. Courtesy of the Newman family. 10 Sadye L. M. Logan to working for a just society. Newman was eight years old when he witnessed the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a white supremacist group, set fire late one night to a caboose that was serving as a lockup for a recently arrested African American man. The Newman family lived near the convict camp where prisoners who worked on the chain gang were kept. Newman remembered lying in bed listening to the man in the caboose screaming, “Help, Help, Help!” as he burned to death. Newman recalled, “I ran into my father’s room and asked, ‘Pa ain’t you going over and help the man?’ My father said, ‘Go back to bed boy.’ And I was insistent. I shook him, I said, ‘Pa, go and help the man.’ But he didn’t.”3 Although Newman’s father understood the violent racial climate of South Carolina and the Klan’s mission to terrorize black people, this response was troubling to an eight-year-old child. Newman later said of this incident, “I tell you I put that in my memory bank. I kept that in my heart for a long time and I held it against my father. There was a man being burned alive, and my father wouldn’t turn a hand to help him. Of course, I learned since then had he gone to give help, he would have been shot down, just killed.”4 Newman as a young man in his late twenties with younger siblings, from left to right: KingWilliam Milton II, Omega Franklin, Isaiah DeQuincey, ErnestWilber, ErnestineWilma. Courtesy of the Newman family. Isaiah DeQuincey Newman 11 Newman’s father later married Serena...