SC residents watch history made in Washington 1/21/2009 1:45 AM By BRUCE SMITH Associated Press
AP Photos SCMC102, SCPC102-103, SCCHA101
CHARLESTON -- From a wind-swept Charleston park to snow-dusted upstate towns, people in the state where the Civil War began watched history Tuesday as Barack Obama became the nation's first black president.
"I can't begin to describe it. It's just such a wonderful feeling inside to be able to witness history like this," said Joyce Gilliard, 36, a black hair stylist who joined several hundred others in Charleston's Marion Square to watch the inauguration on a giant video screen.
She wanted to be in Washington but said joining the Charleston crowd was the next best thing to being on the Mall. The crowd, which approached 500, included folks huddled in blankets sitting on folding chairs and toddlers wrapped up in strollers.
The significance of the moment in South Carolina and Charleston, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter, was not lost on the crowd.
The screen was located just a few yards from a statue of John C. Calhoun, a South Carolina lawmaker and vice president who, in the years before the war, termed slavery "a positive good."
"To stand next to a Jumbotron under his statue and have a black man sworn in to the highest office in the nation, to me, as an African-American, it makes me so proud," said the Rev. Willie Hill of the New Israel Reformed Episcopal Church of Charleston.
On one side of the square rise the turrets of a building that once housed The Citadel, South Carolina's state military college whose cadets fought for the Confederacy. The building is now a hotel.
"It shows we have come a long way, a long way," Gilliard said.
In Hartsville, tears filled the eyes of 61-year-old Sam Cain as he watched television with his wife and two daughters as Obama was sworn in.
"This is history. I've seen history," he said.
"You got it, you got it," his wife Ernestine told the new president. "Now, don't drop the ball."
Cain, born during the Jim Crow era, worked the fields as a child picking cotton and tobacco and didn't attend school until he was 9.
He said society has softened from the days he attended an all-black elementary school but still Obama's accomplishment "was something I never thought I'd see."
Almost a dozen people gathered at Bernice Norman's clothing store near the aptly named community of Promised Land near Greenwood to watch.
"I'm thinking about how truly blessed this country is. Especially myself, I had no idea I would live to see this day, that a black man was being made president," said Norman, who turned 74 on Saturday.
"We were praising the Lord. He's brought us a long way," she added.
Across the state, in Laurens County, the Rev. David Kennedy watched the inauguration with his family thinking of his great-great uncle, who was lynched by a white mob in the early 1900s.
"To see this. To see we have come to this moment - I have never been so proud of America in my life like I am proud this day," he said.
Kennedy said Obama's presidency proves hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan are not wanted.
"They have no real place in America now because America has spoken," he said. "We need to stop trying to fight a civil war that was lost by the South and reach out with our president."
During his speech, Obama told the nation "we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord."
That was what Heidi Gault, 55, was thinking as she watched in Charleston, even though she voted for Republican John McCain.
"I came out because of the history and because he is our president and we're going to back him up," the Charleston resident said.
Rodney Williams, 47, a black business consultant, said Obama's presidency means that the nation will now be able to talk about the issues which divide people.
"It's impossible to change things in a day. But there is now a new policy of discussion. We can talk about it," he said.
To one side of the crowd was a table where folks could write messages to the new president on a large piece of fabric.
"God bless you, you changed my life," said one message, signed simply, Angelique.
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