Brittany Counts on Working at Metanoia

AH: You said that you work as a counselor for eighth grade girls, what school do you work with?

BC: I work with, my program is not housed in a specific school. I have girls who attend Morningside Middle School in North Charleston; Military Magnet in North Charleston, and yeah, those are my two schools, they all stem from Chicora Elementary and our program is there because the Chicora-Cherokee area of Charleston is the poorest sector of Charleston and these kids had nowhere to go during the hours that were most dangerous for them, which would be between 2pm and 6pm, which are the functioning hours of our program. It is during these hours that kids, teenagers, seem to make the choice as to whether go home and do homework or to go stand on the walk with your friend who is selling drugs or to could be forced into robbery or things like that. And so we take them and we give them a safe haven, a lot of them do not constant people in their lives, people who they can depend on, they have people just come through and say that that they are going to be there and before they know it they are gone again. So we teach them skills that need to make it past all of the statistics that say they are going to in Chicora-Cherokee doing the same things that their parents do and that is as far as it goes. We teach them entrepreneurship, and character, we develop their character, we teach them how to deal with their emotions and our program runs from first grade through high school and I work on the high school program. And we are the only program in South Carolina, who has a program for high school students because they tend to be very different because they are growing up, they are defining themselves and that can often lead to attitudes and rebellions when you tell them to do certain things, but we work hard and we let our students know that if they need anything they can come to us.

AH: And so the funding for that program comes through the state or private funds?

BC: We are a non-profit so all of our funds are donated, we have fundraising activities, we have people who are annual donors and then we have the donors who if we need anything we can call them and it is just like they snap their fingers and it is done, but and we host, our biggest fundraising event is Jubilee, which takes place in December and its’ where we showcase what the kids have been working on and our high schoolers have two business, the boys work on the Hodari Brothers [Screen Printing Co.] screen printing and they make mugs and T-shirts for local community organizations and businesses and the girls have a business called the Isoke Sisters [Jewelry] and they make jewelry and they showed off, they showcased the jewelry, they sell the T-shirts and it just a chance for the donors to come together and they can donate money, they can meet the students, they can see what we have been working on, the progresses that we make here and where we are aiming to go in the future.

AH: That is great, how long have you been involved with that?

BC: I am a Bonner Leader and as a Bonner Leader I am committed to serving at least 300 hours of community service a year and Metanoia, which is the name of the program is my work site through my program, through Bonner. It also qualifies for my federal work-study, so I often refer to it as my job as opposed to my work site.

BC: I have been, my first year I worked with sixth grade girls and I am into my second year now, where I moved up to seventh grade and I also have eighth grade students as well.

Brittany Counts on Inman High School

AH: What were some of the major issues that happened at school, I know that some schools had fights and racial tensions, where there anything like that happening in Inman?

BC: Lets’ see, we had people who, it is a really, really small country town, its’ like I mean if you drove through this town, you would think, oh, time has stood still, like we still have the local ice cream shop, where you can like get three scoops of ice cream for $0.95 and a hot dog for like $0.50 and a lot of ways the thoughts of the people has stood still too even more so than the town because it was the way that they were raised and so they raised their children that way and there was a huge, huge problem when President [Barack] Obama was running for his first term, it got so bad that we were not allowed to wear anything supporting him, if we had it on our cars we had cover it up or take it off if we could because of fear that it would cause issues, race issues, there were people who would wear shirts portraying him as a monkey or just other animals and there were lots and lots of racial slurs that we never pointed directly at me, but they were put toward some of the African American friends that I had and whenever an individual would get in trouble or get caught yelling these everyone in the group, but me. They would be like, “why are you singling her out?” “Well she doesn’t count,” and so that was a big issue for me because how I can be sitting here and I am the one that doesn’t count? “Oh well this applies, they are ghetto and you are not” and so that was a huge huge thing people always constantly tell me that “you don’t count when we say this because everybody elese they are loud that they are ghetto and they do all of this and they wear all this long weave and the long nails and they just don’t act intelligent. They do not put up that façade, almost that they do not act like you so therefore when we call them this name, we are not including you.” And we never have like fights revolve out breakout because of it, we had people who were African American and Caucasian who were just kind of liked looked at weirdly because, if they had predominately Black friends, they would be like “yeah, you kind of fit in” and if you had predominately White friends, then “oh they are traitor, they are not really Black at all, they just don’t acknowledge the fact that they have Black in them at all” and so, I tried, I did my best, I had friends of all races and I am thankful for that, but at the same time it was just kind of like, when people would meet me they would get to know me really well, it was not like it really changed their views on other African Americans or the African American community in a whole, it was just kind of like, well there is Black people and then there is Brittany Counts. And so I was like, I don’t understand because Brittany Counts is Black

BC: So I really don’t understand why I don’t get put in with this category and it is like, “if we saw you no way in the world would we grab our purses or feel threatened, but if we saw so and so we would probably turn around and go in the opposite direction and cross the street.” And so that is like there were a lot of things said, but nothing genuinely carried out.

Ronald Anderson on Upward Bound

AH: For those that don’t know what Upward Bound is, can you explain it?

RA: Upward Bound is a program that prepares you for college and your future.

AH: Is that a College of Charleston program?

RA: Yes

AH: And who runs that?

RA: Mr. [Larry] Lewis

AH: And is there a local contact at, here at St. John’s [High School]

RA: Yes

AH: What is her name?

RA: You can contact Ms. Smith I guess, if you cannot contact him, you can contact her I guess

AH: Okay, how did you get involved in Upward Bound?

RA: You have to be, not referred, what is the word? I am going to use referred. You have to be referred to, by a person who sees potential, who sees potential in the student in the future.

AH: Okay, so what kinds of activities do you guys do?

RA: We have tutoring; we have volunteer work around downtown, around the College of Charleston. We also stay on campus, one whole month to have the college experience, for free, it is free. And we also travel to places such as New York, Florida, DC, Georgia, and we also have international visits like go to France, Italy, and Japan, sometimes and also we went on a five day cruise to the Bahamas. That was fun and to Newport [Rhode Island], that was awesome and that’s it.

AJ Johnson on Black Power

AH: I want to ask, what does Black Power mean to you? because everybody has their own definition of Black Power, so what does it mean?

AJ: As of now?

AH: Well

AJ: I can definitely say that back in the day, I didn’t really know, I was trying to figure it out because again, I was trying to understand my identity, I was trying to understand who I was, because I was told that I was so-and-so on one side and then so-and-so on another and all I could find was that I wanted to be like Martin Luther King [Jr.] one day, that was all I had in my mind, “hey, I want to be like Martin Luther King [Jr.] one day, that is what it means to be Black to be able to create this peace, this happiness” that is what I felt and what I wanted to aim for

AH: What does it mean now for you, today?

AJ: Just Black Power in general?

AH: Do you still believe in Black Power?

AJ: Black Power for me is about the uplift of a race, of the culture, of the consciousness of the people within a culture. That is Black Power, that is the Black power we strive for, within that consciousness we are building up of the race, everything will come whether it is economically, intellectually, that is what we are aiming for in the Black Power Movement or a Black Power Movement instead of more aggressiveness or self-destructive, any destructive power is, the power of intellectual building because knowledge is power and through that consciousness we will be able to raise ourselves and build ourselves, back to where we should be and even greater heights past that, but Black Power is inherently nationalistic and I do not believe in pure nationalism anymore, I believe that every culture has something to offer every other culture and that only by understanding other cultures can we be able to understand our own, but we do have to have a certain amount of understanding of our cultural identity before we even gain anything from other cultures and that is something that we need to build up right now because by being told who we are from other cultures, specifically Anglo-Saxon cultures, we are being diluted and not even we know where we stand out most of the time anyhow.

AH: And so your evolvement in think about this idea came from college classes or from outside reading material?

AJ: Well, I guess, that I always had a passion for it, I always had this kind passion, and so when you have a passion like that, it kind of, I am not going to say that it comes to you, but you go places to learn that kind of thing and it comes to you to you in to an extent. And in doing so, I have done a lot of outside reading, classes, I have done a few, but again a teacher can only teach you so much and you really have to have that drive and passion yourself to be willing to go and learn further. Because it is only through that critical learning that you are going to learn and it is going to stick. You are going to be able to expand on it on your own mind and in your own consciousness. And so I have had to my own outside reading and my own outside study. And that is the study I am most proud of and what I have learned the most from and a teacher can tell me one thing and if I can argue with a teacher on a point, I feel like I have gained something, that, I didn’t just gain what the teacher told me, I have been able to go back and learn on my own, teach myself and that is something really powerful.

Education

Sara Daise on differences between Black and White Students at Beaufort High School


SD: I would never go back. I know that some people loved high school. I did learn and I did enjoy it. I did marching band I was in color guard my senior year, I was color guard captain. I enjoyed choir as well. Um, I had a few good teachers some not so great, uh freshmen year was really tough for me because I wasn’t ready for high school so for tenth grade I had to get it together, buckle down and get my work done and I excelled. I got to meet different people. I was not in the honors program, but I took some AP [Advanced Placement] classes, but I could never be in the AP program because math and science are not my thing, so that would just be horrible. So, one of the things that is interesting is that in my honors classes that I did take the Black kids that were from marching band and choir were in those classes. There would be three or four of us in those honor classes. If I wanted to get to know the rest of the Black population I would have to go my CP classes.

AH: CP classes?

SD: College Prep

AH: College Prep, okay

SD: It is interesting to see that in most of the schools, college prep, oh that good, but at Beaufort High College Prep, college prep does not prepare you for college.

AH: Laugh. Okay, okay. So in your high school, in Beaufort there was a division between Black and White kids and they were tracked differently?

SD: Definitely, like I said in the honors classes I did take, like English and History, and um government, there would be about three or four or five of us. It was always the same ones and we were also the ones who did extracurricular like marching band, or choir; athletes not so much in the honor classes. I mean there were a few who acted like they were not dumb, but not much. It was mostly those in student government