UofSC student works to replace hate with hope
Posted on February 25, 2021; Updated: February 25, 2021
By Megan Sexton, [email protected]
It was spring 2018 and Regan Freeman was studying in one of the cubicles inside the Thomas Cooper Library when he came across a 60 minutes story. Oprah Winfrey and attorney Brian Stevenson were visiting the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, a monument to the thousands of African Americans who were lynched in the 70 years after the Civil War.
Freeman watched the screen as Winfrey and Stevenson stopped and looked at one of 800 worn steel monuments, each representing a county in the United States where racial terror lynching occurred. The victims’ names are engraved in each column.
“Eliza Cowen was lynched in Laurens County, South Carolina,” read Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and the force behind the creation of the lynching memorial.
Freeman, a Clinton native in Laurens County, admits to being “amazed”.
“I’m a white guy. I spent 12 years at a public school in Laurens County. Not a part of it has been taught. Dozens of people lynched in Laurens County and it bothered me that no one talked about it at home, ”said Freeman, who at the time was in the last semester as a political science student at the University of South Carolina.“ This darkest part of history has never was mentioned. ”
That moment and those words were a turning point in Freeman’s life. This inspired him to join a Laurens County minister and his congregation in the fight for equality and justice. It is a journey that has gained momentum in recent months with the release of a film that documents the history of the racial struggle in Laurens and coverage of the group’s racial reconciliation work by national media, including CBS News and
The Washington Post.
Investigating the past
That day, at the University of South Carolina library, Freeman’s study session quickly turned into an afternoon of research. He missed the next class and spent three hours reading about his hometown’s history of racial violence.
This reading led him to stories about the notorious Redneck Shop. Installed in the old and segregated Echo Theater in the center of Laurens, the store was known as the “only Klan museum in the world” and sold paraphernalia of white and neo-Nazi nationalists. The store opened in 1996 – the same year Freeman was born – and remained open until 2012.
Freeman knew the Redneck Shop story in passing, but says he never understood gravity, believing it was just “a bunch of local freaks”. But as he got deeper into his story, he learned about Rev. David Kennedy, pastor of the New Beginning Missionary Baptist Church, who spent his life fighting for civil rights and fighting the beliefs of Redneck Shop owners.
“I left T-Coop and found Rev. Kennedy’s church number. I just called his church and he answered. I said to him, ‘I just heard about it and would love to talk to you.’ ”
“Why don’t we have lunch tomorrow?” was Kennedy’s reply.
The next day, Freeman missed another class and drove 60 miles on Interstate 26 from Columbia to Clinton, where he met the man who inspired him with his life story of faith, forgiveness and the fight against injustice.
“I told him that we have to do something to honor these people (who have been lynched). He didn’t know me from Adam. We were talking and he looked me in the face – and I will never forget that – he said: ‘Do you want to help lead this?’
“Since then, he’s just been a possessed man.”
Freeman, who graduated in political science from the College of Arts and Sciences with a major in public relations from the College of Information and Communications in May 2018, suspended his plans for law school. In January, he left his job working at a Columbia law firm and devoted his life full time to working with Kennedy and others in the community to transform a building that was once a seat of racial hatred into a center for reconciliation, remembrance and Education.
The Eco Project is born
The project started slowly; for a while, it was just a bunch of to-do lists in Freeman’s phone notes app. In the two years since then, the Echo Project has grown to become a movement that has raised more than half a million dollars. Much of this funding has been donated since the launch of the Burden, a film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is now available through streaming services and on DVD. It is based on the Redneck Shop story – how Kennedy, played by Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, helped and became friends with one of the owners of the original store, former Klansman Michael Burden Jr. When Burden was homeless and broke, Kennedy o offered a home, food and a place to worship. Burden sold Kennedy partial ownership of the Redneck Shop, which sparked a long legal battle before Kennedy and his New Beginning Missionary Baptist Church became owners of the building when the store closed in 2012.
The call for action at the end of the film, along with racial calculations across the country this summer after George Floyd’s death, resulted in donations from around the country and the world to the Rehab Hate website.
There are more than 5,700 donations so far. Some are small – $ 25 or $ 50 from individuals with notes like “in the name of the unit”, Bible verses and quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. Others are tens of thousands of dollars – contributions from companies that want to help change the world. legacy of the Echo Theater.
The now dilapidated theater, where Kennedy once watched movies from the segregated porch, still holds traces of his days as the Redneck Shop. The room is full of KKK recruitment cards, while Klan robe order forms are nailed to the wall. One of the walls is covered by a mural with the 7 meter high swastika from the days when the building was used by the American Nazi Party.
Freeman, Kennedy and the Echo Project advisory board are in the process of reviewing proposals from some of the country’s leading exhibition designers, with a plan to transform the building into a center of diversity and reconciliation; to create a memorial and a living community center.
Freeman, now the executive director of Project Echo, acknowledges that he is new to the battle that Kennedy and others have been fighting for their entire lives. He says that the people who lived and fought against it in Laurens County for a quarter of a century are the real heroes, “and I am so grateful that they let me get involved.”
The South Carolina I want to live in, recognizes its past and moves forward productively.
Regan Freeman, Executive Director, The Echo Project
For Kennedy, Freeman is “a breath of fresh air. He’s young, full of energy and always excited, ”Kennedy told CBS News.
But Freeman also heard the talk and resistance of some in his hometown. “’Why are you bringing this back? Why did you display Klan artifacts? ‘Rev. Kennedy’s argument, and I agree with him, is that you have to tell the truth to be reconciled. Racial reconciliation starts by telling the truth. ”
So this place, which Freeman calls “the personification of evil”, may be a Laurens County story, but it is also a “universal story”.
“You have this visceral space where you can understand the centuries-old struggle for justice and how this theater fits into that. We are transforming this building from a Klan museum into a center of diversity and reconciliation. I get goosebumps saying that, ”he says. “But we are not just going after the building in Laurens. We are talking about the universal message of resisting hate, of choosing healing over hate. ”
Harry Agnew has been friends with Kennedy for over 25 years, and the two were on the same page about the need to transform the old Echo Theater building. He was with Kennedy at lunch 2018 when they met Freeman.
“When Regan came along, he provided the enthusiasm to be the catalyst to do this,” says Agnew. Former member of the University of South Carolina Visitors Council, Agnew is now vice president of the Echo Project board of directors. “There is a lot of work to be done in South Carolina. This is what this project is about. ”
While working with others at the Echo Theater in his native county, Freeman says he often thinks about the historic landmark next to the historic Horseshoe in his alma mater, which says the university is “a faithful index of the state’s ambitions and fortunes. . ”
“The Echo Project and what we are fighting for is a manifestation of that. The South Carolina I want to live in, recognizes its past and moves forward productively. We will let Project Eco also be an index to South Carolina’s ambitions and fortunes, and that will help move the state forward. ”
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