Valinda Littlefield tells the untold stories of women’s contributions to SC, nation
Posted on: March 18, 2021; Updated: March 18, 2021
By Page Ivey, [email protected], 803-777-3085
Valinda Littlefield specializes in telling stories of people who were omitted in the first draft of history. Whether they were people of color, women or both who were treated as second-class citizens, Littlefield recounts the ways in which they came out of the roles assigned to them by society to do something courageous.
In his last book, 101 women who shaped South CarolinaLittlefield tells the stories not only of elite white women, but also of working-class women from diverse backgrounds who helped to influence the cultural and political life of South Carolina and beyond.
“The sins of covert and open omission left out the experiences of working class women and others,” Littlefield wrote in the introduction to the book he edited. “In the past two decades, historians and others have added herstories to South Carolina’s history.”
The essays in the new book are gathered around six themes and are designed to make the stories accessible to high school students.
The timeline goes from Lady of Cofitachequi, an American Indian leader in South Carolina in the 16th century, to Nikki Haley, a former governor and most recently US ambassador to the United Nations under President Donald Trump. Featured women include graduate and benefactress and entrepreneur Darla Moore, English teacher and National Book Award winning poet Nikky Finney, Gamecocks women’s basketball coach, Dawn Staley, the first UofSC graduate black woman Henrie Monteith Treadwell and graduate in law and South Carolina Supreme Court’s first chief female judge, Jean Toal.
When you leave women out of the history of building a state, of a nation, you are not providing an accurate story.
Valinda Littlefield
Many of the women in the book have had their stories told before, especially in the three-volume collection South Carolina women: their lives and times co-edited by Littlefield or at South Carolina Encyclopedia, published in 2006 and edited by Walter Edgar, distinguished professor emeritus of history at UofSC. But some of the entries are new, including Donella Brown Wilson, an educator, civil rights activist and community leader who died in 2017 at the age of 108.
Wilson was born from sharecroppers in Calhoun County and attended the Booker T. Washington School in Columbia before earning her teaching credentials at Allen University in 1933. She taught at segregated schools in Lexington and Orangeburg counties until she retired in 1971. Wilson and her husband lost their teaching jobs in Lexington in the 1940s, when they applied for wages and benefits equal to that of white teachers in other schools.
She was part of a large contingent of voters for the first time in the 1948 Democratic primaries, after a successful process forced the then all-white party to allow African Americans to vote in the primaries.
Wilson shared stories with Littlefield, who has been at the University of South Carolina since 1999 and served as a history professor and director of African American Studies. In addition to her work on two books that highlight women’s contributions to the history of South Carolina and the United States, she has served as a consulting historian on several projects, including the documentary project Between the Waters, which shows culture and history of Hobcaw Barony in Georgetown County, off the coast of South Carolina.
Finding and telling these stories is what moves Littlefield, who hopes his latest book will encourage others to find even more stories from ordinary people who helped shape the story.
“I would say there is a lot more to discover,” says Littlefield. “Women have been at the forefront of all kinds of efforts to create this state and are often left out – the sins of omission.”
“And we don’t know enough about the stories of those who were left out. We haven’t done the research that needs to be done. We continue to recycle the same people over and over and leave out the ordinary people who do extraordinary things. ”
In discussing omissions, Littlefield recalls an African saying: “Until the lion tells his version of the story, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
“When you leave women out of the history of building a state, a nation, then you are not providing an accurate story,” she says.
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Book by Valinda Littlefield 101 women who shaped South Carolina is available from the University of South Carolina Press.
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Topics: Faculty, Research, Diversity, Faculty of Arts and Sciences