Episode 86, 34 min listen
In this episode, with the help of our guest Russell Stall, we will look back at the contributions past immigrants have made to Greenville, S.C. In doing so, we will draw from the lessons of our community's immigrant past to help inform our future.
Welcome to this very special series, New Roots, New Voices: Listening to Our Immigrant Neighbors, where we will listen to and lift up the voices and stories of local immigrants here in Greenville, South Carolina.
AUDIO PLAYER
You can access this episode wherever you listen to podcasts via our pod.link.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
Reference for information about Sankofa.
Learn more about our guest, Russell Stall.
This immigration series is done in partnership and collaboration with:
- Village Engage
- Greenville Immigration and Faith Coalition
FULL TRANSCRIPT
-Introduction
Ame Sanders 00:11
Ame, this is the State of Inclusion Podcast, and I'm Ame Sanders. There is a lot in the news every day about immigrants, and a lot of it is negative. What if we went beyond the news? What if we opened our hearts and our minds to better understand the reality of immigrants in our own community?
Over the next several weeks, we will listen to and lift up the voices and stories of local immigrants here in Greenville, South Carolina. Along the way, we will meet neighbors, families, friends, local icons, and legends. We will gain insight into the challenges our immigrant neighbors face and become better allies. Welcome to this very special series, New Roots, New Voices: Listening to Our Immigrant Neighbors.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my teammates introduced me to the concept of Sankofa. Sankofa is a symbol or concept originating from the Akan people of Ghana. For the Akan, forgetting their past is not just ignorance. It is a loss that weakens the entire community's Foundation. And generally, the concept of Sankofa often is illustrated by the image of a mythical bird depicted looking backward while holding an egg in its beak, symbolizing the act of reaching back to reclaim something valuable, knowledge, heritage, or lessons. The bird's posture illustrates the balance between looking back and moving forward. Sankofa also represents the need to continuously return to the past to draw lessons, to inform the present, and the future. Together. We've spent the last few weeks in episodes solidly situated in our present, listening to stories from our local immigrant neighbors, but just as Sankofa teaches, we will take this episode to look back at the contributions past immigrants have made to Greenville. We will draw from the lessons of our community's immigrant past to help inform our future.
So today, we are happy to welcome Dr Russell Stall. Russell wears many hats. He's a native Greenvilleian, a Greenville City Council member since 2017, and Interim Executive Director of the Greenville Historical Society. Welcome Russell. Thanks so much for joining me.
Russell Stall
Thank you for asking me.
Ame Sanders
Well, so as you know, I've spent the last few weeks and the last few podcast episodes interviewing some of our local immigrant neighbors, and honestly, our team thought that any series about our immigrant neighbors wouldn't be complete without looking back at the contributions that past immigrant neighbors have made to Greenville. So we're grateful that you joined us, because we know you've done some research on that and you have some information to share. So would you tell us a little bit about what you found in your research?
-Greenville the Beginning
Russell Stall 03:17
Yeah, I'd love to Ame we when, when I was asked to look at this story, I wasn't sure what direction it was going to go, quite frankly, and but as I got into it, I realized the the real importance of the people who have immigrated here, and how, how they have shaped this community. If, if you look at our history, that our history does not begin in 1783 or 1762 whenever Richard Paris came here, our history begins 1000s of years before that in the United States, with the Cherokees. And the Cherokees were extremely benevolent residents. They took care of the land. They honored the river. The Reedy River was sacred to them. And so I think it's critically important to remember that the Cherokee Nation was here first with great reverence for the country, and Richard Paris was an immigrant. If I had my druthers, I probably would not have chosen Richard Paris as the first one, because he was a bit of a rascal. He got 100,000 acres and Greenville County around the Reedy River down to the entery and a little in questionable ways. The way he got it is he married the chief of the daughter of the Cherokees, and had had a child, and they took the land. But he was our first true immigrant. But after him, the odd the Scotch Irish followed. We had a lot of the people that were coming to America. The time were escaping something. We're escaping persecution. We're escaping their many lives were in danger. So they were bold and embrazoned and very courageous people to come to a nation that that wasn't extremely developed yet. So I guess bottom line is, if you go back far enough, all of us have immigrated here at some point in our generational tree. And I mean, my roots go back to the Scots Irish who came in from actually, I had a relative that was on the Mayflower who fell off the boat, by the way, that's kind of the fun. Part of the story is it was John Howland. History treats these things in an interesting manner. So we're not exactly sure how some of these things happen, but John Howland fell off the Mayflower and was saved by grabbing on to the to the rail. So I cannot it's possible I would not be here right now had it not been for the people who pulled John Howlin out of out of the Atlantic. But the bottom line is, Ame, is we all have our immigration story. And as I've looked at the culmination of these, these stories over the generations, there's some real stories of celebration here, there are some stories that we should embrace as the community. As you know, we are just a wonderful place that it would be very easy to be negative about things that are going on today, but I would encourage us to celebrate the histories that brought us here from all different places.
-Waves of Immigration
Ame Sanders 06:42
So tell me a little bit about some of the waves of immigration that we've seen since the since the early days. So you talked about how we kind of got started and the Scots Irish, but we've had a lot of immigration since then.
Russell Stall 06:56
We have, we have. It first started…the first Europeans here were Scots, Irish, Germans, English farmers. Many fled, especially from Scotland. They fled from Ireland. They fled to Ireland, only to face really high persecution and dangerous situations. And I guess the second wave would have been in the early 1800s, and when we were emerging from being a outpost, a small, tiny, little trading outpost, into a small village, and you saw the churches, you saw the schools start, the courthouse came here, and that really changed things. And we also two significant things happened in our history that made this really the vibrant place that it is. And one is the railroad. The railroad came in in the 1800s, and the beauty about the railroad is that it not only connected us physically, but it connected us culturally. It connected us to the world, and so we could get the news now from the rest of the world in a pretty quick manner. And it also gave people the ability to move around and to come to this thriving, growing town. So that's one of the waves.
We had a big wave come in from especially New York. The textile industry was starting to emerge, and many of the mills from New York moved down to Greenville and down to South Carolina. So we saw immigration happen from those as well, some of the more significant waves were the Greek families. They first came in around, I believe, around 1905, the early 1900s, and they came in kind of the same story, escaping poverty in Greece and political unrest in Greece. And many began very modestly. Ame they would run fruit carts, they would have candy stands and storefronts, but they started the food movement in Greenville, the Greeks did. You probably recognize some of them. Sanitary Cafe was a significant meeting place in downtown, Pete's and Como's, Charlie's Steakhouse, which is at least for my family, where our most significant family conversations have been. I've shaped my teenage children at Charlie's Steakhouse. The Clock, food started in institutions from those coming from Greece, and with Greek heritage was one of the waves. Jewish families, they started coming about the same time, and with them, they opened downtown stores. They sold clothing and furniture. They also built religious life. They built the first synagogue in Greenville. And, I couldn't tell this story without mentioning Max Heller. It's really hard to describe Max and do him justice. Max was deeply loving, deeply passionate. I believe he is the reason Greenville is the way it is today.
-Father of Modern Greenville
Ame Sanders 10:23
And tell our listeners who may not know who Max Heller is, a little bit about who he was.
Russell Stall 10:27
Sure, Max was the mayor of Greenville in the late 70s and early 80s. I think it would be helpful to hear his story of how he got here. He was a Jewish teenager in Vienna, when Hitler's army marched into Austria in the late 30s or so, and his family couldn't get out, and it was really difficult to get out at the time. It was hard to get a visa. You had to have someone in the receiving country sponsor you. He ended up meeting a Mary Mills. They had a dance in Vienna when he was 18. He danced with a group of American girls that were on a graduation trip, and one happened to be Mary Mills. And he wrote down her name, and to shorten the story…the story is a little more complicated, but to shorten the story, when he was trying to get out, he knew one person in the United States, and that was Mary Mills. So he wrote her a letter. The letter, there was a line in there that said, Mary, I will never be a burden to you. And then there is a wonderful thank you note that Max wrote to her when he was running for Congress in the 1980s that said, Look what 40 years has done for us, and look how special this is. You saved my life. And she did. So he came to the United States, and he worked in a textile mill. He was sweeping floors in a textile mill, and worked his way up. He eventually owned Maxson Shirt Company, and was among the first in the Upstate, probably in the country, to integrate his mills.
His gift was people and relationships with people, and knowing and understanding people. And I think what shaped him, though Ame, was that he governed with the perspectives of somebody who knew what it meant to lose a homeland. He wanted Greenville to be a place where no one felt shut out. He wanted Greenville to be a place where everyone felt included. He believed in sidewalks and trees. He believed in outdoor cafes, a very, very Austrian, very Viennese. Look at it now, it is. I mean, we've got a lot of the components of Vienna in Greenville, and I mean, look where it's come. But it was not without persecution. He was an incredible mayor, did so many things, but then he ran for Congress in 1982, and it was a horrible campaign. He was running against…his opponent was Carol Campbell, who was a young Republican lawyer, and on paper, it looked good. Heller was leading in all the polls. He was winning in the polls, he had 51 to 39% of the vote. Then his background, as an Austrian, born Jewish man, became a weapon. Whispers spread that he was, quote, not really one of us. Opponents questioned whether or not a man who spoke with an accent, who hadn't been born on Southern soil, could truly be a good candidate for Congress. And it was very hurtful for Max, the man who had basically given his life back to this community, to be verbally attacked because of his heritage. It was very difficult for him. In retrospect, though, he always forgave the people that staged that campaign. As a matter of fact, he wrote a letter at one point commending Carol Campbell on what a great governor he was. So it just shows the grace that Max had, and that's the way he governed, and that's, wouldn't it be nice if we saw a little more of that grace today in our politicians?
-A New Way of Thinking
Ame Sanders 14:37
I mean, a lot of people consider him to be the father of modern Greenville, and that he, as a refugee, came and brought so much to our community. So we have a few people in our…a few immigrants in our history, who were, I would say, larger than life, and you probably have another one or two of those to mention. But we also have some everyday people. Who made a difference in our community,
Russell Stall 15:01
And that's why your podcast has been so intriguing. It’s been interesting listening to everyone's story. Everyone has a story. Some are more interesting than others, but all of us have a story of hope. And when we talk about immigration, all of us have some kind of story that we can tell. And when you think about people like Max, the reason he made the difference in Greenville is the power of people and the power of relationships. He could talk to anyone and make them feel like they were the most important person in the world. He could talk to somebody who's fixing the looms. He could talk to governors. He could talk to anyone.
But I think for Greenville, what it took for us to change was someone from the outside with a new way of looking at things, and someone who had a history somewhere else that couldn't say, well, it was great for granddad when he lived here, but we don't need to change anything. He brought a new way of thinking, and it was shaped by his story. It was shaped by what he went through in Austria, and, you know, he embraced that. But yeah, there's so many different stories that we could tell. I mean, the Rama family, when they came here and created the hotel empire that they did. [Ame] And they're Indian immigrants, right? [Russell] Indian immigrants and Vivian Wong. Vivian and Peter Wong are immigrants from Hong Kong, and they started with a restaurant and eventually have created this global empire that is pretty fantastic. But again, they never forgot their roots. They never forgot what was important to them and the importance of their values, and in the way we treat people.
Ame Sanders 17:12
One of the things I really liked that you shared with me about Vivian Wong was that you described her leadership as having a global perspective but a local commitment. Yeah, absolutely, and that's a beautiful sort of way to interact and live in the world she was in.
Russell Stall 17:33
That was. I would consider that a new wave in that generation that let me bring my ideas from other places, and let me learn from other places. Vivian, much like Max, much like Heller, reminds us, immigration isn't just about survival, and it isn't just about economic contribution, but it's ways that we can, we can thrive as a community. It's, it's about belonging. It's, it's about making people feel welcome and wanted and needed. And then how do we take you to the next step and help our community understand the need for people to get involved and to get to take responsibility for our future, instead of saying somebody else will do it. How do we encourage people to step up? And I'm encouraged by that. This week, I gave a speech at Leadership Greenville and at Opportunity Greenville on Greenville's…I think I titled it Greenville's Uncomfortable History. Which was a journey of the things that we don't particularly celebrate, but we have to know about our past and the Things that shaped us, our story, while magnificent in Greenville is, it's a story of there's a lot of prejudice, a lot of bigotry, a lot of racial issues that we've had throughout our history. And it's critically important that we understand how those shaped who we are, and how that shaped who the people are that are living here. And we can't ignore that past. It's ugly and it's messy, but it's, it's, it's something we have to celebrate and learn from.
-International Companies Arrive
Ame Sanders 19:36
So those are some great stories, and we've talked about some of the folks that are larger than life, but our immigration history is a story of everyday people, and after having done this research, we've talked a little bit about what these waves of immigrants have brought to the community, but let's talk about that a little bit more, because we've had some more recent waves of immigrants. We've had a lot of. international companies come in. We've had, we've had a different waves of immigration in the last, say, 40 years, 30 years,
Russell Stall 20:09
I think a conversation that would be valuable is what's been the difference between when textiles came in and when we had the wave of BMW, GE, and Michelin/ When textiles came in, the textile mills were the life of the people working there, both good and bad ways. Life controlled. The Mills controlled the schools, and the mills controlled their housing. The Mills controlled the stores. Many of the textile companies had or textile mills, had their own money, had their own script. If the mills closed, the people who worked in the mills, their lives, were in real, serious trouble. The Mills did not encourage education. If you look at a story like Shoeless Joe Jackson, Shoeless Joe Jackson was illiterate. He made it through third grade, and when his problems came up, he couldn't defend himself because of his lack of education. So the mills did not encourage education.
What's different is that when BMW, Michelin, and GE came in, they brought in European management. They brought in European management styles. They were based on an educated workforce. So it's very, very different in the people that are coming over from textiles than from the international companies. At one point, we had the highest per capita number of engineers in the country in Greenville. I don't know if that's still the case, but those global firms really amplified, especially those coming from Germany and France. If you look at it, I think what's really cool is, if you walk down the bridge, if you walk across the bridge, you will hear every language, not every, I mean, that's impossible, but you will hear so many different languages, different accents. That's what makes Greenville pretty special, that salad bowl of connectivity and cultural stuff that people are bringing from other places. And it would certainly be boring if all of us, if all of us went to Greenville High like I did, and there wasn't any uniqueness to the community,
-History We're Creating Today
Ame Sanders 22:28
One of the things when we think about our history, we have to realize is that we're creating history every day. So we are creating history now. And one of the things I want to ask your perspective on is, what do you think future historians will think about, how will they view and judge this chapter of our community's immigration story?
Russell Stall 22:49
I'm gonna have to pause a little on that, because I'm hopeful yet apprehensive. Greenville has always led the way in South Carolina, and many things, and I think we've led the way on some of our more progressive policies. I'm a bit fearful of what's happening in today's political environment, whether or not we're destroying some of the welcoming, belonging types of things in our communities, where, if you weren't born here, you don't belong. I'm I hope that's merely a blip on our radar internally. I think that it is. But at the same time, when you get down to the root level of people that are living here, people living here are, I mean, they're good and loving and generous and want people to feel welcome. I mean, I'm convinced of that to the core, that as a community, we're extremely compassionate and loving in Greenville, and I hope, as we look back at history, people will look back at this as a time when we embraced that and stood up for our values. This is the time when we stood up for what we believe, and we stood up for being the voice for people without a voice, and that's why I love the podcast so much, is you're giving voice to a lot of folks that have not been heard, and we knew more of that. But I think as we step back, Ame and as we step back and see that the early Europeans brought the churches and the markets, the Greeks, Italians, and Lebanese gave us the diners and groceries. Jewish families built institutions. Max Heller made us believe in civic renewal. The Latino immigrants, who I haven't talked about today, the Latino immigrants strengthened the workforce, and then we had the Asian immigrants and global firms that built the economy. Another, another one we haven't talked about deeply, but the refugees who have come in reminded us what resilience looks like. All these groups have had a great impact in shaping our community. And I, I hope that's what we remember. I hope we remember the people. I hope we remember the Max Hellers and Vivian Wongs and DJ Ramos and the Conits family. But I don't know. I hope we'll look back at this period that we're going through with a sense of hope as a time where we shifted the way we deal with other people in other cultures. I don't know.
-Keeping and Acknowledging Our History
Ame Sanders 25:48
One of the things that I've been most impressed by, and I guess it's opened my eyes a bit in the interviews that I've done with the local immigrant, with our local immigrant neighbors, is, I think this wave of immigrants that we have is so rich and diverse. Yeah, one of the things you talked about the refugees and resettlement and some of the asylum seekers, but also people who have just immigrated here from all over the world, and the I've had just a few interviews with people, just a few stories, and they've come from so many different places in the world, and that really opens and broadens the perspective that our community can have in a way that I think it's essentially impossible to do any Other way.
Russell Stall 26:39
Absolutely, one thing that, as I put on my Greenville County Historical Society hat, one thing that I am worried about is, in many ways, we're losing our history. We're not capturing our history. So podcasts like this are fantastic, and creating oral histories and putting some of these things down on paper and on tape. We need to do a better job in this community of telling the stories. And you know, we can spend all day talking about dates and quantitative data and population data and stuff like that. But until we get qualitative with a collection of the stories that people have around the community. That's what really brings it to life. That's what brings the soul back, back to Greenville. So I'm hopeful that we're going to do a better job of capturing, cataloging, and, most importantly, making people's history accessible. The Historical Society has a lot of incredible documents, but right now it's really hard to get to them. And how can we make those stories accessible and those photographs successful? Give people an easy way to tell their stories. They're so rich and fantastic. I mean, I think both you and I could sit down all day listening to these stories, and the celebrations that people are having are pretty, pretty incredible.
-Storytelling is Essential
Ame Sanders 28:10
You know, I believe that one of the ways, one of the critical ways that we build community, is by sharing, making ourselves vulnerable to one another, sharing our stories and also deeply listening to one another, because then it leads us to finding ways to reaching out to each other, even in little, small ways. So I think that really helps us to build community and I've heard it over and over again in the interviews that I've done with our immigrant neighbors, is that you know, it's really all about building empathy, compassion, and respect, and sharing our stories really helps us to be able to do that.
Russell Stall 28:51
I think someone like Max Heller would jump all over in a good way your comments about listening, when you look back at some of these stories they gave without caring who got the credit. But the way they did it, in the way they process things, was the incredible power of shutting up and listening and hearing people's stories, and Max in his I mean, he was just so good at hearing people's concerns because he had lived it. And, you know, same with many, many of those who have come to America from dangerous places. So the listening is key. I mean, we don't listen like we used to. We don't listen anymore. We don't tell stories around the I was gonna say campfire, but that sounded kind of weird, but we were stuck in our phones right now and aren't telling and sharing our stories, and I'm guilty. I'm certainly guilty of that as well. But yeah, how can we capture and tell those stories? That's crucial.
Ame Sanders 30:02
So Russell, is there anything else about Greenville's immigrant history, past, or even our present that you want to talk about or discuss?
-Owning and Learning from Our Past
Russell Stall 30:12
One thing about Greenville history that I'm not sure where this fits in the conversation, but our history isn't a sugar-coated, glorious history of Look how amazing we are, although that's the story we often tell, our story is messy. Our story is ugly, but we can't ignore that. We have we have to take the time to understand the times where we were not a very great place to live. And how do we learn from those things? We can't sweep those warts under the under the rug. We have to acknowledge them and learn from them so we don't make the same mistake again. And unfortunately, I think in some ways, we're making some of the same mistakes we made in the 1930s and if we can acknowledge those stories, then maybe we can do a better job. But I don't mean to sound all down and doom and gloom and how awful things are. Ame, I believe this, with the best is yet to come in in this community, and I truly believe that, and it's because everyday people who are willing to stand up for what they believe and stand up for their values and stand up for their religious convictions through venues like this one where you're helping people, you're giving people that voice, you're giving people the ability to tell those stories and to stand up for what they believe. That's the only way it's going to happen. The only way it's going to happen is from the ground up and from the grassroots. So I'm deeply appreciative of the work you're doing. Ame, thank you so much.
Ame Sanders 32:04
Thank you for joining us, Russell. I really appreciate the research that you did on our immigrant history and sharing that here with us, because it is important to look back at the contributions that you know our local legends have made, but also our everyday folks, as well as people who came here. You know, we have African American neighbors whose heritage, they came against their will, and they immigrated here against their will, but together, we build the community that we have. And so I'm really grateful that you shared all that with us, and you joined us today. Thank you so much.
Russell Stall 32:41
Thank you, Ame, thank you for what you're doing.
-Conclusion
Ame Sanders 32:48
Over these past few weeks, we've heard many different immigrant stories, stories of past immigrants who have made their mark on Greenville and contributed in large and small ways to creating the community that we know and love today. And also, we've heard stories of immigrant neighbors who've arrived more recently and are helping every day to move our shared community forward. In all of that, we've heard beautiful stories of resilience, entrepreneurship, education, vision, hard work, and giving back to the community. After hearing these rich stories, we can and perhaps should ask ourselves, How can we be better allies, and what does it mean to step up and better support our immigrant neighbors? We'll dig a little more deeply into that in our final two episodes. Join us.
This has been the State of Inclusion Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, the best compliment for our work is your willingness to share the podcast or discuss these ideas with others. Also, feel free to leave us a review or reach out. We love to hear from you. And join us for the next episode in this very special series, New Roots, New Voices: Listening to Our Immigrant Neighbors.
CONTRIBUTORS
Guest: Dr. Russell Stall
Host: Ame Sanders
Social Media and Marketing Coordinator: Kayla Nelson
Sound: Uros Nikolic