After Charlottesville and Charleston, how this viral Gullah artist fights hate with history

On a hot summer day in 2015, Ment Nelson took a photograph of his grandmother standing on a dock, tossing a crab net into a marsh.

Then, Nelson started sketching.

He sketched a figure of his grandmother, Lillie Behlin, crabbing. Although the features of her face are obscured, her posture and long denim skirt give her identity away. Nelson also drew a man walking with his fishing rods and pail, and another man on his tractor — all depictions of Gullah life in South Carolina’s Lowcountry.

Two years ago, Nelson sold the piece for $280. It launched his career as a Lowcountry artist, and he now sells his artwork all over the state, the U.S. and even internationally. Nelson has an online shop where he sells prints and caps, and after one of his tweets went viral last month, he’s sold more than a hundred pieces of his art, he says.

Back in 2015, Behlin had no idea that Nelson had taken the photo, nor did she realize that he was selling his artwork online.

“I didn’t know he put it on the … what d’you call it, the internet?” Behlin, 74, said. “Yeah, I didn’t know he put it on the internet. My granddaughter’s father lives in California. He called me, and he said, ‘Woman, you’re all over the world.’ And I said, ‘huh? What do you mean?’ And that’s how I found out.”

Nelson, 28, always had a desire to learn about his family’s history. That desire deepened in 2015 after the shooting of Walter Scott, who was black, by a white police officer in North Charleston; and the slaying of of nine black churchgoers at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Indeed, Nelson was named after one of the people murdered at the church that summer — Pastor Clementa Pinckney, a state senator and native of Beaufort who had grown up with Nelson’s mother.

And racial tensions recently captured national attention once more, after a counter-protester was killed at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend.

“I feel like one of the biggest problems with race relations is misunderstanding,” said Nelson. “So I’m glad I’m able to share the Southern black experience. We should be sharing cultures and talking to each other instead of using violence.”

And that’s what Nelson is hoping to do with his art and the internet. He not only hopes to educate people from around the country about the people of the Lowcountry, but he also wants to teach the younger generation of people living in South Carolina who might not be as interested in preserving the culture of older generations.

Same Lowcountry, worlds apart

Both Nelson and Behlin were born in the Lowcountry. And although both spent their lives in the same part of South Carolina, around Beaufort, Jasper and Hampton counties, the two grew up in entirely different worlds.

Behlin was born in 1942, when World War II was raging and the South was segregated.

Nelson was born decades later, in 1988, when the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was written in history textbooks.

Behlin attended a segregated school — a wooden schoolhouse with oil lamps and an outhouse. She learned arithmetic and reading, but subjects like history and science weren’t taught at all. She grew up on gospel music, which she sang in school.

Once, her teacher asked her to sing the lead in “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

“I was real shy, I never walked with my head up,” Behlin said, remembering the incident with a laugh. “But they liked the way I sang, so they told me I had to lead the song. … That made me real nervous, but I made it through. I ain’t never did nothing like that since.”

By the time Nelson began school in Hampton County, forced racial segregation was long over, and he studied alongside his black and white classmates alike. Nelson listened to hip hop and R&B from the 1980s and 1990s — but he always enjoyed gospel music too, he assured his grandmother.

As a child, Behlin dreamed of being a nurse and playing the piano. But she left school after the sixth grade to help her mother with her sick stepfather and seven siblings. She married her first husband when she was 13 years old, which, then, was a kind of obligation.

Nelson, on the other hand, graduated from high school, and since then, has been exercising his creative muscles — at first musically, with a group called OXYxMORON, and then through his artwork.

Using history to look forward

Behlin had three children with her first husband, but she ended leaving him. She married her second husband, Willie “Click” Behlin, a former classmate, in 1965.

“I kind of knowed him when we was going to school,” she said. “I hated him.”

But as adults, their childhood teasing turned into affection. She had two more children with Click, and later this month, the couple will celebrate their 52nd wedding anniversary.

And although Behlin never became a pianist, she worked as a nurse’s assistant for 15 years.

When Nelson looks at his grandmother, his admiration is evident. Many of his prints depicting everyday Lowcountry life were inspired by his motivation to preserve her and the rest of his family.

“He wants to know so much about the old ways, and he wants to preserve our family history,” Behlin said. “All I know is, I’m happy. I’m proud that he’s my grandson.”

This story was originally published August 16, 2017 at 5:56 PM with the headline "After Charlottesville and Charleston, how this viral Gullah artist fights hate with history."