Race relations: It’s up to you

Etta Mann was an Episcopalian all her life.

She graduated from an Episcopal college and she attended the historic Parish Church of St. Helena in Beaufort from the time almost 50 years ago that black people like her could do such a thing for the first time since the Civil War.

That’s why her funeral Tuesday morning was held at the graceful old church, even though it’s only the fourth time W. Brown Marshel, in his shaded glasses and cane, has directed a funeral there.

The church was filled for the 88-year-old educator in a service that lasted only 38 minutes. I’ve heard prayers longer than that at black funerals in black churches. But the family needed to double-time over to Beaufort National Cemetery to lay Etta Mann to rest by her husband, U.S. Marine Corps Master Sgt. Earl Mann. And I have it on good authority that she was sent off good and proper in the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority’s Omega Omega service Monday night at Penn Center.

But this funeral offers a snapshot on race relations as streets across America are filled with racially-charged violence.

“It’s a troubling time we are living in now,” the Rt. Rev. Alden Hathaway said in his homily. “And we’re not handling it very well.”

The snapshot shows Beaufort’s finest, both black and white, sitting together, even singing “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine” with Jewish Mayor Billy Keyserling in the house.

It shows Hathaway, the retired bishop of Pittsburgh, daring to read a portion of Scripture from the Gullah translation, to the murmers of the largely black crowd. It was Ephesians 4:13:

“Til we all togeda gwine come fa be one people, da gree een we fait an een wa we know bout God Son ...”

He noted the church’s history of Colonial and antebellum times and everything since, and said:

“So we’re here, all together.”

He said it was Mann’s life as an upbeat, energetic mender and blender that remained her witness to the scorching Lowcountry day she was buried.

Integration

It could have been much different.

The church history shows that Etta Mann — then Etta Nickpeay from the small town of Eastover — was in her first teaching job on St. Helena Island when she was told she could not worship there. In 1949, she and two other teachers went to a Sunday morning service, but her principal was told the next morning they would not come back if he wanted to keep his job.

About two decades later, by then married with two young boys, Etta Mann wanted to get back in the church. She called the rector and he heartily welcomed her. And when she didn’t show up on Sunday, an associate rector went to the Mann home to invite her personally. That was around 1969, and the Mann family never left the Episcopal church. As a lector, she often stood where her funeral homily was delivered and read Scripture in a “rich, steady voice and lyrical cadence,” Hathaway said.

At about the same time, the Beaufort County public schools underwent a complete, forced integration for the first time.

One of the students influenced by Mann during that rough era drove down from Charleston for her funeral service.

It was Jonathan Green, the artist who put the Gullah culture on the world map.

“She supported us at a time we really needed it,” said Green, a 1973 graduate of Beaufort High School.

She had the backs of both the black and white students, he said.

In an interview last year, Mann told me, “You had to work not only on the attitudes of the students, you had teachers who didn’t want to be there either. We decided to have something where we could all be together. We had a Christmas party out on Fripp Island for all the teachers and their guests. We got to talking and found out we’re not all that different.”

‘Yours and mine’

I had a flat tire on the way to the funeral — maybe the best reason to avoid the road construction on Boundary Street.

As I scrambled through the trunk, I heard a voice over my shoulder: “Looking for your jack?”

How did he know? The stranger came over and found the jack and changed the tire with meager help from me, a weakly pencil and pixel pusher.

As we sweated together by the tire, I told him — a black man — about Etta Mann. He’s new to town and didn’t know her. He and his wife, who is white, are moving in with his elderly grandfather, who escaped Jim Crow Beaufort years ago to work in New York.

I asked him what he would say about race relations in these troubled times. He said you can’t talk about it terms of an entire race. That’s too big. He said there are too many divisions within the races to generalize. He said it’s a matter of what individuals do.

The old bishop said something similar at the funeral service.

“The content to Etta Mann’s character was her message,” Hathaway said.

“So what is our witness — yours and mine?”

This story was originally published July 19, 2016 at 5:15 PM with the headline "Race relations: It’s up to you."