The Life and Works of Cleveland Sellers: Chapter 4

Editor's Note: This is the final installment of a four-part profile of civil rights activist, scholar and S.C. native Dr. Cleveland Sellers Jr. The story so far: Sellers, now president of Voorhees College in Denmark, was at the Orangeburg Massacre in 1968, later went to jail and was finally pardoned for his role. Read the previous stories in the series.

The University of South Carolina is among the state institutions commonly referred to as "the establishment." Chartered in 1801, it offers 350 degree programs, training people to become active participants in the intellectual, cultural, economic and political pursuits of their communities.

Into this establishment walked Dr. Cleveland Louis Sellers Jr., 38 years after Emmett Till was slain in Mississippi, 33 years after the Greensboro sit-ins, 25 years after the campus shootings at S.C. State College in Orangeburg. Joining this establishment in 1993 was a man who for years was marginalized, who had been vilified by white society, a man who fought the status quo, who worked toward a day when all people might join together in common purpose.

And before long, he would be appointed director of the university's

African-American studies program. He would have the chance to apply directly the lessons and goals of his life within an institution whose purpose was to nurture curious and critical minds.

As the echo of "Black Power!" faded into history, the ideas it expressed would live on. For someone whose ancestors were stripped of everything, only an assertion of identity enables him to find his place within the sweep of human events. What can the civil rights movement possibly mean to those too young to have experienced it directly? What is the significance of heritage? What happens when different heritages clash? What is the result of reconciliation?

The movement to which Sellers had been so dedicated was always an attempt to change society from within, to demand respect and assert the validity of a minority group's national experience. The civil rights struggle was about equal participation, not revolution, Sellers says. The goal was simple: enfranchisement. Now, in a culmination of sorts, Sellers was reaping some of the fruits of this accomplishment, though he knew there was much left to do.

Building a program

These external goals, whose targets were students and society, were just half the battle. Within academia, the challenge of nurturing a reputable program was the other half. Andrew A. Sorensen, who stepped down as USC president in July after serving six years, describes the dilemma:

Cultural studies programs, which are about modern movements and don't easily fit into centuries-old academic categories, require special handling, Sorensen says. If you create unique departments, you run the risk of "ghettoizing" them, he says. They must be part of the school's larger mission.

What's more, Sorensen says, cultural studies programs are of little use if they do not draw resources from the broader community. Within a week of his appointment to the presidency in July 2002, Sorensen was told by several people that there was a gulf between the university and Columbia's black community, he says. So he set up an African-American Advisory Board to engage leaders and improve school programming.

"Word spread like wildfire," he says. Here was a man who attended church with his minister father in a Chicago prison with mostly black inmates, a university president who taught for years at the historically black Lincoln University near Philadelphia. As a young man, Sorensen had worked as a volunteer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Years later, he served as president of the University of Alabama. He was not afraid to confront the issue of race.

Sorensen, who is white, says that a history of activism was widely considered an asset in academic circles. "If you were an African-American and an activist in the cause, that counted for something." It was expected that senior administrators in African-American studies programs would advocate scholarship and action.

But developing such programs was not easy, Sorensen says. Anxious white administrators often worried that stirring the pot of black history would provoke unrest among black students and whites sympathetic with their concerns.

Sorensen says Sellers was ideal for the job: a "very gentle person" who possessed "terrifically strong convictions" and a willingness to balance scholarship with service.

As often happens to civil rights leaders years after their activism, irony showed its face to Sellers in the form of Carl B. Stokes, head of security at USC during the years Sellers ran the African-American studies program. Stokes was among the troopers involved in the Orangeburg Massacre. He was one of State Law Enforcement Division Chief J.P. Strom's assistants on the scene. Once or twice, the two men bumped into one another on campus. "He has changed," Stokes was reported to say of Sellers.

The African-American studies program at USC is "part of the fabric" of the campus, helping to draw a diverse faculty and student body, adding both academic and social value to the community, and aiding in retention efforts, newly appointed President Harris Pastides says.

"There is no doubt in my mind that that program is here to stay," Pastides says. "That is Cleveland Sellers' legacy."

Generations

In another ironic twist that Sellers and many others often cite, his son, Bakari Sellers, was elected to the state House as a representative from District 90 (Bamberg, Barnwell and Orangeburg counties) in 2006. At 22, Bakari was the youngest member of the House ever. The enfranchisement the father fought so hard to achieve was realized by the son.

Bakari Sellers, who just turned 24, says he's more bitter about the 1968 campus shootings than his father. Though the episode, and the civil rights era generally, belong to a previous generation, young people surely can sympathize with the concerns and goals of their forefathers, Bakari Sellers says. So he chooses to channel his sympathy and bitterness into progressive causes that challenge the white patriarchal system of the state.

Today, the youngest son of the civil rights icon focuses not on "equality" and "justice" and "voter rights," but on economic strain and deprivation, he says.

"It's hard to get lawmakers to understand and empathize with terms like 'poverty,' " he says. Yet chipping away at such problems requires more than one or two vocal advocates; it requires a common purpose and community effort, he says.

The younger Sellers, a graduate of Morehouse College and the University of South Carolina School of Law, accepted a position in August at a Columbia law firm and, in so doing, rendered yet another irony: He would be working with J. Preston "Pete" Strom Jr., son of the man whose troopers fired on students, including Cleveland Sellers, on that fateful night of Feb. 8, 1968, in Orangeburg.

For years, Bakari says, he was thought of as Cleveland Sellers' son. Today, Cleveland Sellers is considered Bakari Sellers' father. The torch of political activism is passed.

Small town, big job

Cleveland Sellers is pointing to the motel his father opened in 1969. Now closed, it was the first black-owned motel in Denmark. Converted into apartments, the building sits next to his childhood home at 432 Frederick St., a modest ranch surrounded by trees. Today, his aunt owns the properties and another lot and home nearby, which she rents.

Cleveland Sellers Sr. was among Denmark's enterprising blacks during the dog days of segregation. He drove a taxi, transporting passengers between New York and South Carolina; he ran a cafe; he rented properties. He even raised cattle at one point.

Denmark was once home to a Coca-Cola bottling plant, a pickle plant, a furniture manufacturer. It was a hub for three train lines: the Atlantic Coast Service, Seaboard Coast Line and Southern Railway.

One effect of desegregation on Denmark was the onset of a long economic decline. Many left the rural communities of the South for opportunities in bigger cities, and companies were discouraged to operate in small towns where the cost of labor was suddenly higher. What's more, the old roads linking urban centers and running through places such as Denmark, which benefited from travelers and businessmen passing through, were replaced with interstate highways that bypassed small towns.

Once-segregated schools became desegregated but still were populated by all blacks or all whites. Poor residents of these places became poorer, and their towns deteriorated.

In June this year, Cleveland Sellers Jr. was appointed to serve as the eighth president of Voorhees College, a historically black institution affiliated with the Episcopal Church and founded in 1897 by Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, a disciple of Booker T. Washington and graduate of the Tuskegee Industrial School in Alabama.

He had attended Voorhees High School. He had heard civil rights lectures in these buildings as a teenager. He had worshipped at St. Philip's Chapel, the Episcopal parish on campus, serving as a young acolyte there. In accepting the presidency, Sellers comes full circle.

His wife, Gwen, happy to live in a rural place with quick access to the woods and to gardens where she can "play in the dirt," says she has adjusted to the change by focusing on the lives of her children. While her hometown of Memphis, Tenn., offered a certain cosmopolitan atmosphere, and her years in Greensboro were filled with urban challenge, life in Denmark must be deliberately shaped and enhanced, she says.

Carrie Simmons is the 74-year-old mayor of Denmark, and she's put great hopes in the native son now at the head of Voorhees, which provides more jobs than any other employer in the area (about 400), acting as an economic engine, turning out the next generation of educated professionals.

Little by little, Simmons is trying to improve the town. A park recently was named for local artist Jim Harrison. The Dane Theater was renovated. The fire department got a new building.

And she's hoping to do more: establish new parks, reintroduce a farmers market, encourage small businesses and retail stores to establish a presence in Denmark. Most importantly, she wants to forge a long-term working relationship with Voorhees College, one that might result in the formation of a community development corporation whose goal is to make affordable housing available to residents, one that might ensure a venue for special performances and events.

Simmons has known the Sellers family for a very long time. She says a city-college partnership is necessary if Denmark is to get back on its feet. "Voorhees is key," she says. "The college always has been interchangeable with the city."

Dilemmas, challenges

But it will be an uphill battle. Many historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, face serious financial, enrollment and academic challenges, and Voorhees is no exception.

Sorensen, who has broad experience at black institutions and top-tier universities, says competition for talented students is both a blessing and a curse. Talented black students are aggressively recruited by major colleges around the country that seek to diversify their student populations, he says. Harvard or Yale or the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill might swoop into South Carolina, with their impressive scholarship endowments in tow, and whisk away many of the most talented, and USC or Clemson might attract other high-performing students.

USC, Sorensen notes, has a higher proportion of black students than any other public flagship university in the U.S. So where does that leave institutions such as Voorhees?

"HBCUs work with students who have not received the best secondary education possible," a diplomatic Sellers tells Tammy McCottry Brown during a taping of "The Tammy Show" in Charleston last summer.

What's more, Voorhees is 20 miles from two other black schools, S.C. State University and Claflin University in Orangeburg. Across Voorhees Road and behind the Voorhees College cafeteria is Denmark Technical College. Elsewhere in the state are Allen University and Benedict College (Columbia), Clinton Junior College (Rock Hill) and Morris College (Sumter).

Sellers says enrollment at Voorhees has slipped in recent years from about 800 to 540. To reverse this trend, he has set a 2013 enrollment goal of 1,200 and is reaching beyond Bamberg and Orangeburg counties into neighboring rural areas and well into the Lowcountry.

He's trying to diversify the student body by inviting students from the Caribbean, South America and Africa to participate in a "community of learning," and in so doing to instill in Voorhees' students a global perspective, he says. He also will strive to develop the liberal arts curriculum, strengthen science education and attract new faculty.

The college sits on 345 acres, some of it undeveloped. Its buildings are under renovation. The athletic program needs improving, Sellers says. Without football, Voorhees cannot qualify for a college conference. With football, the college becomes more attractive to students and investors.

LaTonya Gillespie, 21, a senior biology major at Voorhees, came to Denmark from Atlanta for the college's science program. She says Sellers is a "people person" who talks regularly with students and wants to know about campus life.

It's good but it could be better, she's told him. More student activities are needed. Gillespie, who wants to be a dentist, was voted Miss Voorhees College this academic year and serves as a member of student government. She says the new freshman class seems more eager to learn, more determined to succeed, an observation shared by Sellers.

This year's slogan is "Tempered by the past, poised for the future." In Sellers, she says, there are many lessons. Obstacles need to be transformed into opportunities. Empowerment now will ensure achievement later, she says. "Because it's harder than ever to succeed."

In his element

Driving through Denmark, Sellers is all smiles, waving at other drivers and pedestrians, rolling down the car window to chat with an acquaintance.

He points to the rusty row of retail shops downtown, the corner studio belonging to Harrison, the local landscape artist of whom Denmark's residents are so proud, the old neighborhoods that once housed the proud, vital people of this small town.

Sellers describes his youth, his family, his childhood home to which he returned so many years later, after turmoil in Orangeburg and exile in Greensboro. He knows of the challenges he faces now. But this is a man used to unfavorable odds, a man whose life has been dedicated to applying the steady pressure that, little by little, causes the world to change.

Dr. Cleveland Sellers Jr., president of Voorhees College, has a lot of work to do. But he's home, really finally home.

And he's very happy.

Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postandcourier.com.

Editor's note: Earlier versions of this story incorrectly identified the SLED officer who became a security official at the University of South Carolina as J. Leon Gasque. The Post and Courier regrets the error.