![]() ![]() ![]() Over four years later, on April 9, 1865, the war ended with the surrender of Southern general Robert E. Three weeks later, the Civil War began in Charleston, South Carolina. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union, largely in protest over Abraham Lincoln's election as an anti-slavery president and the implications that had for states' rights. That's a mere 150 years ago-only fifty-nine years before my father was born. Sixty percent were African Americans (420,000), and all but 9,000 of these were slaves. The population of South Carolina in 1860 was about 700,000. But those early years in South Carolina are the roots of my racial burden. I left for college eighteen years later and spent four years in Wheaton, Illinois three years in Pasadena, California three years in Munich, Germany and the rest of my life in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. I was born in 1946 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and from the time I was six months old, I grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. ![]()
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