Orangeburg

 The Thompson and Clayton families, among others, had roots in the Orangeburg, South Carolina, area for as long as anyone knew. Their surnames had been inherited from families who had once held their ancestors in the bondage of slavery. In 1923, Isaac “Ike” Thompson and Olivia Clayton, both grandchildren of people born into slavery and freed by emancipation, were born into this heritage.

For generations, their families, believed by some to be distantly related by blood and certainly connected by marriage, had lived in the same poor, rural African American community just outside Orangeburg. The close-knit families were settled in a cluster of homes and small farms on and around the property of a former plantation east of what is now Wilkinson Heights. Among themselves, they called the little settlement Follyville, though the name appeared on no map and was known to almost no one beyond the families who lived there. Olivia and Ike’s lives were intertwined there virtually from the day they were born.

The modern world had been slow to find its way to Follyville. Ox carts carried goods over deeply rutted dirt roads. The sound of roosters crowing frequently filled the air, while chickens wandered freely between houses, sometimes even venturing through open doors. Next to nearly every house was a small, fenced-in and carefully tended vegetable garden. One of the Follyville families kept a small herd of cows. Whenever a milk cow was separated from her calf after giving birth, her mournful bawling could be heard throughout the settlement, signaling to everyone that fresh milk would soon be available. Some families kept goats, which occasionally wandered into the lanes and stubbornly blocked the way, completely unconcerned about anyone wanting to get past them. Barefoot children joyfully played together on porches and dusty roads, sometimes rolling old metal hoops along the lanes with sticks. Answering nature’s call meant a trip to a rustic and not-so-pleasant outdoor latrine.

The residents of Follyville shared a hand-operated water pump located near the center of their cluster of neighboring homes. Early morning trips to the pump were both practical and social, and it was there that the communal character of Follyville seemed most evident. News and gossip about community events and happenings were often shared there before anywhere else. Water was carried home in buckets for drinking, cooking, washing, and bathing, and fetching it wasn’t exclusively women’s work. Everyone took turns, even the older children.

Women labored over wood-fired stoves to prepare meals for their families. Men worked long, hard hours beneath the beating sun, coaxing crops from tired fields and tending to livestock. As sharecroppers and hired hands, almost all worked land they did not own. For many children, if they were so fortunate, completion of the eighth grade marked the end of their formal education. Without electricity, kerosene lamps illuminated their homes after dark, though for the most part people began and ended their days with the rising and setting of the sun.

Isaac Michael Thompson, always known as “Ike,” was born in his family’s humble home in Follyville on February 12, 1923. The sun had not yet risen when he came into the world shortly before seven o’clock that morning. It was chilly and damp, and a lingering rainstorm had left the dirt lanes of Follyville muddy, making the journey to the Thompson home more difficult than usual for the community’s elderly granny midwife, Mrs. Edith Clayton. By the time she arrived, other women of the family had already built up the fire in the woodstove to better warm the house and heat water for Mrs. Edith’s work.

“It’s a beautiful boy,” Mrs. Edith proclaimed with a broad smile as she gently lifted the newborn child into her arms. The baby cried loudly, his voice carrying beyond the walls of the little house and into the waking community of Follyville.