Dear [Viewpoints],
As a three-time graduate of USC (1969, 1973, 1980) my admiration for my alma mater runs deep.
A highlight of my days there occurred in June 1970 when I did field research and prepared a paper on the relative isolation of the African-American population of Fort Motte, South Carolina.
I hope the poem I wrote this month after all those years might be published in your letters section.
I learned so much then about the rich African-American experience in this state and how far we had and have to go in regard to race relations in South Carolina and in the U.S.
- John A. Huffman
_*Fort Motte on My Mind*
They worked the land, and it worked them.
Much they gave to those they loved
and more to those they did not.
They lie here together and
can prove where they rest.
Rectangles attest their
strength insufficient to support the soil
that demanded their lifetimes and desired to confine
them after death.
But still and silent they are not.
African murmurs are heard — sounds echo in the night
telling of long ago times together.
Goodin Cemetery cannot contain them.
Their shades commune with the spirits of the trees
towering there.
Their souls are bound together by trials of hard labor
and by sacrifice but even more — by a togetherness enduring
longer than the arbor and by the ground that cannot confine them.
They are at liberty now — forever free from others’ demands._