News - Local/State - Andrew Dys

Wednesday, Nov. 05, 2008

Rock Hill Friendship Nine member: I never thought I would see this day

Exactly 200 people waited in line to vote Tuesday morning at Pineville AME Zion Church in front of a 66-year-old man with cornrows in his hair and calluses on his fingers.

Every one of those voters, black or white, wearing suits or workboots or high heels, owed this man.

Yet not one knew Willie McCleod. Only a couple church members said as much as a hello. Nobody said, "Thank you."

McCleod did not care.

This man patiently took his place in line when the back of the line was out in the parking lot and a bit of drizzle fell, near the pickup trucks and cars and a white truck McCleod drives every day with "Willie's Septic Service" on the door.

McCleod knows how to wait.

He had waited 47 years for Tuesday.

Willie McCleod, a black man, looked around at the different colors in the line and started talking, a bit loud because his voice carries like a foghorn over ocean waves. He said the word "Obama." He said, "I was hoping to see this day. But never thought I would. Never."

McCleod said his father died not long ago, and his mother, too. He talked about how they would have been in line. He pointed at the brick building and said, "There is a black candidate for president waiting for anybody who wants to vote for him on that ballot in there. Right in that church. Wow. We made it."

The end of waiting for equal treatment for blacks ended for McCleod on Jan. 31, 1961, -- the cold day McCleod and eight other black students from Rock Hill's Friendship Junior College sat down to eat at the whites-only lunch counter at McCrory's on Main Street. All nine were arrested. The charge in segregated Rock Hill: Trespassing, and breach of peace. The crime in unequal South Carolina: Being black.

But this man who waited in line to vote Tuesday at the church he attends every Sunday, and the others, decided not to get out of jail.

"Jail, no bail," started with these teenagers. All from Rock Hill, all graduates of a black high school, all forever after called "The Friendship Nine." McCleod. David Williamson Jr. John Gaines. Thomas Gaither. Clarence Graham. W.T. Massey. Robert McCullough. James Wells. Mack Workman. All went to jail for a month. They worked the chain gang and slept next to killers in the county prison farm.

"All of us, we were worried we would end up lynched -- that means hung, son -- in jail," McCleod said in the voting line. "Or maybe we would just come up missing."

This newspaper, the Evening Herald back then, barely noticed. The police and most of the white community mocked them. Only national media made a big deal of this group that would kick-start the Southern civil rights movement that had been sputtering because of the massive indifference of so many.

The greatness of America, of South Carolina, of Rock Hill, is that nobody in that voting line Tuesday, 46 years later, mocked Willie McCleod. All waited to vote.

The sole exception who came up to McCleod during the hour-plus wait was one black man, tall and with a presence that was so strong it could be felt, like heat from a bonfire. He wore a Chicago Cubs jacket and unceasing smile. He's called "Scoop." Scoop walked up to McCleod and called out the nickname: "Froggy!"

You can do that if your name is David Williamson, and you are one of those Friendship Nine. One who broke rocks in that jail so black people could vote and black candidates could rise from just a hope and dream to a name on a ballot for the whole country on a gray Tuesday. These men share something as sacred as any bond in America on this Election Day unlike any other.

Veronica McCleod, Willie's wife, joined the line.

"He never even told me until later, what he did," Veronica McCleod said. "He never has made a big deal of his actions."

Willie McCleod finally got to the front of the line. He showed his driver's license to prove who he was, then signed his name on a sheet next to the No. 201.

"Here I go," McCleod said.

For the first time in anybody's American life, on the electronic ballot a few feet away, was the name of a candidate for president who looked like Willie McCleod. He strode toward that machine at the end with steps that were sure, but not quick. A poll worker named Spike Myers happily took about a minute to explain to McCleod a few things. McCleod had asked. He wanted to be sure of what he was doing. McCleod took what was just a few minutes, but what seemed to be hours. He bent at the waist, peered through the bottom of his bifocals so he could read better.