Charleston -- March 13

By Michele Vella

March 13, 2004

"That's one thing about our synagogue, we're always coming in late," said a member of the Brith Sholom Beth Israel Orthodox Congregation in Charleston, South Carolina. The service started at 9:00 a.m. Men and women filed in as late as 9:45 a.m., shaking hands with other members and talking during the chanting of prayers. For some members of the Covering Religion class, this freedom of movement and conversation within the context of a religious service was surprising. I am Roman Catholic. During mass, no parishioner is allowed to walk in the aisles. It would be considered disrespectful. You stay in the pew from the beginning until the end of the service. I thought of my Catholic school days where so much as a sneeze during service ignited the wrath of the nuns, landing the disruptor in detention for at least two days. The orthodox congregations walking and talking though showed a sense of community and solidarity within the practice of their faith. It was refreshing watching older and younger members shake hands in a sign of peace, greeting and asking about the welfare of family and friends while the smooth cadence of collective prayer sounded in the background.

The ceremony itself included chanting, song and the reading of the Psalms in Hebrew. There were two lecterns. One faced the congregation for the sermon. The other stood in reverse, facing the Arc of the Covenant. Groups of men took turns leading prayer and song. A glass partition separated the seating for men and women. Men wore off white prayer shawls interwoven with golden colored thread. Married women covered their heads with hats.

The next stop, our class went to the Fielding Funeral Home. Herbert Fielding, director and owner, has run his family funeral home since 1952. Both he and his father, Julius Fielding, trained at an embalming school in New York and brought their technique back to serve the people of South Carolina. Fielding currently owns three funeral homes. His main office is situated in his childhood home.

Fielding spoke of the many funeral customs in South Carolina which include: burying the dead with stick, placing medicine in the casket for the recently deceased, and when writing a list, passing children over the casket. "Some of these customs have been practiced for so long that they have lost their meaning." Asked about the meaning of passing children over the casket Fielding responded, "I don't know what the devil that's about."

Fielding's position as funeral director elevated his status within the African-American community. African-Americans recognized his name from funeral announcements. They saw him at funerals. During the Civil Rights Movement, Fielding encouraged blacks to register to vote. In order to register, blacks had to read and interpret the Constitution. He mobilized semi-illiterate blacks to memorize the Constitution by memory and gain voting rights. In 1970 Fielding was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives, the first black elected representative in South Carolina since Reconstruction. In 1982, he was elected to the South Carolina Senate. He is now retired from politics. Fielding still runs the family funeral homes.

Later in the afternoon, the class went on a tour of Afro-American Charleston guided by Alphonso Brown, a native Gullah speaker. For those who had been on the previous day's tour by Ruth Miller, the journey past half-million dollar homes built by Charleston's slave population contrasted with the displaced tombstones bearing only first names like "Flora", or "Daniel". These tombstones, left leaning against a parking lot wall, bore the only witness to Charleston's past as the primary port of entry for the millions of Africans enslaved and brought to America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.