Word: chatham
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...most towns, a person is known by his family's reputation. "In all honesty, I will never be able to belong," says Bruce Elliott, a New Jerseyite who married a local woman and bought the Chatham hardware store. The pedigreed residents never exclude him from their conversations, he explains, but when they compare cousins and accomplishments, he has nothing to offer to match his wife's family heritage...
Times are rough right now in Chatham, both for the farmers with their puny, drought-burned tobacco leaves and for the folks in the stores, which are hurting for customers. "Nowadays, you are lucky if you can farm, keep your place clean and pay your taxes," complains Frank Pierce, 56, an archetypal Southern farmer in bib overalls. He says that many farmers are turning to moonshine whisky to see them through. Even so, there is a basic optimism. "Folks can do all right," maintains Mayor Hairston...
Physically, blacks and whites live close together in Chatham. "We don't have those subdivisions like you have in the North," says Hairston. Some 40% of the voters in the county are "Nigras," and Joseph Galloway, a black, is on the town council. But the barriers remain. Says Sam Swanson, a white: "Let's face it: the white man is afraid of the black man. The trust is there with those blacks we work with, but they are called Uncle Toms...
...Charles M. Miller, black pastor of the pentecostal First Church of Jesus and director of the Community Action Program, Chatham is a "reserved town of established families who want to keep it as it is." Adds Miller: "They are not openly trying to destroy black folks. They just ignore...
...there is also Frances Hallam Hurt's view of Chatham. The epitome of the genteel Southern lady, she sees Chatham, from the vantage point of her nearby estate, as "the last outpost of the good life-and surprisingly kind...