The Story of Reggie Burgess - Roots of His Raising
It’s not always easy for a person of color to trace their family history. Instead, many rely on stories handed down by family members. Former North Charleston Police Chief, now candidate for Mayor, Reggie Burgess invited me to his home on Dorchester Road to share his story
Transcript
TJ Phillips: Welcome to the stories of us. I'm TJ Phillips. And this podcast is about people from all walks of life, who they are and how they got where they are today. This is the story of Reggie Burgess part two, Where He Came From.
[:Reggie Burgess: I remember my mother, TJ opened up a chef priority can, because she was trying to teach me how to open it. And she would take the knife and open it and she put it in a pot and she had some bread and she would sit down with my brother and I and feed us. And. Make sure we had everything we need to have. I never saw my mother eat anything while we're eating. She gave us all because her whole thing was the survival of my boys. That's the main thing.
[:TJ Phillips: It's not always easy for a person of color to trace their family history. Instead, Many rely on stories handed down by family members. Former North Charleston police chief, now candidate for mayor Reggie Burgess, invited me out to his home off Dorchester Road to share with me the stories he had been told.
[:Reggie Burgess: My great Grandmother, Jeannie Ellis Green. We call her Mama Jeannie, but she actually was born in the 1890s. She would tell her family that she actually grew up on the plantation, and when she got old enough, she just left and came to the city area. My great grandmother was probably in her late twenties, thirties, before she settled down with my great grandfather. They had, I believe, six children and my grandmother was the oldest and she was born in 1920. So my grandmother had nine children. My mother was born on a place that no longer exists is right at the old Baker hospital area. It was called Daniel Jenkins projects. My great grandmother, who raised nine of her grandchildren, actually moved them from Daniel Jenkins after my mother's born to Union Heights.
[:So my mother did all her growing up basically on Union Heights. Her mother had gone to New York. A lot of blacks went up north to, you know, get money and send monies back home to help support the family. So that was the plan. So my, my mother was not educated, didn't know how to read nor write.
[: [:TJ Phillips: Those words, manners and respect, became part of the moral foundation Reggie grew up with, and we'll talk more about that later in the podcast, but first, I had to ask Reggie about something I had heard on the street. He was an adopted child.
[:Reggie Burgess: So my mother grew up on Union Heights, and when she was 17 years old, she knew my biological mother. They were friends. My mother used to go to my biological mother's house on the weekend to help her clean the house and make a little bit of money. She said, "Hey, I need you to go with me to the hospital because I think I'm about to have the baby." So my biological mother and my mother went to the hospital.
[: [:TJ Phillips: And that led to my next question. How does a 17-year-old single mom take care of a baby?
[:Reggie Burgess: It was 1969. And we moved on Georgia green projects. My mother only moved on affordable housing places because she needed a solid foundation. She never accepted the welfare. She would work for her money and pay her bills, but she had to be in housing. She needed housing assistance.
[:So what she did was basically work two and three jobs. She worked at a place called Southern Trucking, which used to be Nielsen's on the Neck area. She worked at the Howell House, which is on Rivers Avenue. And then we would go over to Mount Pleasant, and she would clean a doctor's office in his home on the weekends. So my mother had three jobs.
[:
And then my brother came in the world, like, '68, '69. And now she has two children. We were living in the projects in Georgia Greene. I remember my mother, T. J., opened up a Chef Boyardee can because she was trying to teach me how to open it. And she would take the knife and open it, and she would put it in the pot, and she'd have some bread, and she would sit down with my brother and I, and feed us, and make sure we had everything we needed to have.
[:And now looking back, I never saw my mother eat anything while we're eating. She gave us all, because her whole thing was the survival of my boys. That's the main thing. She made us look at reality. Reality of her was God is first.
[:And I remember her struggling to pay a bill a couple of times. I remember her struggling to pay an insurance man. I remember her struggling to get groceries and she would always say this, and she says this to this day. I was by her house yesterday. "God will provide." 57 years ago I remember hearing that every day of my life. God will provide and he has. He has done everything for us.
[:TJ Phillips: So thanks to the faith and hard work of some very strong women...
[:a great grandmother who left a plantation to settle closer to town. A grandmother who left her family behind to find work up north so she could send money home to take care of them. And a loving and dedicated 17 year old girl. who dropped out of high school to raise her adopted child...
[:Thanks to these women, Reggie Burgess was raised in a safe, loving environment.
[:But you may have noticed Reggie has not mentioned a male presence in his early life. Now that was about to change.
[:Reggie Burgess: So once we were on Georgia Greek, I was going into the first grade, went to Ben Tillman Elementary. Went there from first, second and third.
[:Then there was a knock on the door. Now, when you live in the projects, and this is daytime back in the day, only people that came knock on the door, like in the morning to afternoon time was a mailman delivering mail and insurance man and both of those people were white.
[:So I walked through the door. I'm looking at the black man at the door. He had a nice shirt on and he looked neat.
[:[00:06:30] I said, "I'm fine."
[:[00:06:32] I said, "Yes, sir."
[:[00:06:35] And I said, "Yes, Sir. She is."
[: [:Now, of course, the screen was locked because I was a man in the house. Now that was... I was probably in the second grade I believe. I had my brother Brian and me. I was the man of the house. My mom always say "you're the man in the house." So I go back to the kitchen and say, "Mom..."
[:[00:06:55] I said "There's a man at the door."
[:[00:06:57] I said, "Mr. Willy."
[: [:A couple of years, the man kept coming to the house. He would talk. He would take us, places like to get ice cream. Take us out riding around. That's when I started to venture out and start to see North Charleston as it is.
[:Because he had a car. He actually had a blue Cougar. 1966, I believe. Yes, sir. With Primer marks on the side of it.
[:TJ Phillips: (off mic) ...And a little bondo on the back...
[:Reggie Burgess: ...exactly. (laughter) And, man, when he came over, I didn't really know him that well, but I love the stuff that he would do with us. He would take us anywhere.
[:He was a army veteran that worked at West vehicle paper mill, and he treated my mother so well.
[:
And I remember one day. I was sitting down watching television because every time we watch television, he always said a family needs to be together doing family times.
[:So he would get me and my brother Brian and we're sitting there watching TV. He and my mother sitting on the couch and we all looking at television. We were looking at "Hee Haw" and "the Lawrence Welk show" and stuff like that. And "Rin Tin Tin." We loved "Rin Tin Tin."
[:So we're sitting there watching it and he and my mother was talking.
[:[00:08:13] My mother said, "Oh yeah, he does. He does."
[:[00:08:16] I said, "Yes, ma'am." Always respectful. "Yes, ma'am."
[:[00:08:20] "No, ma'am."
[:And it wasn't that I didn't like him. It was that my Mother was my everything! And here, I saw attention being taken away from me.
[:So I say that to you, TJ, that when Willie James Jameson came into my life, my life, as you see it, changed. He was a catalyst to positive change, not only in my life but my whole entire family, because he believed in family. He believed in family more than anything in the world.
[:And he got his monies together and got us a condo on Liberty Hill, where he's from. And we lived there for probably two years. And his mother, my grandmother, passed away. And the home that he grew up in, that's the home that was willed to him. And we moved in that house, and that's where my mother lives to this day.
[:TJ Phillips: And that's it for another episode of the stories of us. If you have questions or comments about the podcast, email stories of us at TJ Phillips. com. Until next time, remember every person has a story to tell. If we just take time to listen.
[:The Stories of Us is a production of the Podcast Solutions Network.
