A rigorous exercise in race relations strengthens homes and friendships in poor black community.

Most of the affluent white visitors who crowd each summer into South Carolina’s Sea Islands--Hilton Head, Daufuskie, Lady’s, Dataw and the like--are regarded by longtime residents with a wary eye.

These are the people, the natives remember, who made the islands into resorts, sent real estate prices soaring and taxed many black homeowners off their land.

But on this lush island of marshes, oyster beds and beaches--the last major stronghold of the culture known as the Gullahs--there is one group whose arrival brings friendly waves and toothy grins to brown faces.

These, the residents explain, are the Salkehatchie people.

Repair Homes

For one week every year these upper income, mostly suburban whites come from across South Carolina to repair and rebuild the homes of rural blacks. They are part of a 12-year-old experiment in race relations that strengthens both homes and friendships.

The program, called the Salkehatchie Summer Service after a nearby river, is the creation of the Rev. John Culp, a drawling, unorthodox United Methodist minister who came up with the idea when he was a fire department chaplain, after inadequate electrical wiring caused a series of shanty fires.

In the program’s first year, just 20 volunteers came to this island. This year a group of about 140 teen-agers and adults came to St. Helena to run plumbing and electric lines, patch roofs, glaze windows and chip paint, while another 600 did the same in eight other sites around the state.

Racial Understanding

Culp’s idea is to bring two cultures together on equal footing so that better racial understanding can develop, and at the same time to place two different kinds of poverty face to face, with the hope that each will help heal the other.

The poverty of the native islanders is easy to see. Land rich and cash poor, many live in tiny, old shanties and shacks where roofs leak and floors groan with each step.

The needs of the whites, made up mostly of upper middle class youngsters, are not so obvious.

“Some of the biggest poverty is in suburban America,” Culp explained, “the poverty of loneliness, lack of communication, emotional and spiritual poverty. They have some of the same problems as these people. These kids are dealing with divorce, estrangement, drugs.”

So the service becomes a school teaching lessons in life. On St. Helena, the participants crowd into dilapidated dormitories at Penn Center, a former school for freed slaves that now serves as a community service center.

‘Get to Touch Poverty’

From 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, participants dig ditches, tear off roofs, crawl under houses, and as Culp says, “get to touch poverty and see it has a face, it has a name and it has feelings.”

“When they leave here, they’re thankful for their bed, for their refrigerator,” he said.

After dinner there are evening sessions in which participants learn about local culture, history and problems. Afterward, they reflect on their day’s experience. Each night, tears are shed as youngsters tell of the poverty they encounter and the dignity of the people on whose homes they work.

Instead of being paid for their efforts, participants must each contribute $125 and bring their own bedding, work shoes and tools, but year after year many return.

“You try to tell people what it means to you,” said 20-year-old John Fouche, who has been coming since he was 14, “but it’s hard to explain to people why you would pay $125 to come down here and work your butt off for a week crawling under houses.”

Valuable Lessons

For most of the volunteers, the lessons learned range from the simple satisfaction of a hard day’s work to humility.

“It’s fun not to be clean,” Kelly Evans, 15, said. “It’s fun not to be perfect. It feels good to sweat.”

“You develop more self-confidence,” said Mary Francis Moore, 17, of Pendleton.

“You feel like a jerk complaining about what you don’t have,” said Amy McConnell, 17, of Pendleton, who was in the project for a second year. “You meet people who have nothing and they are wonderful, spiritual people.”

Most of all, participants said, they learn about people. Pam Busbee, 17, of Irmo and Laura Brunty, 17, of Myrtle Beach got a big dose of that last year when they worked on the tumbled-down home of Lisa Burns, a cerebral palsy victim. Despite her illness and poverty, Burns was a top student at the University of South Carolina in nearby Beaufort and headed the black student organization there.

“She turned out to be the most incredible person I’ve ever met,” said Busbee, back for her second year this summer. “You learn you can’t be judgmental or materialistic or go on first appearances.”

“You can be asleep while you are awake,” said Sissy Boyd, 18, of Myrtle Beach.

Changed Views

Jamie Crain, 20, of Aiken, S.C., a junior at Clemson, where he majors in electrical engineering, said the experience has “changed my views, the way I deal with people.”

“Before, I didn’t know the other side, that people lived in substandard houses. It doesn’t sink in until you see it with your own two eyes and see how much of it there is, said Crain, back for his sixth year.

Those are encouraging comments to Dave Stuart, one of 40 adults who supervise the housing construction.

“I hope that we’re working on the next generation,” Stuart said. “It’s a powerful thing for young people to get to know people from a whole different culture, a different race.”

Although Kathy Robertson, a Columbia, S.C., fashion and bridal consultant, went to church with black people throughout her childhood, she was taught to look down on them, she said. She came to grips with her feelings in her first year.

“Bessie (the woman in the home on which she worked) taught me that you feel, love and touch the same way I do,” she recalled.