The relatively small state of SOUTH CAROLINA
remains, with Mississippi, one of the poorest and most rural pockets
of the US, although the prime real estate along its coast has
lately been developed into exclusive golf courses and tennis clubs.
Politics in the first state to secede from the Union in 1860 have
traditionally been conservative. Reconstruction was mired in terrible
Klan violence, while demagogues openly espoused lynching and enforced
"Jim Crow" laws with frightening zeal. The state contains
two of the country's most right-wing minor universities - football-fixated
Clemson, and Christian Bob Jones University in Greenville, a training
ground for the fundamentalist right.
South Carolina's fascinating subtropical coastline
of sea islands , great beaches, marshes and lush
palmetto groves preserves traces of a virtually independent black
culture (featuring the unique patois gullah ), from the days when
slaves escaped the mainland plantations. Beyond the grand old
peninsular port of Charleston , arguably the
most elegant city in the US with its rainbow-colored old buildings
and magnificent, tree-lined avenues, restored plantations stretch
as far north as Georgetown , en route toward
the poseur's paradise of Myrtle Beach . Inland,
the rolling Piedmont and flat coastal plain hold little to see.
