Richard T. Greener

John wrote “For two and a half hours Mr. Greener held us spellbound.”  He went on to write at length about the talk Richard Greener gave at a banquet held in Charleston at the Odd Fellows Hall on Society Street in 1907. One hundred twenty-five guests attended. Richard Greener’s contribution to the University of South Carolina Library has only recently been memorialized. John said that Greener predicted that conditions for Negroes in American would evolve into one like Blacks in South Africa – “a restricted group bereft of all of the rights of freemen and of citizenship.” I think that talk was pivotal to John’s engagement in the Charleston Black community. John wrote that he began ”to ponder how he could extend my life into that of the community whereby I could most efficiently render the community a worthwhile service.” John decided on community health and then education.

To me, this is what makes John’s manuscript so valuable. Seeing how Richard T. Greener affected John A. McFall and knowing what John did next is priceless.

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