Chalmers S. Murray and the Sea Island Mungins

            “The finest picture of the Sea Island Negroes even written; Simple, vivid, and taut...raw and outspoken,” reads the Library Journal’s back cover blurb for the novel “Here Come Joe Mungin,” written by Chalmers S. Murray. The novel was published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1942 and reissued by Bantam Books in 1954. I am a descendant of those Sea Island Mungins. In 1999, when I became aware of Murray’s novel making our name a part of the folk history of the South, a natural curiosity welled up in me to find out more about Chalmers S. Murray and more about the Mungin people and the name.

Murray, a native of Edisto Island, South Carolina grew up amongst the descendants of the slaves of the Sea Islands, so he knew them well – so well in fact – that his parents carefully “screened” the black boys he played with. His father made two thousand dollars a year operating a general merchandise store “That catered largely to the Negroes,” Murray recalls in “Turn Backward O Time In Your Flight,” his 1960 reminiscence of growing up on Edisto Island, where he was born in 1894. The North and South Edisto River separate Edisto Island from the mainland of South Carolina. The fifty-five square mile island is one of the oldest settlements in the state. This is also the island where General Sherman left 10,000 sick and starving freedmen who had joined him on his march to Georgia, because he was unable to provide for them.

 Murray and his sister grew up on their father’s farm in an area populated by blacks and isolated from the other white people on the island. The young boy found his sister and a female cousin, who visited sometimes, unsuitable as playmates. “My parents did, however, approve of the children of a Negro family nearby, the Baileys. They were respectable people, my father said and, when time came for me to attend school, he hired Joseph Bailey (who was a few years older than I) as a yard boy.” One of the yard boy’s duties was to drive his young white charge to school in the Murray family’s buggy hauled by their mare Nellie. The two boys became constant companions, Murray recollects without any sign of recognition of the following irony, “My mother thought so highly of him that she gave him lessons in the afternoon, since his job prevented him from attending school. This was during the first years of the twentieth century when, in South Carolina, the black children went to school six months of the year and the white students attended school for nine months of the year. “The whites thought this was fair enough. In fact, many of them did not approve of spending tax money to support Negro schools. They seem to think that the State Legislature was over-generous in giving the Negro children any kind of an education.”

            The Murray family lived well from the money that came in from the general merchandise store and from the farm. They weren’t rich, not even well off, but the dire economical condition of the area’s Negro population made it possible for the family to have a servant for every chore. A woman named Maum Rachel cleaned the Murray home, tended to their chickens and cared for their vegetable garden. She was also the cook and part-time nurse, all for a well spent five dollars a month. Another servant did the laundry. The yard boy cared for the horses. The black foreman, Joe Middleton, who was the model for Murray’s protagonist in the novel, was so highly thought of that he was paid a dollar a day while the other male field hands received fifty cents and the women earned thirty cents a day. “My mother never called the place a farm however. Though the acreage was small, she referred to it as a ‘plantation.’”

            Chalmers S. Murray gained his knowledge of the Negro people in his region by being raised among them. He also had an opportunity to further his study from his work as a writer on the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) documenting the work and history of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) road projects in South Carolina where blacks and whites found work during the depression. Murray’s experience working for the WPA, where he wrote several essays on the racial composition and conditions of work crews in his area of South Carolina, would later be useful to him. The FWP had an office in every state and hired 6000 people from 1935 until 1942; its mission was to document the entire American culture and landscape. As it turned out, the FWP was more than mere temporary employment for depression time writers; it stimulated the careers of many talented writers. Chalmers S. Murray was in the distinguish company of Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Zora Neale Huston, Studs Terkel and Saul Bellow to name a few of the writers who, like Murray, emerged from the FWP.

Murray grew up around Negro spirituals and superstitions, he stored knowledge of Negro myth and folk sayings, and he understood the area’s Gullah speech and in his writings often seems charmed by it. He knew the ritual of the Negro churches and the difference in sophistication the black preachers from Charleston had over the rural Island black preachers. During his work with the FWP he learned Negro work songs, saw what they ate, witnesses their despair, observed their rage and gained a gauge for their temperaments. He was well suited to write “Here Come Joe Mungin,” his “…raw and outspoken,” novel of the Sea Island Negroes.

Chalmers S. Murray attended the Citadel Military Academy in Charleston, but was ostracized by his fellow cadets for reporting the names of the upperclassmen who hazed him. He was picked on and singled out for demerits. Murray describes his time at the Citadel as like being in “purgatory.” Then came the First World War and Murray jumped at the chance to leave the Citadel. His application for an officer’s commission was, he believed, purposely mishandled. To avoid serving as a draftee he volunteered for the army and because of his prior training at the Citadel was appointed to the rank of sergeant in a few weeks.

After the war, Murray returned to Edisto Island where he married Faith Cornish and started his writing career. They had two daughters, Faith and Jane. In a recent interview, Jane Murray McCollum, the surviving daughter, a retired librarian who lives with her husband in Greenville, SC, remembers her father as a particular man who favored punctuality. They often took a rowboat to the ferry that took them to the mainland and Murray always fussed with his family to be on time. “He typed with two fingers and wouldn’t stand for us to make any noises while he was working,” she recalls. Murray had published two novels before he wrote “Here Come Joe Mungin,” and the knowledge he gained, both in terms of craft and subject matter during his days with the FWP, would now come into fruition.

When people asked me about the origin of my unusual name, I’d tell them a story I made up about the early Mungins hiding out on the Sea Islands to avoid slavery. They were discovered in the 1880’s and told that slavery was over, thus we came through the period with our original African name in tack. I attribute our name to Africa because of Njoroge Mungai (pronounced Moong-gi), the Kenyan medical doctor who became Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Minister in 1969. I think that Mungin (often mispronounced Moong-gi) may be an Americanization of Mungai because I have never known a white Mungin. Many African Americans received their surnames from their slave owners. My ancestors, without a doubt were slaves, but what explains how we maintained our identity? Where are the white Mungins of the Sea Islands?

I own a book published by Halbert’s Family Heritage that lists all the Mungins they could find in public records in Europe, North America and South Africa. In the United States, Sea Island Mungins are concentrated in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, with smaller numbers in New York, California and Washington State. There are also populations of Sea Island Mungins large enough to mention, in Great Britain, Germany and Canada. Of the nearly 600 Mungin households in the United States, the largest population (160) is in South Carolina. The town with the largest population of Mungin households in South Carolina is Hollywood (72), in Charleston County, the town of my birth.

It might have been the publisher’s Eurocentric bearing or a realization that it would be a near impossible undertaking to hunt public records, say a telephone directory, in the underdeveloped nations on Africa’s West Coast, which caused this listing to be incomplete.  That there were no searches in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Ghana where most African slaves came from cuts both ways. It may be that there are no Mungins in these countries, but until there are attempts to research the name in these places and the questions answered one way or the other, my suspicion remains intact.

The main character in Murray’s novel is forged from the life of Joe Middleton whom the Murray’s adored and young Murray idolized. Middleton was an atheist; a celebrated married lady’s man and foreman at the Murray farm. “Joe was a tall lanky man, and had no beauty. He loved to fight and to drink, but he never got drunk. He was afraid of nobody and would tackle two or three men at a time, if his opponents made him angry enough. He like nothing so much as a sharp argument and would out-talk anyone in the neighborhood.” Many of the traits that defined the Mungins from that period and beyond. During this period, there were also Mungins quietly getting an education at the Penn School. The Penn School was a privately funded institution that was established on nearly all black St Helena Island, prior to the Civil War, to educate Negroes. It is conceivable that Murray used the Mungin name for his titled character because the name was widely known. Murray found the name’s association with the rowdy nature of rural Negroes, at the bottom of society in the post-reconstructed South, appropriate for the tone of his novel. The Mungin name lent authenticity to Murray’s character’s raging ambition to eat and perhaps, even to prosper, at any cost.

The novel begins on St Helena Island with the murder of August Mungin on the same day his third child was born. Joe Lincoln Mungin was named after the biblical Joseph and the emancipator Abraham Lincoln. His uncle, Rufus Mungin named him the day after avenging the baby’s father’s murder. After he buried his brother, Rufus was in a pious mood that induced a vision of the baby’s future greatness. These two names, Rufus felt, would insure that Joe Mungin would be a conqueror. And, it was a good thing that Rufus acted with dispatch in naming the baby, for in the next two pages, which covered a time period of six years, he too was killed. Rufus had been visiting the wife of a much younger man. When the young man became aware of Rufus’ transgressions, he had his sorceress grandmother put a hex on him. Six years old and curious, young Joe Mungin had gone down to the creek looking for the ocean when he happened upon the young man and the sorceress talking up the spell that would kill Rufus. The young boy ran back to tell his mother what he had heard so she could warn Rufus, but when he arrived home they were already mourning his death.

At the age of 17, Joe Mungin set out from St Helena Island determined to claw his way to the top of the bottom in this life. He was tall, gangly and strong. He took the boat to Etiwan Island where he would live with his mother’s bother, Uncle Isaac Durell. There were many plantations, lots of work and a chance to rise on Etiwan Island. All Joe had were the clothes on his back and a scrawny live hen his mother gave him as a parting gift. Joe made his first conquest minutes into the trip. A boat hand offered him fifteen cents for the hen. Joe sold him the hen for a dollar after convincing him that the chicken was raised by a witchcraft woman and could be used to make spells that would win him the favors of women. Joe was determined to give up his inexperienced country boy ways and finagle his way to the top.

The author’s familiarity with the sights and sounds, the plants and the smells of the creeks of the Sea Islands are transferred to his characters. He understands and shares the Sea Island Negro’s love of oysters, mullet and yellow yams and, he loves to portray the men’s affection for fat, sassy women. Murray describes them in a variety of sexual deviations including pedophilia. He glorifies the perpetual fighting. He seems sympathetic to the harshness of their existence, jealous of their constant drinking and envious of their womanizing.

 Uncle Isaac Durrell met Joe Mungin when the boat arrived at the Etiwan landing. On the walk to Isaac’s house, they came upon a group of girls playing in the woods. Amongst these girl was Tyra Ann Wright. She was only thirteen but had the shape of a woman. Joe was mesmerized with the girls’ play and by Tyra Ann’s comely body. He lagged behind his disapproving uncle and in a conversation he had with Tyra Ann, he promised her three gunger cakes if she would meet him by the general store at dusk. When Joe caught up to his uncle, he was warned about Tyra Ann and her family – the Wrights, whom Isaac described as a wicked breed.

After his uncle introduced him to Mr. Hamilton, the plantation owner, and he was assigned his work chores, Joe returned to his uncle’s shack for a short while before he set out for his rendezvous with Tyra Ann. He had the gunger cakes, wrapped in old newspaper, ready when Tyra arrived at the general store. He gave Tyra Ann the cakes and they walked off into the woods. Joe’s heart was thumping as he heard Tyra Ann’s footstep behind him. When they were a quarter mile from any houses, Tyra Ann directed Joe down into a gully, muddy from recent showers. He heard rustlings in the leaves and whispered words. He stopped to listen. Four of Tyra Ann’s playmates hid in the bushes. Suddenly from the still came a wad of red mud that landed on Joe’s face. Then another in his mouth and he was pelted over and over with wet red mud. The boy looked around, puzzled and full of rage, and then he realized Tyra Ann was nowhere in sight. Joe could hear his female tormentors in the distance laughing and calling out his name, “Here come Joe Mungin.” He had no idea that six years from then Tyra Ann Wright would become his wife.

During the next years, Joe worked hard attending to the plantation cows and trying to get promoted to plowman, but things seldom went right. He drank a lot, got into too many fights and finally got fired for trying to force himself on a young girl. His uncle knew the owner of another plantation on the other side of the island and recommend Joe for a job there. On his way to the new plantation, Joe went through a retrospection of his behavior and became newly committed to getting ahead. He was now determined to make the attempt to get along with people, he would never back down from a fight, but he wouldn’t initiate one either. He would use his ability to be glib or sliver-tongued, as it was known, to triumph over his rivals and enemies. His goals were to save enough to buy some land and plant his own crops and to build himself a home and have a family.

William Morton was the owner of the Jack Daw Hall Plantation. His main crops were cotton and corn. The Negro families worked as independent contractors and were assigned acreage to farm and a shack to live in. Although Morton treated everyone humanly and fair, to be assigned prime acreage created fierce competition amongst the families. Joe Mungin got a feel for every nuance of the place right away. He worked hard and impressed Morton and his fellow workers as a man who was striving to prosper. In a few years, he had risen from yard boy to plowman and had an eleven-acre plat to plant. Shortly after Joe Mungin had made his mark and was a leader and most prominent of the plantation’s workers, the entire Wright family migrated to the Jack Daw Plantation. Joe met Tyra Ann again and that very day they decide to marry. The Wright family approved of her marriage to this man, who, it was widely believed, would someday be the foreman. With Tyra Ann married to the plantation foreman, the Wright family schemed; they would be in position to work all the prime land.

The marriage between Joe Mungin and Tyra Ann didn’t go well for long. She plotted against him from the beginning. She didn’t want to share his accomplishments; she wanted to shape and control them. When it became clear that Tyra Ann was barren, she took in two of her sister’s children to help in the fields and around the house. Joe took up with a flock of outside women and, as some men do, he rationalized that he was determined not to waste his seed. Soon, there was a small army of Joe Mungin’s “Bush chillun” spread out around the plantation. Then the day arrived – the old foreman became gravely ill and could work no longer. Joe Mungin became the new foreman – big bossman - with a wife, a half dozen outside women and a gaggle of children.

Joe was eventually able to buy some land for himself, which he worked during his time off from his plantation work. He bought parcels of land and put them in the names of each outside woman, so that they and the children he fathered with them could make the land productive and profitable for themselves and for him. Then he bought a few cows, some pigs and even a horse and rode in a buggy like a white man. Joe Mungin had prospered, but his marriage was a nightmare. Tyra Ann schemed with her family against her husband and plotted in a failed attempted with a doctor woman to put her spell on him. Her knowledge of the outside women and children didn’t bother her much. Her frustration was that she had not yet conquered Joe Mungin. He beat her regularly, drank his liquor, arranged his nights around his outside women and out foxed her at every turn.

One day, on a visit to another part of the island, Tyra Ann met an old doctor man name Andrew Barron and his wife Hester, a much younger women. They were from St. Helena Island. Tyra Ann spoke with Barron privately and tried to get him to work a spell for her without telling him on whom she wanted the spell worked. He refused, explaining that he was a God-fearing man and that he only used his powers whenever his, or God’s, wrath had been aroused by evil. When Tyra Ann returned home, she suggested that her husband hire on two new hands for the plantation. She told him about the old man and his wife and she mentioned that they were both from St. Helena Island. Hester was a good-looking woman, but Tyra Ann didn’t feel she needed to declare that. Tyra Ann knew that if the two came to the Jack Daw Plantation, Joe Mungin could not resist having Hester; and what woman could resist the call of Joe Mungin - the big bossman. Maybe then witch doctor Andrew Barron’s wrath would be awakened and her dearest dream would come true.

Indeed, the plantation foreman was interested in new workers and rode out to where the Barrons lived to offer them living quarters and fieldwork. Barron spoke about people on St Helena he thought Joe might know, but Joe just nodded. He couldn’t keep his eyes away from Hester. Andrew Barron thanked Joe for the opportunity and in a few days, they arrived at the plantation. In three months, what went on between Joe Mungin and Hester Barron was widely known by their spouses and everyone else. Tyra Ann beseeched the witchcraft man to put an end to the deceit and betrayal they both suffered.

He agreed to pray on it.

The next morning, Joe awoke in a heavy sweat, his heart thumped and he found it hard to swallow. Before he made any attempts to get out of bed, he received a visitor. It was Andrew Barron inquiring whether Joe had misery in his head yet. Then it came to Joe that he knew this man from back home on St. Helena Island. It wasn’t Barron’s face that he felt acquainted with, but rather, his voice. As Barron stood above Joe haranguing him for sinning with Hester, Joe’s mind went back to when he was a little boy searching for the ocean and he happened upon the young man and the sorceress calling up a spell on his Uncle Rufus Mungin. Barron’s face was now old and wrinkled, but Joe was certain that this was the same voice he heard all those many years ago – and now he also knew that he was going to die.

Joe Mungin died, but his bush children went on, one supposes, as did the real life Mungins, to “rise in this life.” Today, the story of the Sea Island Mungin’s extended family’s achievement range from a death row poet with a web site to a Harvard educated lawyer with a book written about his experience with corporate racism. In between, there are other lawyers, preachers, print and radio reporters, doctors, writers, policemen, a union official, a communication director with high governmental security clearance, a community leader with an educational institution named after him, entrepreneurs and soldiers – lots of soldiers.

Many Mungin men and women have used the military as a means to better themselves. Civil War Service records that show that three Mungins received pensions for serving during the Civil War. Draft Registration Cards show that five Mungins were drafted for World War 1 and 2, but I suspect more than five served in the Second World War. There are Mungins still alive today who served in the Korean Conflict. There was one Mungin death in Vietnam, but scores of Mungins served – three brothers from one family alone. There were Mungins in Bosnia and there are Mungins serving in the US Armed Forces around the world today. The Sea Island Mungins have served their nation well.

There are still many Mungins who have not obtained the American dream, but the story of the Sea Island Mungins is the American story of hope, perseverance and achievement. Chalmers S. Murray took note of this fact more than half century ago.