Stump gives politicians opportunity to ‘hear from the people’

By Martha Hunn
WBTW News 13 Anchor
Published: May 12, 2008

Barbara White Cooper has been performing at the Galivants Ferry Stump Meeting for 40 years… As part of her family’s blue grass group- The Red White Band.  She says the music sets the pace.  “I think it just lets everybody know that it’s down home and whenever they get here that’s what they’re gonna hear from the people,” said Cooper. It’s down home and people are searching for that I think today.”

Barbara’s sister Gwen White Johnson has been singing at the stump even longer. “Well I can remember Fritz Hollings and Strom Thurmond when they would come.  They would be dressed up in their white suits and dark ties and their straw hats. You know it was just a time that is no more- a time that I’ll never forget,” Johnson remembered.

Barbara White Cooper concluded, “Things are at such a fast pace that when you come here things just slow down and get back to the old pace… the old days.”

An old photograph tells the story of Cecil and Elise Dix, seated in front of the General Store during a stump speaking more than 30 years ago.  In the picture, Elise is talking heartily to her husband, probably about the politics of the day.  They are iseated in the same spot at this years event, with some of the same playful debating.  Cecil and Elise are what you would consider “mainstays” of the stump meeting.  Cecil’s been attending since 1954, and he still believes this is the best way to pick your candidate.

“Well, it’s a person to person thing.  On the television you can hear what they say but you can’t talk to them.”

Cecil was the rural mail carrier in Galivants Ferry until he retired in the 80’s, and his wife Elise was also his boss. She was the postmaster.  Elise says she and Cecil sometimes cancel out each others votes when they cast their ballots on Election Day.

“We don’t always agree,” Elise explained. Cecil responded, “she’s got a right to her own opinion as well as I am to mine so I let her go ahead and if she’s wrong, I still let her go ahead.”

It’s kind of like dueling banjo’s- the political banter that goes on around the Galivants Ferry stump.  And like the healthy disagreements that politics sometimes brings, there’s a unique southern charm that endures.