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September 1, 2022 3:00 am
On this episode of Our American Stories, Woody Holton of the University of South Carolina tells the story about David George, a man who would escape his bondage only to find himself with new captors, a newfound faith, and eventually...a new freedom in Canada. The late Gini Mancini, wife of American composer Henry Mancini, tells the story of his life in music and their life together.
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Time Codes:
00:00 - The Runaway Slave Who Founded the Black Baptist Church
23:00 - From Steel Town to Tinsel Town: The Life of Composer Henry Mancini
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Mrs. Lee Habib and this is our American story to show where America is your and the American people search for the American stories podcast go to the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast forever. You get your podcast next to a story about our fight for independence original sin, and a man who escaped it. His name was David George and his lasting legacy can still be found all across our country today here to tell his story is Prof. Woody Holton of the University of South Carolina they get away one of the lesser-known.
The more interesting facts about the American Revolution is that one in five Americans at the time enslaved African Americans and many of them in this battle among whites is an opportunity for themselves to become free nearly 10,005 on the American side Rhode Island had a whole regiment of black soldiers fighting for the freedom of the country, but also for their own freedom because that was the deal but in the southward 90% of African Americans lived the patriots did not offer freedom to enslaved people. So the chance for them to get free in the sound was by fighting for the British side David George was from Virginia sometime around 1742 and had a terrible master ironically the Masters last chapel church really went down David George but his brothers and sisters, and worst of all for David George was watching his mother being whipped in his. He wrote in his narrative Masters rough and cruel usage was the reason of my running away. So he did wrong. We don't know the exact year, but the escape from Virginia headed south me think of slaves escaping following the drinking door that is the north started freedom up north of freedom in Canada but for him, freedom lay to the south and 70 across around River into North Carolina. Set some time working in South Carolina object and was advised advised Eisen lawyers that had further south. Save across the savanna River into Georgia and spent a couple years there. But then he heard his owner was still coming after clearing the relentless owner Mr. Chappell trying to track down so this time David George decided the place that he had the best chance of remaining free was in the West, so he headed into what was then.
Now part of Georgia but was then Muskogee country that is the Indians that was called the creeks enslaved into but certainly relative to what he experienced back in Virginia. They were pretty decent slaveowners but once again this relentless master reminds me of job fair in Les Miserables tracked them down. The escape did eventually persuaded his Native American captors to sell him to a white man named Goffin who was very tight with the Native Americans of that area because he was a deerskin trader. He would buy thousands of deer skins from Native Americans and return supply them guns and ammunition and alcohol and other things they needed in his he wrote I was with him about four years I think. Mary here.
I lived a bad life and had no serious thoughts about that.
After my wife is delivered of our first child, a man of my own color named Cyrus came from Charleston South Carolina to Silver Bluff told me one day in the woods. If I live so I should never see the face of God and glory that Cyrus is. This was the first thing that disturbed me in getting much concern.
I thought then that I must be saved by prayer. David George was in his face was at Silver Bluff on the second minus side of the savanna where having become converted to Christ himself.
He helped another man named George Lyle form a black Baptist Church Silver Bluff, South Carolina South Carolina bank savanna River and that was the first black Baptist Church formed anywhere in the world and the black Baptist Church is one of the five most five churches in America today.
It all began. David George and George Leal still both of them enslaved well in 1778 the British captured savanna Georgia from the patriots savanna was then the capital of Georgia and it looked like the British were going another capture that whole area and so George Gaffin ran away. He was a patriot and so worried British imprisoned him. So he took off and that may David George free and you're listening to Prof. Woody Holton of the University of South Carolina, though one heck of a story. The story of David George, the founder of the first black Baptist Church in America and the world. More of David George's story part of America's story when our American stories continue to view love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past. Know that all of our stories about American history from war to innovation culture and faith are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College place for students study all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that are good in life.
If you can't get the Hillsdale bills that will come to you with their free and terrific online courses go to Hillsdale.edu to learn more and we continue with our American stories and with David George's story we last left off Prof. Woody Holton, University of South Carolina is telling us about how David George escape from bondage in Virginia, only to be enslaved again in South Carolina where George would have a spiritual awakening in the woods due to the efforts of another African-American want to found the black Baptist Church and soon the British invasion of South Carolina would create new possibilities, enslaved people. Let's get back to the store's owner had run away so he was free. He eventually moved in to savanna by that time gotten married got by various ways. He ran a butcher stall yet another reminder of all things that incite people did. Besides work out field.
A lot of them merchants and he's now free.
A lot of the incite people worked as merchants for their owners, giving most of the profits of the writers he, his family moved up to Charleston, South Carolina, and where they are in 1782, when the British agreed to evacuate Charleston at the end of the war and so his family evacuated with many other people who'd been loyal to the British crown. Both black-and-white and when evacuated to was Halifax, Nova Scotia, so that was a place for him and thousands of other loyalists to the crown both black and white to take refuge after the war. On the one hand, we have to praise the British for issuing what amounted to Emancipation Proclamation's that resulted in the freedom of thousands of African Americans at the British on a pedestal because they were not great allies. So, for instance, at one point when David George was in savanna Georgia really want to get up to Charleston, South Carolina, and he made the money he needed to pave the ship passage for his whole family to go up to Charleston. But then a bunch of British cavalrymen came and stole all his money so we certainly don't want to imagine that they are all great heroes who were sympathetic to African-Americans and it is not like the ready for freeing their own slaves that use tentative make these efforts only to people like David George who were owned by patriots and his casing at the escape Gaffin because Gaffin got ran away from Amazon around with Nova Scotia running loyal to the crown and so that was a place for him and thousands of other loyalists to crown both black and white to take refuge after the war. In one of the sad parts of David George's story is that even though Blacks and whites had taken refuge there together. The whites were terrible to the black. They were reduced to a lot of them come from places all 13 of the original colonies that rebels had slavery and so many of them were former slaveowners and cells that were not used to seeing Blacks as equals and they refuse to treat them as equals and David George had a an additional liability and Matt was by this time, as I mentioned, he had become a Baptist preacher and the Baptists as evangelicals were really on the outs with the rest of the English-speaking people, that is, people in the British Empire because the official church of England, which today America called Episcopal Church, the so-called Anglican church in England. They had an official government church as did most of the English colonies in America. The church was the state and state was the church and they were they really oppressed evangelicals, including Baptists, and so for instance the crown of veteran, retired British soldiers pulled down on David George's house after punishing for all the preaching that he did. He wants to baptize the couple and William and Deborah Holmes, a white couple entering another reminder that there was tremendous cooperation between Blacks and whites in the evangelical churches were really one of the relocations of fat that is people took seriously the passages in the Bible about God in Christ there is no East nor West were all one. There was tremendous amount of interracial cooperation.
So you had this white couple that wanted to be baptized in the way down the river and as he wrote their relations editor relatives who lived in the town were very angry. They raised the mob and endeavored to hinder them being baptized.
Mrs. Holmes and sister, especially late hold of her hair to keep her from going down into the water to be baptized the persecution as he said only increased in and in fact some African Americans. I'm sad to say, joined in the persecution again because it was a religious battle rather than a an ethical racial battle, because all that persecution they really grasped an opportunity to British left. The British adjust established a new colony on the West Coast of Africa called Sierra Leone the capital was called Freetown, which is a pretty good omen and so 1200 of these after Americans who had first taken refuge in Nova Scotia. After the war. They now offer this new opportunity in 1791 of becoming refugees again and going to Sierra Leone in Africa, and David George caught that opportunity. The first day they landed. He preached our city had no building already said he preached under sale continued to until they got the church built, but they did make a go of it in the settlement called Sierra Leone. Their descendents are still there today because first few decades were really rough. One of the ways that the British suppressed these African, Afro-American, such a problem are the things the British did to them was Lettie really heavy taxes and some of them actually rebelled against these taxes and one of the leaders of that rebellion was a man named Harry Washington Harry Washington years earlier had been owned by George Washington escape from George Washington and joined in the same Exodus and butted here Washington do their he did just what owner George Washington done which was particularly rebellion against taxation without one last thing to say about David George is that as a leading Baptist minister was very interested to go meet the Baptist in England and they agreed to finance his trip and so that's why we have an account of his amazing journey is that while there, they asked him to write up his pilgrimage as he called it for one of their magazines, so don't know much about his life.
After that this account that you load up up and I guess you are not specific religious person myself, but I'm so grateful for these guys. Faith because and again, different faiths have different methods, but many faiths are really and having people write down their religious pilgrimage. It's been a real boon for historian David George was the guy who founded the first found the black church in America and a terrific job on the production and storytelling. By faith Buchanan and Matthew Montgomery and a special thanks to Prof. Woody open the University of South Carolina and my goodness without God. The story is not possible. Of course, the founder of the first black church in America, a man of my own caller told me if I lived so and he was. Not living well. I would never get to see the face of God or his glory and must be saved by prayer, but started spiritual journey of David George and I started this remarkable transformation is life's journey.
His story David George's story, the founder of the first black church in America you on our Americans and we returned to our American stories and up next story from the late Virginia Mancini wife of Henry Mancini, one of America's greatest film composers. If you don't know his name. You certainly know his compositions which include the Pink Panther theme and Moon River.
Breakfast at Tiffany's peers are on Monty Montgomery to get us started with the store. American composer Henry Mancini was born in Cleveland, Ohio on April 16, 1924.
That's not where he grew up here is his wife Virginia Virginia with the rest of the story grew up in West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh and a steel town and his father worked it at Jones and Laughlin steel mill and Henry had a very modest childhood West Aliquippa.
You have to understand is on the wrong side of the tracks, and many Europeans settled their especially Italians.
They were very poor Italian family and they were very close and was a very small town so his life was fairly simple and once his father realized that he didn't want his son to go to work in a steel mill. He turned them onto the flute because his father played the flute and when his father came down with a month in his frustration he handed Henry the flute and taught them to play and they both played in the Sons of Italy band and West Aliquippa. So that was Henry's introduction to music and he loved it and there's a part in his history that talks about his father taking him into Pittsburgh to see the movie and the stage show at the I forget the name of the theater by one of the most popular theaters in Pittsburgh.
The drama captured Henry in ways that I never realized because he thought the music was being played live behind the screen and when he found out that it was recorded. He was fascinated with the whole way movies are put together and the music is there to create the emotional reaction that you're looking for and that fascinated me as a put to the point where his instincts told him to just do what he felt like doing and eventually and I followed his intuition and it paid off because once he graduated from high school. He had a chance to go to Julliard and the music business. Mancini would also serve during World War II were he make strong connections with other musicians. Meeting members of the Glenn Miller band after the war when the Glenn Miller band reformed sands Glenn Miller become the piano player. But how did Ginny meet Henry. It starts with American musician Miller Torme. I work with Nels Monday for 3 1/2 years. Some of the most fun times of my young life and when now was advised to go out on his own as a solo performer. I didn't know where my next meal was good income from the so I got a call one day from a friend who said that Tex Beneke was out here with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and was going to be at the Hollywood Palladium in the vocal group that had been with the band decided to leave in in Hollywood and they needed a new girlfriend so I had nothing better to do, and I went down to the million dollar theater in downtown LA and walked into Texas dressing room where the auditions were being held and there was a tall young Italian at the piano named Henry Mancini who is playing for the auditions on the rest of the orchestra was out on the golf course so he was a little bit peeved that he had to stay back to play for the auditions I got remember what I sang for my audition, but I did get hired and never having been out of California before I left on the train with 36 strange musician for a tour for two months for a tour across the country, starting with the week at the Golden gate theater in San Francisco on the way to San Francisco. The young Italian plant piano player sat down on the trail by beside me and said you know I just arranging for the van. Is there anything in particular you would like to sing and it was October 1946 and Nat King Cole had just recorded the Christmas song, the one that is such a standard today chestnuts roasting on the open fire that one. It was about to be released and it was timely so I suggested that meanwhile we are in San Francisco and now were on a tour for two months across the country. When we arrived in New York mid December. I was rather stupid about whether arrived in a cloth coat mid December and freezing New York City. At any rate it was there that I heard what Henry wrote_paper that got my attention.
I knew I never wanted to be married to a traveling musician because I saw how hard it was on the orchestra lives. It was only when I realized that he had potential that I really sought his attention and I on one side of the stage.
He at the piano on the other side of the stage. The band certainly knew that I had eyes for the young Italian piano player. We began to date and go out to dinner after the after the job and on our week off at Christmas time I didn't have it. I wasn't making enough money to fly home to California so he said I'm going to my home in Aliquippa and you're welcome welcome to come with me, so I agreed to go, knowing that would give me an opportunity to see what his relationship was with his mother line measure on the good husband was a loving relationship with his mother and I had the opportunity to witness Henry's loving kindness with his mother and I was impressed with that and you been listening to Virginia Mancini tell the story of Henry Mancini, the world famous composer and when she met him he was a keyboardist player for a large traveling band gold Glenn Miller band and in the end they struck up a romance and she got to take not only the musical measure of the man, but the character of the man is well and she said I had eyes for the young Italian piano player but by invitation to his home. She was able to as she said, quote that my measure of a good husband, which she said was his relationship with his mother. When we come back more of the life story of Henry Mancini and in a way the story of his bride Virginia Mancini and the story of a time in America distinct time in America. Postwar America here on our American story and were back in our American stories and the story of Henry Mancini, the composer of such classics as Moon River and the Pink Panther theme among other compositions and is being told by his bride Virginia Mancini. We were commenting during the break about the fact that Henry Mancini came up and grew up in a steel town. What a thing about this country that you can grow up in a working-class town like that and imagine yourself to become well, almost anything. When we last left off Virginia Mancini, his widow is telling us about Henry's early life in Pennsylvania and how they met. After World War II, let's continue with the story. When we got married I was making $36 a year on the 15 minute radio show Henry was making $52 unemployment insurance and we didn't have a care in the world. We managed to pay our bills, pay our rent.
I was still singing backup for people. One of them was Betty Hutton measure major start Paramount Studios and she asked me if I would accompany her to London where she was playing a month at the London Palladium and she was opening on my first wedding anniversary and she was offering me some good money so I went home and I said Henry I would never do this except with without your permission, but Betty Hutton is asked me to go with her to the London for a month you feel about that and he said well why don't you do that said it's okay with me, so I life on our opening night my first wedding anniversary big bouquet of flowers came into my big tub of a dressing room, you know, washing job while I'm at the London Flavian. He has a gig at the Hollywood plating laying the glockenspiel on I'm looking over a four leaf clover any singing and playing the blocking field, but the whole thing looking over for me.
Clover and he would not he would play the glockenspiel but not saying and one night the bandleader saw him not singing fired him off the bandstand. Right then and there. So when I came home from the landlady and me up at the airport and I said Henry Palladium. I got fired because I would sing out looking over a four leaf clover anyway. That was that chapter in our lives. In the 1952 Mancini would join the universal music department where he going to have a hand in working with scores of over 100 different his time at Universal with like going to Harvard great training experience for him to be on salary and we knew we could always depend on a check at the end of the week and that's where he got his training he was working constantly on everything he could think of and it was there that he meet Blake Edwards, American actor, director, producer and screenwriter. If you don't know you directed breakfast at Tiffany's just by accident Blake Edwards and Henry were on the universal lot at the same time Henry was there to get a haircut and they were about to have lunch and I met in the commissary. Blake happened to mention to Henry that he was about to do a television series called Peter Gunn, would he be interested in doing the music Henry of course thinking with the Western share. Why not do it. No no no no this is not a Western is about a private detective named Peter Gunn well that was a turning point in our life because it became such a worldwide and still today that album cover is treasured worldwide. We had always tried to plan to go to Europe at some point in our lives and we would say one day were going to go to Europe when they were going to go to Europe. It is Henry. I don't care when, but let's look at [now so we booked a trip from New York to Southhampton on the SS France first class all the way for six weeks. We had saved $6000. So when we sailed on the SS France. It so happened that Blake Edwards and Maurice Krishnan were writing a script on a story called the pink panther so they would be in their estate writing all day long and at dinnertime. We would all converge at the dinner table for drinks and laughs and the rest of the evening we were on a six week tour of every wonderful country, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden.
We get it all in six weeks on $6000. Can you imagine so while we were there. It's when Peter Gunn hits and we knew that we came home we didn't have to worry. The first royalty check from ASCAP for Peter Gunn was $32,000. We couldn't imagine having that much money and when when Henry had an assignment I is to hear him composing away upstairs in his music room and always sounded so beautiful to me just to hear the notes come out anyway when he was finished with her with a segment call me on the phone.
He said he wanted to come up and hear something and I was always the first one to react to what he had written and it was mostly always always positive. I love the experience of hearing what he wrote for the first time and anybody on the planet and one song that Henry composed and Ginny managed to here pretty early on was Moon River for breakfast at Tiffany's. It's a song that since been covered by Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Chevy Chase, Frank Ocean and Morrissey of all people with a song almost didn't make it onto the big screen.
No wind. Breakfast at Tiffany's was finished. Paramount decided to take it to San Francisco to preview it and when it was over we all met in Blake Edwards, suite in San Francisco to discuss know what work what didn't work. It was that things happened that was a little long and I needed needed to be cuts made here and there. One of the suggestions by the head of the studio was that they cut the song whenever there was such silence in the room.
Even Audrey took exception to that suggestion.
After having worked so hard to do it and learned at an end. Anyway, it definitely stated in the picture window and thank God it did. He had a sense of melody that very few good musicians have an River.
I do believe will live longer longer longer than any of us. People who know that song forever has a lasting quality about it that expresses everybody's feeling Henry Mancini would pass away on June 14, 1994 at the age of 70 and Ginny adored every second of their time together my life with with him. It was such a joy because his temperament was so even he would never get angry. He would always take this is a Ginny when I have to fly off the handle uses a Ginny for Barstow by naming form bars of music before you say anything before you react. Anyway he taught me a lot. He taught me a lot.
My time with Henry was over much too early this year, we would've celebrated 69 years of marital bliss.
Unfortunately I with is not able to keep them that long. So I II keep them alive through listening to his music all the time.
He's always there, always there, and a great job on the production by Monty Montgomery and a special thanks to Philip Graham for helping us gather the audio for the story and a special thanks to Virginia Mancini telling her story and the story of her husband, composer Henry Mancini turns out that universal music department gig was a life-changing story, Henry Mancini here on our American story