About 15 miles down the road from Pelion, the sleepy town of North. All 813 or so of them
The famous entertainer Ertha Kitt was from North... talk about getting above your raising!!!
As you can see on the map, there is an Army Air Base located just outside of town, which I suspect supports the local economy- There were lots of C-17 aircraft practicing landings in the air. Think this shot is over the Ravenel Bridge in Charleston, which is also a major base for this aircraft.....
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North, South Carolina
Area
|
|
• Total
|
0.9 sq mi (2.2 km2)
|
• Land
|
0.9 sq mi
(2.2 km2)
|
• Water
|
0.0 sq mi
(0 km2)
|
Elevation
|
279 ft
(85 m)
|
Population (2000)
|
|
• Total
|
813
|
• Density
|
956/sq mi
(369.3/km2)
|
North is a town in Orangeburg County, South Carolina, United States. The
population was 813 at the 2000 census.
Demographics
As of the census[1] of 2000, there
were 813 people, 356 households, and 223 families residing in the town. The population density was 953.7 people per square mile (369.3/km²). There were
412 housing units at an average density of 483.3 per square mile (187.1/km²).
The racial makeup of the town was 52.64% White, 46.37% African American, 0.37% Native American, and 0.62% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race
were 0.86% of the population.
There were 356
households out of which 25.3% had children under the age of 18 living with
them, 38.5% were married couples living
together, 19.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 37.1%
were non-families. 34.6% of all households were made up of individuals and
18.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average
household size was 2.28 and the average family size was 2.94.
In the town the
population was spread out with 23.5% under the age of 18, 9.7% from 18 to 24,
23.1% from 25 to 44, 25.3% from 45 to 64, and 18.3% who were 65 years of age or
older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 80.7
males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 74.7 males.
The median
income for a household in the town was $21,136, and the median income for a
family was $30,750. Males had a median income of $24,286 versus $21,406 for
females. The per capita income for the town was $14,237. About 27.5% of families and
30.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including
39.3% of those under age 18 and 24.2% of those age 65 or over.
Military
As I mentioned, Eartha Kitt was from this burgh.
Eartha Mae
Kitt (January 17, 1927 –
December 25, 2008) was an American singer, actress, dancer and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style
and her 1953 hit recordings of "C'est
Si Bon" and the enduring Christmas novelty smash "Santa Baby". Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in
the world".[3] She took over the role of Catwoman for the third and final season of the 1960s Batman television series, replacing Julie Newmar, who was unavailable due to other commitments.
She also voiced Yzma on Disney's The Emperor's New Groove and its television spinoff, The Emperor's New School, earning two Emmy Awards in the process, the second shortly before
her death. She won a third Emmy posthumously in 2010, for The Wonder Pets
More on her:
Life and career
Early years
Kitt was born Eartha
Mae Keith on a cotton
plantation in North, a small town in Orangeburg County near Columbia, South Carolina, in 1927.[1] Kitt's mother
was of Cherokee and African-American descent.
Though it remains unconfirmed, it has been widely reported that her father was
of German descent.[4][5]
Kitt was raised
by Anna Mae Riley, an African-American woman whom she believed to be her
mother. When Eartha was 8, Anna Mae went to live with a black man, but he
refused to accept Kitt because of her relatively pale complexion,[4] so the girl lived with another family
until Riley's death. She was then sent to live in New
York City with Mamie
Kitt, who she learned was her biological mother.] She had no
knowledge of her father, except that his surname was Kitt and that he was
supposedly a son of the owner of the farm where she had been born.[4] Newspaper
obituaries state that her white father was "a poor cotton farmer".[6]
In an August
2013 biography, British journalist John Williams claimed that Kitt's father was
a white man, a local doctor named Daniel Sturkie. However, Kitt's daughter,
Kitt Shapiro, has questioned the authenticity of this claim.[7]
Career
Kitt began her
career as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company in 1943 and
remained a member of the troupe until 1948. A talented singer with a
distinctive voice, she recorded the hits "Let's Do It"; "Champagne Taste";
"C'est si bon" (which Stan
Freberg famously
burlesqued); "Just an Old Fashioned Girl"; "Monotonous";
"Je cherche un homme"; "Love for Sale"; "I'd Rather Be Burned as a Witch";
"Katibim" (a Turkish melody) ;
"Mink, Schmink"; "Under the Bridges of Paris"; and her
most recognizable hit, "Santa
Baby", which
was released in 1953. Kitt's unique style was enhanced as she became fluent in
the French
language during her
years performing in Europe. Her English-speaking performances always seemed to
be enriched by a soft French feel. She spoke four languages and sang in seven,
which she effortlessly demonstrated in many of the live recordings of her
cabaret performances
Career peaks
In 1950, Orson
Welles gave Kitt her
first starring role, as Helen
of Troy in his staging
of Dr. Faustus. A few years
later, she was cast in the revue New
Faces of 1952, introducing "Monotonous" and
"Bal, Petit Bal", two songs with which she is still identified. In
1954, 20th Century Fox filmed a version of the revue, titled New
Faces, in which she performed "Monotonous", "Uska Dara", and "C'est Si Bon".[8] Though it is
often alleged that Welles and Kitt had an affair during her 1957 run in Shinbone
Alley, Kitt
categorically denied this in a June 2001 interview with George Wayne of Vanity
Fair. "I never had sex with Orson Welles", Kitt told Vanity
Fair: "It was a working situation and nothing else".[9] Her other
films in the 1950s included Mark of the Hawk (1957), St. Louis Blues (1958) and Anna Lucasta (1959).
Throughout the
rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, Kitt recorded; worked in film, television,
and nightclubs; and returned to the Broadway stage, in Mrs. Patterson
(during the 1954–1955 season), Shinbone Alley (in 1957), and the
short-lived Jolly's Progress (in 1959).[10] In 1964, Kitt
helped open the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California.
In the late
1960s, the television series Batman featured her as Catwoman after Julie Newmar left the
role.
Anti-war controversy
In 1968, during
the administration of US President Lyndon
B. Johnson, Kitt
encountered a substantial professional setback after she made anti-war statements
during a White
House luncheon.[11][12] Kitt was
invited to the White House luncheon and was asked by Lady
Bird Johnson about the Vietnam
War. She replied:
"You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder
the kids rebel and take pot."
During a
question and answer session, Kitt stated:
"The children
of America are not rebelling for no reason. They are not hippies for no reason
at all. We don’t have what we have on Sunset
Blvd. for no reason.
They are rebelling against something. There are so many things burning the
people of this country, particularly mothers. They feel they are going to raise
sons—and I know what it's like, and you have children of your own, Mrs.
Johnson—we raise children and send them to war."
Her remarks
reportedly caused Mrs. Johnson to burst into tears and led to a derailment in
Kitt's career.[13] The public
reaction to Kitt's statements was extreme, both pro and con. Publicly
ostracized in the US, she devoted her energies to performances in Europe and
Asia. It is said that Kitt's career in the US was ended following her comments
about the Vietnam war, after which she was branded "a sadistic
nymphomaniac" by the CIA.[14]
Broadway
She returned to
New York in a triumphant turn in the Broadway spectacle Timbuktu! (a version of
the perennial Kismet set in Africa) in 1978. In the musical, one song gives a
"recipe" for mahoun, a preparation of cannabis, in which her
sultry purring rendition of the refrain "constantly stirring with a
long wooden spoon" was distinctive. She was nominated for a Tony Award
for her performance, but lost to Liza Minnelli.
Later years
In 1984, she
returned to the music charts with a disco song, "Where
Is My Man", the
first certified gold record of her career. "Where Is My Man" reached
the Top
40 on the UK
Singles Chart, where it
peaked at No. 36;[15] The song also
made the Top 10 on the US Billboard dance chart, where it reached No. 7.[16] The single was
followed by the album I Love Men on the Record Shack label. Kitt found
new audiences in nightclubs across the UK and the US, including a whole new
generation of gay male fans, and she responded by frequently giving benefit
performances in support of HIV/AIDS organizations.
Kitt appeared with Jimmy James and George
Burns at a
fundraiser in 1990 produced by Scott Sherman, Agent from The Atlantic
Entertainment Group. It was arranged that James would impersonate Kitt and then
Kitt would walk out to take the microphone. This was met with a standing
ovation. Her 1989 follow-up hit "Cha-Cha Heels" (featuring Bronski
Beat), which was
originally intended to be recorded by Divine, received a
positive response from UK dance clubs and reached No. 32 in the charts in
that country.
In 1991, Kitt
returned to the screen in the Jim Varney children's Halloween movie Ernest Scared Stupid as Old Lady
Hackmore. In 1992, Kitt had a supporting role as Lady Eloise in the film Boomerang starring Eddie
Murphy. In the late
1990s, she appeared as the Wicked Witch of the West in the North
American national touring company of The Wizard of Oz. 1995 saw Eartha Kitt appear as
herself in an episode of The
Nanny, where she
performed a song in French and flirted with Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy). In November 1996, she appeared on an
episode of Celebrity Jeopardy!. In 2000, Kitt
again returned to Broadway in the short-lived run of Michael John LaChiusa's The Wild Party opposite Mandy
Patinkin and Toni
Collette. Beginning in
late 2000, she starred as the Fairy
Godmother in the US
national tour of Cinderella alongside Deborah
Gibson and then Jamie-Lynn
Sigler. In 2003, she
replaced Chita
Rivera in Nine. She reprised
her role as the Fairy Godmother at a special engagement of Cinderella,
which took place at Lincoln
Center during the
holiday season of 2004.
One of her more
unusual roles was as Kaa the python in
a 1994 BBC
Radio adaptation of The
Jungle Book. Kitt also lent her distinctive voice to the role of Yzma in Disney's The Emperor's New Groove, for which she
won her first Annie
Award, and returned
to the role in the straight-to-video sequel Kronk's New Groove and the spin-off TV series The Emperor's New School, for which she
won two Emmy
Awards and two more Annie
Awards (both in
2007–08) for Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production. She had a
voiceover as the voice of Queen Vexus on the animated TV series My Life as a Teenage Robot. In her later
years Kitt made annual appearances in the New York Manhattan cabaret scene at
venues such as the Ballroom and the Café
Carlyle. She was also a
guest star in The
Simpsons episode "Once Upon a Time in Springfield", where
she was depicted as one of Krusty's past marriages.
From October to
early December 2006, Kitt co-starred in the Off-Broadway musical Mimi
le Duck. She also
appeared in the 2007 independent film And Then Came Love opposite Vanessa Williams.
Kitt was the
spokesperson for MAC
Cosmetics' Smoke Signals
collection in August 2007. She re-recorded "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" for the
occasion, was showcased on the MAC website, and the song was played at all MAC
locations carrying the collection for the month.
After romances
with the cosmetics magnate Charles
Revson and banking
heir John Barry Ryan III, she married John William McDonald, an associate of a
real estate investment company, on June 6, 1960.[17] They had one
child, a daughter named Kitt McDonald, born on November 26, 1961. They divorced
in 1965. A long-time Connecticut resident,
Eartha Kitt lived in a converted barn on a sprawling farm in the Merryall
section of New Milford for many years and was active in local
charities and causes throughout Litchfield County. She later moved to Pound Ridge, New York, and then to the southern Fairfield County town of Weston in 2002, to be near her daughter Kitt and family. Her
daughter, Kitt McDonald, married Charles Lawrence Shapiro in 1987[18] and had two
children, Jason and Rachel Shapiro.
Activism
Kitt was active
in numerous social causes in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1966, she established the Kittsville
Youth Foundation, a chartered and non-profit organization for underprivileged
youth in the Watts area of Los Angeles.[19] She was also
involved with a group of youth in the area of Anacostia in Washington,
D.C., who called themselves, "Rebels with a Cause." Kitt supported
the group's efforts to clean up streets and establish recreation areas in an
effort to keep them out of trouble by testifying with them before the House
General Subcommittee on Education of the Committee on Education and Labor. In her
testimony, in May 1967, Kitt stated that the Rebels' "achievements and
accomplishments should certainly make the adult 'do-gooders' realize that these
young men and women have performed in 1 short year - with limited finances -
that which was not achieved by the same people who might object to turning over
some of the duties of planning, rehabilitation, and prevention of juvenile
delinquents and juvenile delinquency to those who understand it and are living
it". She added that "the Rebels could act as a model for all urban
areas throughout the United States with similar problems".[20] "Rebels
with a Cause" subsequently received the needed funding.[21]
Kitt was also a
member of the Women's International League
for Peace and Freedom, thus her criticism of the Vietnam
War and its
connection to poverty and racial unrest in 1968 can be seen as part of a larger
commitment to peace activism.[22]
Like many
politically active public figures of her time, Kitt was under surveillance by
the CIA beginning in 1956. After the New
York Times discovered the CIA file on Kitt in 1975, she granted the paper permission
to print portions of the report, stating: "I have nothing to be afraid of
and I have nothing to hide."[23]
Kitt later
became a vocal advocate for LGBT
rights and publicly
supported same-sex marriage, which she considered a civil
right. She had been
quoted as saying: "I support it [gay marriage] because we're asking for
the same thing. If I have a partner and something happens to me, I want that
partner to enjoy the benefits of what we have reaped together. It's a
civil-rights thing, isn't it?"[24] Kitt famously
appeared at many LGBT fundraisers, including a mega event in Baltimore, Maryland, with George
Burns and Jimmy James. Scott
Sherman, an agent at Atlantic Entertainment Group, stated: "Eartha Kitt is
fantastic... appears at so many LGBT events in support of civil rights."
In a 1992
interview with Dr. Anthony Clare, Kitt spoke about her gay following, saying:
We're all
rejected people, we know what it is to be refused, we know what it is to be
oppressed, depressed, and then, accused, and I am very much cognizant of that
feeling. Nothing in the world is more painful than rejection. I am a rejected,
oppressed person, and so I understand them, as best as I can, even though I am
a heterosexual.[25]
Death
Kitt died from colon
cancer on Christmas
Day, December 25,
2008, at her home in Weston, Connecticut.
Her daughter,
Kitt Shapiro, recently explained her last days with her mother:"I was
with her when she died. She left this world literally screaming at the top of
her lungs. I was with her constantly, she lived not even 3 miles from my house,
we were together practically everyday. She was home for the last few weeks when
the doctor told us there was nothing they could do anymore. Up until the last
two days, she was still moving around. The doctor told us she will leave very
quickly and her body will just start to shutdown. But when she left, she left
the world with a bang, she left it how she lived it. She screamed her way out
of here, literally. I truly believe her survival instincts were so part of her
DNA that she was not going to go quietly or willingly. It was just the two of
us hanging out [during the last days] she was very funny. We didn’t have to
[talk] because I always knew how she felt about me, I was the love of her life,
so the last part of her life we didn't have to have these heart to heart
talks".
She started to
see people (that weren't there) she thought I could see them too, but of course
I couldn't. I would make fun of her like I’m going to go in the other room and
you stay here and talk to your friends."
Awards
Kitt won awards
for her film, television and stage work, and in 1960, the Hollywood Walk of Fame honored her
with a star, which can be found on 6656 Hollywood Boulevard.[29]
And here is the Post Office:
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