You know her as Conway’s mayor, but she has been shattering glass ceilings for decades
She’s sure the teacher won’t use the same lipstick on her that she’s using on the white girls ahead of her on stage.
Lined up side-by-side for makeup before a pageant at West End Elementary, a 6-year-old Barbara Jo Blain-Bellamy clenches her eyes as the teacher gets closer and closer.
Anxiety creeps in. She’s the only black child in the school.
“There was no way that teacher was going to use that lipstick on a little black girl,” Blain-Bellamy recalls more than 60 years later.
She has no idea how the teacher will handle it.
“I sorta squeezed my eyes shut as she was right next to me, and I came to to the strokes of that brush for the rouge and she put the lipstick on me,” she said.
Relief.
“And without as much as even pretending to wipe off my nastiness, because I was a little black girl, she put that lipstick on the girl next to me and it is a story I’ll never forget as long as I live,” Blain-Bellamy said.
Segregation wasn’t as much of an issue in Nevada, like it was when she was born in 1952 in Conway.
With her father in the military for three years, Blain-Bellamy moved from the south to Arizona, California and Nevada, where she wasn’t defined as a black child. She was just a child, like everyone at school. But when she returned to Conway, the separation still existed.
Now, 60 years later, not only is she the first black mayor of the City of Conway, she’s a woman who has spent a lifetime representing people — from being a social worker to a prosecutor to a public defender.
“This is the best place in the world,” she said. “It has been a beautiful, wonderful, life-changing experience” to be mayor.
Blain-Bellamy, 66, enters a room with a purpose and makes herself noticed. In her sleek, round eyeglasses, she is not afraid to walk up to someone and introduce herself. She addresses everyone as she’s talking in a room, even someone sitting alone in a corner. And she’s always greeting people with a hug — it’s part of her love language, she says.
She’s the first on the dance floor, and the last to leave. Her favorite food — seafood, country cooking and grilled steak with fries.
Blain-Bellamy is known as Aunt Barbara to many children, teenagers and young adults she has mentored through the years.
Sandra Gowans, career coach at A Father’s Place who has known Blain-Bellamy since elementary school, said Blain-Bellamy always is taking care of people, offering “everything she has” and doesn’t give empty words.
“She’s definitely magnetic — her smile, her aura just pulls you toward her,” Gowans said. “You can call on her at the last minute, and if there’s anyway she can do it, she’ll do it.”
Career and law school
Blain-Bellamy graduated from Whittemore High School one year before total integration in the county. She was named Miss Whittemore High her senior year in 1970. She went on to earn a degree in sociology at the University of South Carolina. Twenty years later, she received a masters in education.
Her last stop at a university was at 45 years old, when she started law school at USC.
Recently divorced, Blain-Bellamy was raising two nephews on her own, was two years into her second term on Conway City Council and had just made the first few mortgage payments on a small home.
“This idea of going to law school on those circumstances didn’t make sense,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was walking into.”
As a social worker for the S.C. Department of Social Services, Blain-Bellamy saw a couple struggling from the lack of knowledge of the court system.
“I’ve always been pretty sensitive to others and the situations they find themselves in,” she said. And then thought: “Somebody like me needs to go to law school.”
So she did. She resigned from her seat on city council to move to Columbia with her two nephews.
After graduating, Blain-Bellamy worked as a prosecutor, a lawyer for DSS, a public defender, deputy administrator for the City of Conway in the early 2000s, and then she opened her own law firm.
Blain-Bellamy doesn’t spend any time in the courtroom these days, but does practice some transactional law.
First black mayor of Conway
It brings tears to Blain-Bellamy’s eyes three years later just talking about winning the mayoral election.
It was her fourth time running for public office — the previous times were for city council, all races she won.
A couple weeks before the election, she found herself in an upper-, middle-class neighborhood, searching for a home where she had permission to place a campaign sign.
But she was impacted by one massive realization: “If you did a 360 degree turn, you could see 1,000 of my opponents’ signs — not one of mine,” she said.
It felt like, “We’re for somebody and it wasn’t you,” she said.
She and her husband never found the home to put the sign out.
“When we got back home … he opened the storm door for me to go in first, I got one foot in my back door and I literally fell in the floor,” Blain-Bellamy said. “I was so defeated. I was so sure I couldn’t do this. Sort of like going to law school, who did I think I was? Why did I think I could pull this off? There’s no way I can do it.”
Then Election Day came.
Blain-Bellamy went to every precinct in hopes to remind people one last time she was ready to take on the role as mayor.
At the end of the day, she was at the elementary school poll and realized they were counting votes for that specific location.
She was doing well.
Shocked and not knowing each precinct had voting numbers, Blain-Bellamy decided to go to each location to get her results.
At the county courthouse, she did OK. Then 77 votes at the library. And 277 at Whittemore Park.
With a 50-cent calculator she bought the week before, Blain-Bellamy started adding the votes.
“The numbers couldn’t be that good,” she said.
But they were.
She won — not with a landslide, but decidedly won. There wouldn’t be a recount.
“It was as unreal as me getting into law school, as me passing the bar, any of the most wonderful things that had happened in my life,” she said. “I would be dishonest with you if I thought there was no way I could win. But I never felt smug about it.”
Debbie Smith, who has worked most recently as the mayor’s assistant, praises Blain-Bellamy’s encouragement after she was diagnosed with cancer last year.
“Whenever I told her about my diagnosis, she prayed with me,” Smith said.
“She’s very uplifting. She makes people feel important.”
Smith said Blain-Bellamy works hard for city staff and truly cares about the people of Conway.
And each time she greets someone, whether she knows the person or not, she welcomes him or her with a hug, Smith said.
“What you see is what you get,” she said. “People gravitate to her.”
Family
Blain-Bellamy, the oldest of five children, is the daughter of Jobe Blain, the first black Horry County policeman, and Ruby McDowell Blain. She has been married to Robert Bellamy for three years.
Growing up, Saturdays were hair days for her and her three sisters.
Her nicknames as a kid were “Jelly Baby” and “Fat Lady.” Blain-Bellamy said she doesn’t have an athletic bone in her body, and she was only able to travel with the softball team in sixth grade because she handled the bats. And the first “C” grade she received was in physical education in the seventh grade.
But that did not stop her from learning to swim at 60 years old and roller skate at age 50 — both things she’s proud of.
She has been a member of Friendship Baptist Church since the early 1990s.
Craigon Lennon, one of the nephews she raised, lived with her for about 24 years. Lennon, who refers to his aunt as “Ba” (pronounced Bah), said his family has always taken the it-takes-a-village approach when raising children.
“I cannot imagine having ever grown up completely free of her influence,” he said.
Lennon said the way to his heart is through his stomach, so one of his favorite things about his aunt is her candied yams. And one of the best lessons she has taught him is to have courage and not to worry about what others think of him.
‘Conway Strong’
Blain-Bellamy has been through three natural catastrophes as mayor. She said the city has a goal going forward to manage growth, strengthen plans for flooding events, and involve Coastal Carolina University students to make the city more of a college town.
Councilwoman Jean Timbes also worked with Blain-Bellamy during the mayor’s time as a councilwoman.
“Barbara is probably the most outgoing mayor I’ve ever worked with,” Timbes said.
She said Blain-Bellamy’s positive attitude and influence helped through the flooding after Hurricane Florence.
“She was right there,” Timbes said. “She kept peoples’ spirits up. She kept everyone from bogging down.”
Though the city has continued to move forward, Timbes said much of Blain-Bellamy’s time as mayor has been in a “fix-up time” due to flooding after hurricanes.
Timbes said their relationship strengthened after Blain-Bellamy was elected mayor. Timbes was serving as mayor pro-tem, and the two spent a lot of time together.
“We enjoy each other’s company,” Timbes said.
Blain-Bellamy said she and council have worked hard to grow the city’s population and businesses.
“We are growing as a hip town,” she said, noting food trucks and a drawl for young people.
And, as for the upcoming election, Blain-Bellamy plans to run again.
