‘Gives people hope’: New Myrtle Beach mural celebrates racial diversity
For Mary Cookie Canty Goings, racial justice is a family business.
Her sister was one of the first students to integrate Myrtle Beach High School in the 1960s, her mother attended the Myrtle Beach Colored School during segregation and later helped turn the school into a museum.
Cookie, as she’s known, also attended Myrtle Beach High School, where she later became a guidance counselor.
“It’s a calling on my life to give back, because so much was given to me,” she said.
Goings now leads the City of Myrtle Beach’s Neighborhood Services Department, aimed at providing support and direction for communities to help maintain character and identities. Her latest project, Beachside Chats, started after the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota sparked a racial awakening across the country.
“We’ve got to have conversations, conversations on race, healing, peace and understanding,” Goings said.
Beachside Chats are a series of community gatherings where members of all races come to listen and to be heard, she said. Last weekend, Goings and her team unveiled what she called the culmination of weeks of work. Two murals, hand-painted by community members now hang outside the Myrtle Beach Colored School Museum and Education Center.
The museum honors the students who attended the school, which operated from the 1930s to the 1950s, as well as Black inventors.
On Mr. Joe White Avenue, passersby will be able to see two murals, one reads “Beachside Chats” on top of two hands clasped, one white, one Black. The other reads “We are here…” and in smaller writing community members were urged to write why they came to the event.
“To share the love of the Lord,” one read, “To grow in understanding,” and “To be the change” were others.
Will Williams is an intern for the Neighborhood Services Department who helped organize the project.
“I think it gives people hope,” he said. “We’re working to shed light on issues that didn’t just happen in the past but are still happening.”
Williams took his interest in art and combined it with a newfound passion for racial justice and Black history.
“I think I’ve always tried to use my artwork to shed light on, on issues such as racial injustice,” he said. “I realized that I was fed a glamorized, romanticized version of history that didn’t take into account true African American heroes.”
Beachside Chats had operated on a biweekly basis with anywhere from 80 to 120 people attending the events. The crowd is diverse, both in age and race, and often officers from the Myrtle Beach Police Department attend and participate.
The chats are now moving to a monthly basis and will be held at Chapin Park on Sundays at 6 p.m. The next one is scheduled for Sept. 20. Masks are required and organizers ask that you bring a lawn chair or blanket to sit on.
“It’s got to be continuous. We can’t stop. This is just the top layer. We’ve just begun,” Goings said. She stressed that Beachside Chats aren’t just for people of color, but instead for everyone in the community, “but you’ve got to come with an open heart and an open mind, and just willingness to hear and to understand.”
This story was originally published August 26, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
