Carolina Ledger

Altman targets ETV budget

after gay documentary airs

CHARLESTON, S.C. — A Lowcountry legislator says he wants to cut South Carolina Educational Television’s budget after it aired a documentary on gays in the South.

‘‘I thought it was just social, leftist propaganda that they had no business airing,’’ said state Rep. John Graham Altman, R-Charleston. ‘‘They were actively promoting homosexuality as an OK thing to do.’’

SCETV President Maurice Bresnahan says his agency isn’t promoting an agenda by showing ‘‘We are your Neighbors’’ as part of its twice-monthly Southern Lens series of stories about life in the South.

‘‘An analogy would be a librarian buying books for the bookshelf. ’We are your Neighbors’ was just one 26-minute show out of 8,700 hours of programming. We are just presenting a point of view. This is just one book on a shelf of thousands of books,’’ Bresnahan said.

Baseball bat beating

leaves Rock Hill man dead

ROCK HILL, S.C. — An 18-year-old man has been charged with murder after a man he struck with a baseball bat in a fight a week ago died.

The beating happened Nov. 22 during an argument involving at least six other people at a Rock Hill apartment complex parking lot.

Without any kind of warning, Jeremy Moon walked up from behind and swung the bat at 28-year-old Chris Manfredi’s head, striking him so hard that the bat cracked in half, authorities said.

Manfredi collapsed seconds later, blood pouring from his head and mouth, friend Marty Williams said. He died Thursday at the hospital.

Moon was originally charged with assault and battery with intent to kill, but those charges were upgraded to murder after Manfredi’s death.

Manfredi had come to the apartment to pick up his 3-year-old son, who was at his estranged wife’s apartment.

The woman was having a party, and Manfredi didn’t want his son around it, Williams said.

Man killed in

Union County hunting accident

UNION, S.C. — A 23-year-old man hunting deer in Union County has been killed in what investigators say was an accidental shooting.

Jeffrey Parker, of Pacolet, was hunting with his father and two friends near Jonesville Saturday morning when they spread out through the woods to try and get the deer to run, authorities said.

One of the friends saw movement and fired, hitting Parker, who died shortly after he was taken to the hospital, authorities said.

The shooting appeared to be an accident, Natural Resources Department spokesman Lt. Robert McCullough said.

Wildlife officials will investigate the shooting to see if the hunters were wearing proper safety attire, or whether alcohol was involved, McCullough said.

Florence churches

bring founder home

FLORENCE, S.C.— Nearly 150 years after he planted the seeds of three Florence County churches, the Rev. Sampson Ham has come home.

As part of Savannah Grove Baptist Church’s 138th anniversary celebration, the remains of Ham and his wife were taken Sunday afternoon from an abandoned family cemetery to a mausoleum on the church’s ground.

For years, no one at Savannah Grove Baptist knew where Ham was buried. Once they found out, they knew what they had to do, said the church’s current pastor, the Rev. Ralph Canty.

‘‘Reverend Ham was highly recognized as a man of God, a spiritual leader and a gifted preacher,’’ Canty said. ‘‘We dishonor ourselves if we dishonor our ancestors.’’

The casket was taken by a horse-driven wagon. Members of Savannah Grove Baptist and two other churches Ham helped establish, Antioch and Mt. Carmel, were pallbearers and their ministers participated in the entombment, which was followed by a worship service.

Members of Ebenezer Baptist Church also participated. Ham went to the church with his slave owner in the early 1850s.

Church members were so taken by Ham’s evangelical talent, they bought his freedom so he could preach the gospel both inside and outside the church until the end of the Civil War.

‘‘From what I’ve been told, Ebenezer Baptist Church had more black members than it did white, but with the Civil War behind them, they thought it was best that the congregations separate,’’ Canty said.

Ham and his flock began meeting to worship together on an acre of land donated to the group by George Pettigrew.

‘‘They started having service under some mulberry trees located where our church stands today,’’ Canty said. ‘‘So the very first Savannah Grove Baptist was a church without walls, simply some land where these former slaves met to worship God.’’

The church’s first sanctuary was destroyed by fire just before Easter 1939. Less than a year later, a new sanctuary was erected. It now serves as a fellowship hall after the church built a new sanctuary in 1999.

———

Information from: Morning News, http://www.morningnewsonline.com/