At The Crossroads

Talk about irony; Jim J. French is now the “victim” of inclusion.
For the past 42 years, French has been the owner and publisher of “The Charleston Chronicle,” a black-centric newspaper put together every week at his trophy shop located on Upper King.
Last year, state Sen. Robert Ford (D-Charleston) managed to get through the legislature a proclamation that named the intersection of Magnolia Drive and Savannah Highway in honor of French, 86, a self-described “brass ass” journalist who has covered several of this community’s and country’s crossroads over the years.
Despite private money being raised for the purchase of the two signs, both had be taken down a little more than a month ago.
Why? Because, according to state Department of Transportation spokesperson Pete Poore, their placement violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. Those signs await new, ADA-friendly perches, he said.
French, who has lived in a racially mixed neighborhood off of Magnolia for the past 30 years, has been many things, but likely never before the victim of inclusive laws.
Born in Kansas City, French found his calling in the Navy, as he petitioned successfully to leave behind a job in the mess hall for a spot behind a typewriter.
His military career took him around the world, from sharing beers with future Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to being the public information officer of what was then the Charleston Naval Base.
When his stint in Vietnam ended, he returned to Charleston in the late-‘60s, and began working at the base. But when he retired in 1971, French was unable to get the ink out of his blood, and began searching for financial backing to open a black weekly newspaper.
He needed some money. Anybody’s money.
“I didn’t have a bag of dirt,” French quipped this week, with the practiced comedic timing of a man who’d dropped that line a hundred times before.
A handful of prominent local white businessmen, including former U.S. Congressman “Cousin” Arthur Ravenel, stepped forward and gave local bankers the nod that he was a safe bet. Given 45 days to reimburse the $2,000 loan, French says he paid it off in 30 days.
With the then-princely loan, French said he began publishing the “Checkerboard” newspaper “from my wife’s kitchen,” the name taken from Charleston’s presence of black neighborhoods abutting whiter ones. That paper morphed into “The Chronicle,” which aims to cover the local black community.
“We’ve always been an integrated city,” said French, who credits the remnants of slavery-era attitudes that have helped whites and blacks get along. “We know we’ve got a good thing here,” he said, saying that proximity between the races helped create opportunities for dialogue during turbulent times, tamping down bigger skirmishes.
Obviously, from that comment and a host of others, French does his best to defy categorization. He counts among his friends John Graham Altman III, the former state representative midway through the last decade, and also a lightning rod for criticism since his days as chair of the county school board.
French won’t align himself with either of the two major political parties. He calls himself a conservative. “Black people in Charleston are the most ‘conservative’ people you’ll ever find,” he says.
Herb Frazier, a lauded local writer and reporter, said that French would take shots at anyone, white or black, especially if he thought they aren’t doing right by the black community.
Frazier’s affection for French is evident in the spritely tones he takes to call his friend a “bovine fecalist” – or words to that effect. Frazier, who worked at The Post and Courier for years before taking over public relations for Magnolia Plantation, once wrote that French had a great way for calling out to him:
“How’s the little colored boy who works at the white folks newspaper? French would crow on Frazier’s approach.
French tells the story of decades before when a less-than-inclusive editor was taken to task by the then-publisher, the late Peter Manigault, at the “Kew-rier” for not hiring him years before. “He yelled, ‘you created competition for my paper,” laughed French.
With an unadorned crossroads in West Ashley named for him, where merchants’ growth is impinging on nearby neighborhoods, French says America and Charleston are still at its own crossroads.
The fight for Civil Rights isn’t finished, in French’s eyes, as he looks out the windows of his office and sees “white” hotels and businesses and homeownership slashing black representation on the peninsula by two-thirds since he opened up shop there.
“We’ve not reached that goal,” said French. And until a month ago, at least there were signs.