St Matthew’s exterior is light brownish-orange with a tall spire that rises out of a courtyard. The courtyard has a lot of greenery, as well as alternating black and white diamonds on the ground. There is a bright red door at the front in which you walk into the interior of the church. The interior is made of two levels; the first level consists of a center aisle, with rows of wooden pews on either side. The pews have red padding, and the floors are made of marble. The second level has a white balcony rail that wraps around some seating and the choir loft. The choir loft has chairs for the vocalists and a large organ with organ pipes coming up the wall at the very front of the church. There are many stained glass windows on both levels. The most memorable is the reformation window, that shows Martin Luther holding a scroll (there are no words seen in the window, but it is probably part of his 95 theses), and Luther is speaking to the Council of Worms and with a German royal at Augsburg. The feeling inside of the building is very still, when you don’t go on a Sunday. The people inside the church were friendly and formal, but I assume at a Sunday Service, the space would be filled with families and it would radiate life. It smelled lightly of incense and cleaning supplies. The atmosphere was a reverent one. 

The Church itself is very beautiful, and is quite impressive to look at. It has an almost majestic presence as it rises over King’s St. More than that, however, it feels like a part of Charleston. It’s one of the city’s oldest churches, and it has loyal parishioners whose families have been going there for decades. The German population was growing in the 19th century when the church was built. By 1860, Germans made up about 5% of the Charleston population, and Germans were often Lutheran. This means this church would have been a sanctuary for a minority group in the city. It was also a place that cared for many German Charlestonians during the yellow fever outbreak. This church seems welcoming, much like the city itself.

The church itself is very beautiful and still, and presents itself as a place where reverence is assumed when you walk through the doors. Some churches feel somewhat informal, but this one has an almost regal atmosphere. You can almost believe that God would gather his people in a place like this. I think this represents the feeling of Southern identity that being religious and consistent with your history is the most important aspect of oneself. It reminds me of the Revival and Camp meetings where people would leave their homes and their work to gather together in both a physical and spiritual sense. There wasn’t a physical building, but there was still that sense of community. A Southern stereotype is that they see themselves as God’s people and put a lot of emphasis on religious tradition, and this church seems to be the type of place where religious tradition is seriously upheld by the congregation.

First Watch is a Florida-based restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch, and brunch. The restaurant incorporates many southern foods into its menu such as collard greens, pimento cheese, and grits. The location in Mt. Pleasant has a loyal Southern clientele, and that is where my roommates and I ventured last week for brunch. I ordered a sandwich with ham, pimento cheese, and a fried tomato, as well as a side of grits, and had sweet tea to drink. I’m from Georgia and well versed in southern food, and this was up to par. The kitchen prep area could be seen from where we were seated, and it had a very homey, southern-kitchen feel. There were black wrought-iron skillets hanging from hooks above a counter where you could see people chopping vegetables and bringing out foods from the fryer in the back. The menu reminded me of food from home. The vegetables were very fresh, but there was still the sense that the cooks knew their way around a gravy boat. The cooing style was not complex; like Thomas Peed said, “You don’t need to be fancy just to cook good.”

The atmosphere felt Southern. The wait staff wasn’t just polite, but also friendly in a way that you might not see if you traveled a few miles north. First watch does have locations in other states, and I would be interested to see if that home-like atmosphere changes when you’re no longer in the Southeast. As far as southern hospitality, it extended beyond serving food with a smile. When I left my phone in the restroom, I went to ask the hostess if anyone had grabbed it. With a sweet smile she said “Let me check on that for you, darlin” and got me someone who helped me find it. That may not seem like much, but the manner in which they helped me was not business like. It felt like a family member genuinely wanting to help you find something you lost.

The southern tradition has not varied much over the years “baked ham, beaten biscuits, stuffed eggs, potato salad” were all on the menu, as well as “fried chicken, cornbread, grits, and sweet tea” (The Edible South, pg.4-5). In The Edible South, it discusses these staple foods of Southern Tradition. At First Watch, these were all integral parts of the dining experience. I got the baked ham and the grits, one of my friends got eggs and cornbread, and the other two both had biscuits included in their meals. And of course, we all got sweet tea. Southern tradition is steeped in a restaurant that has branched out of the South, exposing our food to the rest of the country.  While the rest of the country may think southern food is not always the most healthy, they still can enjoy it for its flavor and homegrown feel. I have very positive memories associated with southern food. I remember as a young child heading out to the lake where we would have large cookouts. Very much like Thomas Peed and his turtles, we had neighborhood gatherings with roasted pig. Our neighbors out at the lake would come down and bring sides like collard greens, potato salad, mac and cheese, lima beans, corn bread, black eyed peas, and lintels. Then desserts like peach cobbler, blackberry and pecan pie, and pound cake. Drinks like sweet tea, lemonade, and of course various beverages for the adults were always there, too. The best part, of course, was the roast pig. It was often a hog that they had brought down during hog hunting season, and it sure was big.  The fellas would baste it and then roast it on a spit for hours. Often times that hog would have been cooking since the small hours of the morning. We would spend all afternoon out on the lake and then run up in the early evening to start grabbing plates. The pig would have been taken off the spit and pulled out into barbecue or sliced into ham. We would cover it in sweet BBQ sauce and load every inch with the sides. My experience at First Watch took me right back there. The ham tasted very similar to roasted pig we had at the lake. You could tell a lot of time and effort was put into making their food in a southern style. The grits tasted like my mother’s, and the sweet tea was every bit as good as what we had back home. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went, because I knew it had expanded out of the South. What if it had lost its Southern feel? Maybe in other locations it has, but the site in Charleston has all the Southern food you could want.

-Liz Williams

In 1931 when the King Street Movie painting was painted, there were a lot of issues that American painter George Biddle could see. The main problem in cities like Charleston was the segregation of people of color and white people. The black community greatly suffered injustices from segregation laws and policies that kept them out of “white” spaces. For example, movie theaters. The movies allowed for black and white audiences (they weren’t going to turn down money), but the black people had a different entrance, worse seats, and couldn’t use the same snack counters or water fountains. These were mostly the result of Jim Crow laws, which enforced what were called “separate but equal” laws for public spaces in the South. Besides this being totally unnecessary because we can all share public spaces, it also wasn’t very equal. The black spaces were almost always lower quality.

In the painting, there are five white people standing around the movie theater. In the 1930s, they were probably not as prosperous as they had once been, but they still were in a better position than the black man featured in the painting as well. The man would have to go in a different door to watch the same movie, sit in the back or in a balcony, and wouldn’t be served at the counter if he wanted pop corn or candy. He is also standing with a dog, which may be symbolic of the white people’s view of him. They would just a soon watch a movie side by side with a dog as with a black person. The painting is a snapshot of history where the injustices POC faced were part of every day life. George Biddle had lived outside of the US (in Mexico) while studying art. He would have seen a way of life that wasn’t dividing people up and telling them where they could and could not walk, drink, or exist.

sources: Plaque at Gibbes Museum

https://www.jstor.org/journal/jsouthernhistory