Knowing Who I Am ~ Earl M. Middleton

A third-generation native of Orangeburg, South Carolina, Earl M. Middleton has prospered in ways few African Americans have in the rural South. As owner of a successful business that cuts across racial lines and as a political leader in the cause of civil rights, Middleton has garnered hard-won recognition for his efforts from blacks and whites alike. His life story is at once illustrative of dynamic developments in Southern race relations over the past eight decades and inspirational in telling how one individual capitalized on those changes to perpetuate a family legacy of entrepreneurship and service in his community.Born in 1919, Middleton is the youngest of six children. His father was a carpenter, and his mother was in one of the first graduating classes of what is now South Carolina State University. Middleton himself graduated from Clafin College, Orangeburg's predominantly black Methodist school, where his studies of sociology became the basis of his knack for understanding an