Code returns to his roots during Black History Month

Hundreds of people filled a large Seneca meeting room today for the city’s Sixth Annual Black History Luncheon. On this day, the city opens a new exhibit at the Strickland Cultural Museum, the city museum that celebrates its African-American heritage. Organizers brought Greenville’s Merl Code Sr. home to the neighborhood where he was reared and the place where his late father, Allen Code, served as principal of the county’s only black high school, Seneca’s Blue Ridge High. Code, a success as a lawyer and a judge, sought to inspire his audience to persevere against odds and called out the names of some of his Blue Ridge classmates who excelled academically and in their careers. But Code had his audience transfixed and applauding when he talked about the era of segregation in the South and what it was like in Seneca. Things like separate waiting rooms for whites and blacks, blacks forbidden from staying at motels, not allowed to sit at front in movie theatres, and the like. 1964 was a key time in his talk, the year that a major law began to put an end to segregation. The keynote speaker had great praise for his hometown, explaining that it’s rare for a pre-dominantly white government body to have opened an African-American museum. Code praised city leaders for listening to and respecting a minority and to focus of doing what’s right.