A cryptologist and a pioneering opera star both hailed from Hopewell Presbyterian Church in South Carolina
by Dr. Kim Smith | Special to Presbyterian News Service
In its 134 years, Hopewell Presbyterian Church has produced an opera star and a cryptologist. (Photo by Gerald Jackson)
BLACKSBURG, South Carolina — Travelers on Highway 5, the 50-mile stretch between Blacksburg and Rock Hill, South Carolina, often stop on the roadside to admire and take pictures of the small church perched off the highway. Hopewell Presbyterian Church, with its distinctive rock exterior, seems to glow when the afternoon sun hits at the right angle, highlighting its unique architectural charm that symbolizes strength and fortitude. Learn how the rock church was built.
The church, however, serves more just than a place of worship, members say. Throughout its 134-year history, the church has been a rock-solid icon of cultural pride and the literal and figurative cornerstone for this small African American community called Hopewell, located 45 miles southwest of Charlotte, North Carolina.
The church’s founders — most of whom have passed away — taught their children honesty, the value of hard work, the importance of giving back, helping others and trusting in God. The elders adopted the African Proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.”
And like the unsung heroes in the 2016 film “Hidden Figures,” about four Black women mathematicians who helped launch NASA astronauts into space in spite of systemic racism, the Hopewell community also had its unsung trailblazers it raised, who quietly impacted the nation and the world. Here are profiles of these unsung heroes from Hopewell.
Chineta Smith Gamble
Chineta Smith Gamble was born in 1925 in Blacksburg and attended Hopewell church, where her father, Amzi Anderson Smith, was also a member and church leader. A Howard University graduate, Gamble became one of the first Black women cryptologists at the National Security Agency, during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Few people knew of her covert work. She decoded Soviet Union intelligence while the United States and the Soviet Union faced off at the brink of nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Due to the nature of her work, much of her life remained a mystery, family members recalled.
Gamble continued her spy work through the Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations. She died in 2009 in Columbia, Maryland, leaving behind a legacy of quiet excellence that reflects the resilient spirit of her community.
Lawrence Winters (Photo courtesy of WDAV-FM)
Lawrence Whisonant (stage name Lawrence Winters) was a pioneering African American opera star who broke racial barriers both nationally and internationally. Whisonant was born in Kings Creek in 1915 — it later became part of the town of Blacksburg. His remarkable career took him across the globe, and he performed until his death in 1965 in Germany.
His voice instructor at Howard University was Todd Duncan, the famous African American baritone that composer George Gershwin selected to play Porgy in his 1935 opera “Porgy and Bess.” He became Duncan’s understudy during a 1942 revival of “Porgy and Bess.” Winters also sang at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s birthday ball in 1943.
The Great Migration out of Hopewell
Gamble and Winters, like many others from the community, left Hopewell in the 1940s and ‘50s to pursue opportunities up North. Their paths aligned with the broader movement known as The Great Migration, in which an estimated 6 million Blacks moved to northern and western cities between 1910 and 1970 to escape racism, segregation, Jim Crow laws and lynchings occurring in the South. They also didn’t want to spend the rest of their lives farming and picking cotton.
In her 2011 masterpiece, “The Warmth of Other Suns,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson described the migration as the greatest untold story of the 20th century.
Welcome home
As Hopewellians migrated to Washington, D.C., New York City and points farther north, they reaped higher-paying jobs, better housing and culturally enriching experiences. Their dignity was restored. But something drew them back to Hopewell, like ships to a lighthouse.
They returned in droves in August of every year to visit relatives and friends, sometimes bearing gifts that reflected their new, prosperous lifestyles and freedom from an unjust South.
Gamble’s family started holding August family reunions in 1966. “There is this insatiable need for people to return to their roots: the place that nourished and supported them,” Gamble said before she died. “That is why I come back.”
The Hopewell community turned the visits into a month-long homecoming celebration, welcoming former residents and their family members with open arms.
“At least three churches in the Hopewell community picked a Sunday in August to serve as the homecoming host,” recalled the Rev. Pat Parker-Reid, a native of King Creek who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hopewell church hosted homecoming on the third Sunday in August.
“We would attend church service at Hopewell and get a meal prepared by the ladies of each church and socialize with family and friends in the front yard,” Parker-Reid said.
An enduring legacy for future generations
In a speech in London during World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”
This is from a declassified National Security Agency newsletter published in 1954, where Chineta Smith Gamble was honored for a promotion. (Photo courtesy of the National Security Agency)
Churchill’s words serve as a call for Hopewell’s new generation to learn its history and recognize how the church and the community nurtured Chineta Smith Gamble, Lawrence Winters and other unsung heroes from Hopewell yet to be discovered. Though they came from a small, tight-knit congregation in rural Cherokee County whose laws deprived members of the rural Black community of full citizenship, their contributions resonated far beyond Hopewell.
Gamble’s top-secret work with the NSA helped shape United States foreign policy and the trajectory of global politics. Winters, with his powerful voice, broke racial barriers and opened doors for Black opera singers on stages both nationally and internationally.
The windows at Hopewell Presbyterian Church are framed by the work of the Black masons who toiled nearly a century ago. (Photo by Kim Smith)
Hopewell was their starting point, a place that nurtured them and laid a human foundation just as strong and enduring as the stones that form this rock church off Highway 5.
Hopewell Presbyterian Church, which is still holding Sunday services, is located at 1473 York Road in Blacksburg, South Carolina.
Dr. Kim Smith is an Associate Professor at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina. Read an article Smith previously wrote about Hopewell Presbyterian Church here.
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