East Side History Series: St. Julian Devine and “The Great Game of Politics”

This portrait of St. Julian Devine
now hangs on the second
floor of the St. Julian Devine
Community Center, just across from the elevator.

by Susan Millar Williams, Ph. D. 

Those who live and work on the East Side know the name St. Julian Devine—it’s the name of the community center located in the old city incinerator, on East Bay Street between Blake and Cooper Streets. But who was the man behind the name. 

According to a plaque at the center, St. Julian Devine was born in Berkeley County on July 5, 1911 but moved to Charleston as a youngster because his father worked for the railroad. He was the seventh of eight children born to Frank and Sarah Wise Devine, and the only one to survive childhood. He attended Burke High School, married Priscilla Theresa Walton in 1935, and fathered ten children. He was active in the A.M.E. church and in several fraternal organizations.

But St. Julian Devine’s most important claim to fame is that he served on the Charleston City Council from 1968 to 1975 as the first African American elected to that position since the end of Reconstruction. In order to understand why this was such an important achievement, you have to know how completely black South Carolinians were shut out of the political process from the 1890s to the 1960s.

St. Julian Devine Community Center 

After the Civil War, in the 1860s, 1870s, and early 1880s, there were black city councilmen in Charleston, black policemen and firemen, black judges, and a black postmaster. But by the time St. Julian Devine came along, African Americans had been removed from these positions and effectively stripped of the right to vote. Those who tried to organize any kind of resistance were targeted, terrorized, and bribed to keep quiet or leave the area. A few black men and women still managed to vote, but not many. In a 1986 interview, Devine recalled that on election days, whites patrolled the streets and threatened blacks they suspected of trying to vote.  

St. Julian Devine’s grandfather, Paul Devine, had been a schoolteacher and a political activist during Reconstruction, when most black people belonged to the Republican party—the “party of Lincoln.” “Stand up for your rights,” Paul Devine told his grandson. “Don’t sell your people for a horse and buggy and an acre of land.”

And so in 1924, young St. Julian Devine joined the Marcus Garvey movement, an international effort to promote social, political, and economic freedom for black people. There were about sixty-five young men in the Charleston chapter, and one of its goals was to teach African Americans skills that could made them independent. Devine took this lesson to heart. He started a moving and hauling business, a grocery store, a filling station, and a furniture store, all of which catered to black customers. But even owning several successful businesses did not make St. Julian Devine immune to political pressure. He lost a lucrative contract hauling books for the Charleston County School District when he pointed out the enormous difference between the resources provided for black and white students. He was later arrested for teaching black citizens how to vote.

This later portriat of St. Julian Devine
hangs near the entrance to the
community center that
bears his name. 

Devine and his friends formed clubs to study the political system. Rather than join the Republican party, which had been more or less crushed in South Carolina, they decided to push for inclusion in the Democratic party, which then controlled state politics and refused to allow black people to vote in its primary elections. Devine joined the Progressive Democrats, the Palmetto Democrats, and the N.A.A.C.P.—the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A white “downtown lawyer” gave him a book called The Great Game of Politics. Devine studied the rules of the game, written and unwritten. He made connections with important men, cut deals, and refused to back down.

St. Julian Devine encouraged his employees to go to school and gave their children a quarter for every A on a report card. He urged people to purchase their own homes and worked to get black students admitted to the local colleges. He pushed the city to hire black policemen, sanitation workers, and school crossing guards. In 1975 he became the first black man in the city’s history to serve as Mayor Pro-Tem. In his later years, he served on the board of the Carolina Art Association and was a founding member of the Palmetto Lowcountry Health Services Agency.

The plaque at the community center notes that St. Julian Devine also loved to draw and paint, and that his works are based on subjects and scenes related to the East Side. I don’t know where those drawings and paintings have ended up, but I hope that someday they will be exhibited and published. 

St. Julian Devine played an important part in Charleston’s municipal history, and now there is a way to hear his story told in his own voice. Winthrop College recently posted an interview conducted by Michael A. Cooke in 1986: https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/oralhistoryprogram/66/. Much of the information in this post is based on that interview, but it’s well worth taking the time to listen to the hour-long discussion between a young man who was a beneficiary of the civil rights movement and an elder statesman who helped to bring that movement into being.