“We’re a small organization with a big mission,” Gail Wilson Awan says, as she walks down the second-floor hallway of the historic McClaren Medical Center. “A year ago, we were looking for our niche.”
Awan steps around an old door that’s off its hinges. Her colorful silk scarf catches on a finishing nail. Plaster crunches underfoot.
“And now it’s right here in front of us,” she says.
Awan and her team are a few short months into restoring what will become the McClaren Institute for Health and Quality of Life, the new home of the Urban League of the Upstate.
“This building has existed for a long time,” Awan says. “There’s a long history in this place – a history of people partnering together, working together. Things survive for a reason. But now it’s time for the next phase. Now is this time.”
Back in 1949, Dr. Edward E. McClaren, one of the few Black physicians in the Upstate at the time, built the clinic out of his own pocket to serve a community that was not welcome in white hospitals.
“Dr. McClaren kept meticulous financial records,” Awan says. “He had to. Some of that, I’m sure, is just because of the nature of the person he was. But this was also during Jim Crow segregation. You could be questioned at any time, especially if you had status. He had status.”
The man who worked here, the building itself and the more than 200 women who gave birth here have affirmed Awan’s sense of purpose.
“Health and wellness,” Awan says. “If we don’t have that, we have nothing. That’s why I think this is such an important place.”
As president and CEO of Urban League of the Upstate, Awan leads an organization that fights for economic equality in communities from Pickens to Union counties. In any given day, she covers a lot of ground, literally and figuratively. She takes great comfort in knowing that in less than a year, the Urban League offices and a handful of small businesses will be housed here.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” she says. “But it’s not just about bricks and mortar. It’s more than that.”
The Urban League of the Upstate provides signature national Urban League programs including Project Ready, student academic support and youth development, career and workforce development opportunities, and affordable senior housing.
“Poverty doesn’t discriminate,” Awan says. “All our services are free to the public for those who need them. It’s that simple.”
The exposed beams, the cracked windows, and the crew working — these things converge with the layered past.
“I was thinking about that Kwanzaa principle of Ujima, collective work and responsibility,” Awan says. “Everybody uses their skills and their knowledge for the community. And that’s what we cannot erase about this place.”
She drapes her scarf over her shoulder.
“You’ve got to work to make the world a better place,” she says, “and keep working or die trying. That’s what it’s about. You try and try, and you know that what you put into it – some of it will linger. So the next generation comes along and picks it up.”
She smiles and nods.
“My dad was an athlete,” she says. “He was a sprinter. You know that passing of the baton thing? You go around the track, you run your laps, and you pass the baton, so it doesn’t get dropped. If you have a gift, a talent, you pass it on. You pass it on and then somebody at some point is going to say ‘good job.’ But until then, you keep going.”
