Walter B. Gaither, one of seven children of Fairfield County farmers Walter and Fancie Gaither, and Fannie Mae Little, second daughter born to Anderson County homemaker Molly and mill worker Louvel Little, met at Rock Hill’s Friendship Junior College. After graduating, they married and started a family near Great Falls. Fannie Mae became a teacher, steering generations of students through eighth grade until the mid-1950s when many Black teachers were fired following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling.