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This week we'll be talking with Timmonsville native Johnny D. Boggs about his latest novel, Bloody Newton: The Town from Hell (2024, Psicom Publishing), his journey from a childhood in the Pee Dee, his life in Santa Fe, New Mexico,and his career as a celebrated author of Western fiction. Bloody Newton has just won for Johnny his tenth Spur Award from The Western Writers of America.

This week we going to explore South Carolina from A to Z. That’s the title of our sister podcast and the title tells you all you need to know about what that podcast does: Letter by letter Walter goes through the South Carolina Encyclopedia, giving you bite-sized takes on the history of the Palmetto State. The challenge he faces for each episode is that it is only one minute long - 145 to 149 words of text to cover the topic.On today's Journal Walter and Alfred are taking five topics from past editions of South Carolina from A to Z and are discussing each at lenght,  giving some of these people and events from our state's history room to "breathe."

This week author and journalist Carolyn Click joins us to talk about her new book, The Cost of the Vote: George Elmore and the Battle for the Ballot (2025, USC Press). Elmore's story is that of a man who believed, with uncommon boldness, that he and other Black Americans were guaranteed the right to vote. He volunteered to become the plaintiff in the NAACP lawsuit that successfully challenged the all-white Democratic primary in South Carolina in 1946.Carolyn centers her story on Elmore, his family, his neighbors, and the activists and lawyers who filed the suit. Although Elmore's court challenge would prove successful, he and his family paid a steep personal price.

This week we'll be talking with Andrew Waters about his latest book, Backcountry War: The Rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton, and Thomas Sumter (2024, Westholme Publishing). In it Andrew weaves the history of three key leaders in the American Revolution into in a single narrative, focusing on the events of 1780 in South Carolina that witnessed their collective ascendance from common soldiers to American legends. It was a time when British victories at Charleston and Camden left the Continental Army in tatters and the entire American South vulnerable to British conquest. Yet in those dark hours, Sumter, Marion, and others like them rose in the swamps and hills of the South Carolina wilderness. Their collective efforts led to the stunning American victory at Cowpens and a stalemate at Guilford’s Courthouse the following year that finally convinced British general Charles Cornwallis to abandon the Carolinas for Virginia and eventually to Yorktown where his beleaguered army surrendered.

This week, we’ll be talking with Bennett Parten, author of Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation (2025, Simon & Schuster).In Somewhere Toward Freedom, Ben reframes this seminal episode in Civil War history. He not only helps us understand how Sherman’s March impacted the war, and what it meant to the enslaved, but also reveals how it laid the foundation for the fledging efforts of Reconstruction.Sherman’s March has remained controversial to this day. Ben Parten helps us understand not just how the March affected the outcome of the Civil War, but also what it meant to the enslaved—and he reveals how the March laid the foundation for the fledging efforts of Reconstruction.s

This week, we’ll be talking with Betsy Teter and Jim Neighbors about their book, North of Main: Spartanburg's Historic Black Neighborhoods of North Dean Street, Gas Bottom, and Back of the College. In this book, co-authors Brenda Lee Pryce, Betsy Teter and Jim Neighbors tell the story of how post-emancipation black districts arose in Spartanburg and how they disappeared. In this episode we will talk about the history of the neighborhoods and introduce you to a few of the pioneering Black men and women who lived and worked in there.

In his book, Aggression and Sufferings: Settler Violence, Native Resistance, and the Coalescence of the Old South, Evan Nooe argues that through the experiences and selective memory of settlers in the antebellum South, white southerners incorporated their aggression against and suffering at the hands of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeast in the coalescence of a regional identity.Nooe join us for a thought-provoking conversation about the complicated history of the interactions between the many native American tribes and European settlers in what is now the American South.

This week we bring you a very special episode of the Journal – we will be remembering our friend and champion of Southern cuisine, Nathalie Dupree, who died on January 13, 2025, at the age of 85. Nathalie visited with us twice during the Journal’s long run as a broadcast program: once in 2011 to talk about her book, Southern Biscuits (2011, Gibbs-Smith) and again in 2013 when she published her grand opus, Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking (2012, Gibbs-Smith).In this episode we will share excerpts from both of those programs, beginning with our conversation on Southern cooking, which was recorded before a studio audience.

In his new novel, Raptors in the Ricelands, Ron Daise unfolds a story in a twenty-first century fictional community near Georgetown, SC - a story which reveals family secrets and conflicts that challenge cultural beliefs. Conveyed in four acts and with chapter names that follow the production stages of Carolina Gold Rice, the novel spans the future, the present, and the past, and fosters a message of connection with African diasporic communities around the globe.Ron joins us to talk about how he created a story that manages to connect the reader with historical accounts of the Orangeburg Massacre; Black church life, particularly in Oconee County, SC as begun during slavery; the launch of White supremacy in Fort Mill, SC; the Reconstruction Era; and the Universal Negro Improvement Association - all within a compelling narative.

On this episode of Walter Edgar's Journal, we’ll be talking with Tracey Todd, the Director of Museums for the Historic Charleston Foundation, and Andrew Agha, an archaeologist working on the site of the Nathaniel Russell house, a National Historic Landmark on Meeting Street. We’ll be talking about the Foundation’s most recent preservation initiative which involves the kitchen house, an ancillary structure that included a kitchen, laundry, and living quarters for the enslaved.Nathaniel Russell arrived in Charleston from Bristol, Rhode Island in 1765 and, thanks to extensive contacts in his home colony, established himself as a successful merchant and trader of captive Africans. In 1808 the Russell family moved to their new townhome at 51 Meeting Street. Accompanying them were as many as eighteen enslaved people who toiled in the work yard, gardens, stable, kitchen and laundry.By uncovering the material history contained in the kitchen house, the Foundation hopes to further illuminate the lives of the men

This week we’ll be talking with former poet laureate of South Carolina, Marjory Wentworth about her new collection of poems entitled One River, One Boat (Evening Post Books, 2024). This collection of occasional poems and essays includes those written about heartbreaking and joyous times in South Carolina’s history and Wentworth’s own life including the deaths of relatives, gubernatorial inaugurations, the Mother Emmanuel AME massacre, Hurricane Hugo, and more.Marjory no longer lives in South Carolina, but it will be obvious in our conversation, as it is in her poetry, that she has deep roots here. And her love of the Lowcountry, as well as her deep understanding of humanity, shines through in One River, One Boat.

Todd Duncan (Porgy) and Anne Brown (Bess), 1935.(Photo courtesy the Ira & Leonore Gershwin Trusts)Dr. Kendra Hamilton’s book, Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess, is a literary and cultural history of a place: the Gullah Geechee Coast, a four-state area that’s one of only a handful of places that can truly be said to be the “cradle of Black culture” in the United States.While there is a veritable industry of books on literary Charleston and on “the lowcountry,” there has never been a comprehensive study of the region’s literary influence, particularly in the years of the Great Migration and the Harlem (and Charleston) Renaissance. With Romancing the Gullah, Kendra Hamilton sheds new light on an only partially told tale.By giving voice to artists and culture makers on both sides of the color line, uncovering buried histories, and revealing secret connections between races amid official practices of Jim Crow, Kendra Hamilton sheds new light on an only partially told tale. Romancing t

Dr. Kendra Hamilton’s book, Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess, is a literary and cultural history of a place: the Gullah Geechee Coast, a four-state area that’s one of only a handful of places that can truly be said to be the “cradle of Black culture” in the United States.While there is a veritable industry of books on literary Charleston and on “the lowcountry,” there has never been a comprehensive study of the region’s literary influence, particularly in the years of the Great Migration and the Harlem (and Charleston) Renaissance. With Romancing the Gullah, Kendra Hamilton sheds new light on an only partially told tale. By giving voice to artists and culture makers on both sides of the color line, uncovering buried histories, and revealing secret connections between races amid official practices of Jim Crow, Kendra Hamilton sheds new light on an only partially told tale. Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess that will satisfy the book lover and the scholar.

Abraham Lincoln, February 9, 1864(Anthony Berger / Library of Congress)This week, we offer you an encore of an episode from our broadcast archive: A fascinating conversation with Dr. Vernon Burton, the Judge Matthe w J. Perry Jr. Distinguished Professor of History at Clemson University, and Dr. Peter Eisenstadt, affiliate scholar in the Department of History at Clemson University.Walter will be talking with Peter and Vernon about their book, Lincoln’s Unfinished Work: The New Birth of Freedom from Generation to Generation, a collection of essays from a conference that they directed at Clemson University which discussed many of the dimensions of Lincoln’s “unfinished work” as a springboard to explore the task of political and social reconstruction in the United States from 1865 to the present day.The conference was not solely about Lincoln, or the immediate unfinished work of Reconstruction, or the broader unfinished work of America coming to terms with its tangled history of race; it investigated all

"Where the Shrimp Pickers Live," 1940, oil on canvas.(Dusti Bongé (1903-93) / Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS. Gift of Dusti Bongé Art; Foundation, Inc. 1999.012 )This week we will be talking with Jonathan Stuhlman and Martha Severens about their book, Southern/Modern: Rediscovering Southern Art from the First Half of the Twentieth Century (2024, UNC Press). Jonathan Stuhlman is the Senior Curator of American Art at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, and Martha Severens is in independent scholar based in the upstate of South Carolina. Together they have created a book that springs from an exhibition at the Mint but is so much more than just a catalog for the exhibit.Featuring twelve essays, this lavishly illustrated volume includes all the works from the exhibition and assesses a broader body of contextual pieces to offer a fascinating, multipronged look at modernism's thriving presence in the South—until now, something largely overlooked in histories of American art.

Photomontage of members of the first South Carolina legislature following the Civil War.( Library of Congress)In their book, Reconstruction beyond 150: Reassessing the New Birth of Freedom, Vernon Burton and Brent Morris have brought together the best new scholarship, synthesizing social, political, economic, and cultural approaches to understanding a crucial period in our country’s history. They talk with us about how the their project came about, and about how many "reconstructions" our country has seen since the Civil War.

(Timothy J / Flickr )This week, we will be talking with Dr. Judith Bainbridge about her book, A Short History of Greenville (2024, USC Press). The book is a concise and engaging history that traces Greenville, SC's development from backcountry settlement to one of America's best small citiesIn our conversation with Judith we will concentrate the growth Greenville's textile industry and its demise, the economic decline of the city, and its rebirth as a haven for business and tourism in the twenty-first century.

In his new book, The Miraculous Art of Jazz, Benjamin Franklin V, Distinguished Professor of English, Emeritus, at the University of South Carolina, has gathered reviews of hundreds of recordings written over his 40-year career as a jazz writer.In our conversation his love for jazz and blues shines through. And the reviews he has collected in his book are as vital and important as ever – for listeners new to Jazz as well as long-time listeners who want to take a deeper dive into the music.

J. Drew Lanham, Ornithologist, Naturalist, and Writer, 2022 MacArthur Fellow, Clemson, SC( John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)This week, we will be talking with J. Drew Lanham, about his new book, Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves (2024, Hub City Press). The book is a sensuous collection of Drew's signature mix of poetry and prose, a lush journey into wildness and Black being. Drew Lanham notices nature through seasonal shifts, societal unrest, and deeply personal reflection and traces a path from bitter history to present predicaments, mining along the way the deep connection to ancestors through the living world.

"Ichnography of Charleston, South Carolina"(Library of Congress)For centuries residents of Charleston, SC, have made many attempts, both public and private, to manipulate the landscape of the low-lying peninsula on which Charleston sits, surrounded by wetlands, to maximize drainage, and thus buildable land and to facilitate sanitation. In her book, Lowcountry at High Tide: A History of Flooding, Drainage, and Reclamation in Charleston, South Carolina (2020, USC Press), Christina Rae Butler uses three hundred years of archival records to show not only the alterations to the landscape past and present, but also the impact those efforts have had on the residents at various socio-economic levels throughout its history.In this encore of a broadcast conversation from 2020, Butler explores the ways in which Charleston has created land with Dr. Edgar, and they talk about challenges facing the city in the face of rising sea levels.

One of the Davis brothers who operated the Davis Battery Electric company in Greenville, 1930. (Courtesy of Bobbie Jean Rovner, Greenville)This week we will be talking with Diane Vecchio about her book, Peddlers, Merchants, and Manufacturers: How Jewish Entrepreneurs Built Economy and Community in Upcountry South Carolina (2024, USC Press).In the book, Diane examines the diverse economic experiences of Jews who settled in Upcountry (now called Upstate) South Carolina. Like other parts of the so-called New South, the Upcountry was a center of textile manufacturing and new business opportunities that drew entrepreneurial energy to the region. Working with a rich set of oral histories, memoirs, and traditional historical documents, she explores Jewish community development and describes how Jewish business leaders also became civic leaders and affected social, political, and cultural life. The Jewish community's impact on all facets of life across the Upcountry is vital to understanding the growth of today's Spa

Cover illustration from Payne-ful Business: Charleston’s Journey to Truth (2024, Evening Post Books)(Painting by John W. Jones)Margaret Seidler thought she knew her family’s history. Then, a genealogical search on-line led her to connect with a cousin who, unlike Margaret, was Black. Determined to find as much as she could about her lineage, Margaret soon came face to face with more than just an expanded family tree. And what she found led her to devote years to historical research and many difficult conversations about the centrality of the institution of slavery in Charleston, and the part some of her ancestors played in helping it flourish. This week we talk with Margaret Seidler about how this journey into history challenged her and about her new book, Payne-ful Business: Charleston’s Journey to Truth (2024, Evening Post Books).In the book, Seidler has written about the realities of Charleston’s racial history while highlighting the historians, journalists, and community members who work to reconc

In 1976, the Cowpens, SC, Bicentennial Committee decided that the next town festival would be called the Mighty Moo Festival in honor of former crewmen of the USS Cowpens WWII aircraft carrier. Over the years since, many veterans who served on the ship during the war have attended the festival along with their families. Today, the town continues to celebrate the service of the carrier each father's day.In his book, The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, Nathan Canestaro tells the story of the ship and its untested crew who earned a distinguished combat record and beat incredible odds to earn 12 battle stars in the Pacific.Nathan joins us this week to talk about The Might Moo.

Two of four slave cabins restored at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston. May 17, 2023(Victoria Hansen / South Carolina Public Radio)This week we're talking with Joseph McGill and Herb Frazier, authors of Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery.Since founding the Slave Dwelling Project in 2010, Joseph McGill has been spending the night in slave dwellings throughout the South, but also the North and the West, where people are often surprised to learn that such structures exist. Events and gatherings arranged around these overnight stays have provided a unique way to understand the complex history of slavery. McGill and Frazier talk with us about how the project got started and about the sometimes obscured or ignored aspects of the history in the United States.

Bombardment of Fort Sumter(Artist unknown / From the collections of Fort Sumter Fort Moultrie National Historical Park)This week we'll be talking with Richard Hatcher, author of the book, Thunder in the Harbor: Fort Sumter and the Civil War. Construction of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor began after British forces captured and occupied Washington during the War of 1812 via a naval attack. The fort was still incomplete in 1861 when the Battle of Fort Sumter occurred, sparking the American Civil War.In writing Thunder in the Harbor, Rick Hatcher conducted the first modern study to document the fort from its origins up to its transfer to the National Park Service in 1948.

The 1768 Charleston lighthouse( Courtesy of Kevin Duffus)This week, we'll be talking with author Kevin Duffus about his book, The 1768 Charleston Lighthouse : Finding the Light in the Fog of History.Charleston’s first lighthouse was established on Middle Bay Island in 1768. The history of the lighthouse, however, has been lost in a fog of misinformation. Kevin Duffus conducted extensive research for his book and has been able to reconstruct the history of America’s seventh – and tallest at the time – lighthouse. Kevin will tell us about the structure's distinctive architecture inspired by Charleston's St. Michael's Church, the ingenious Irishman who designed and built it, its variety of lighting systems, its involvement in three wars, and is tragic end.

Casper George Garrett and Anna Marie Garrett, who are known in the book as Papa and Mama, are seen with four of their children, circa 1897. (Courtesy David Nicholson)In his book, The Garretts of Columbia: A Black South Carolina Family from Slavery to the Dawn of Integration, David Nicholson tells the story of his great-grandparents, Casper George Garrett and his wife, Anna Maria, and their family.A multigenerational story of hope and resilience, The Garretts of Columbia is an American history of Black struggle, sacrifice, and achievement - a family history as American history, rich with pivotal events viewed through the lens of the Garretts's lives.

Boston Tea Party, State House Mural, Boston, Mass.(Detroit Publishing Company postcards / NY Public Library)On the Journal this week we will be talking with Robert James Fichter about his book, Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773–1776.Fitcher says that despite the so-called Boston Tea Party in 1773, two large shipments of tea from the East India Company survived and were ultimately drunk in North America. Their survival shaped the politics of the years ahead, impeded efforts to reimburse the company for the tea lost in Boston Harbor, and hinted at the enduring potency of consumerism in revolutionary politics.

This week we talk with Claudia Smith Brinson about her new book, Injustice in Focus: The Civil Rights Photography of Cecil Williams (2023, USC Press). Claudia's rich research, interviews, and prose, offer a firsthand account of South Carolina's fight for civil rights and tells the story of Cecil Williams's life behind the camera. The book also features eighty of William’s photographs.Cecil Williams is one of the few Southern Black photojournalists of the civil rights movement. Born and raised in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Williams worked at the center of emerging twentieth-century civil rights activism in the state, and his assignments often exposed him to violence perpetrated by White law officials and ordinary citizens. Williams's story is the story of the civil rights era.

A statue of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the founder of St. Augustine, stands outside the Lightner Museum.(Joe Shlabotnik / Flickr)In this episode, we'll talk with Prof. Kevin Kokomoor about his book, La Florida: Catholics, Conquistadores, and Other American Origin Stories.Spanish sailors discovering the edges of a new continent, greedy, violent conquistadors quickly moving in to find riches, and Catholic missionaries on their search for religious converts: these forces of Spanish colonialism in Florida helped spark British plans for colonization of the continent and influenced some of the most enduring traditions of the larger Southeast. The key history presented in the book challenges the general assumption that whatever is important or interesting about this country is a product of its English past.

George SingletonThis week we have a fun conversation with author George Singleton about his new book Asides: Occasional Essays on Dogs, Food, Restaurants, Bars, Hangovers, Jobs, Music, Family Trees, Robbery, Relationships, Being Brought Up Questionably, Et Cetera. It's a collection of fascinating and curious essays, in which Singleton explains how he came to be a writer (he blames barbecue), why he still writes his first draft by hand (someone stole his typewriter), and what motivated him to run marathons (his father gave him beer). In eccentric world-according-to-George fashion, Laugh-In’s Henry Gibson is to blame for Singleton’s literary education, and Aristotle would’ve been a failed philosopher had he grown up in South Carolina.

Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim synagogue( www.kkbe.org)Founded in 1749, Charleston, South Carolina's (KKBE) is one of the oldest congregations in America, and is known as the birthplace of American Reform Judaism. Their sanctuary is the oldest in continuous use for Jewish worship in America. The congregation's president, Naomi Gorstein, and Harlan Greene, historian, join us to trace the history of Jewish life in Charleston, which goes right back to the founding of the city. We'll also talk about the evolution of the KKBE congregation and their plans to celebrate the 275th anniversary of its founding in 2024.

"Law enforcement officers stand beside a captured moonshine still"(National Park Service)This week we'll be talking with Kathryn Smith, author of Methodists & Moonshiners: Another Prohibition Expedition Through the South…with Cocktail Recipes (2023, Evening Post Books). In her follow-up to 2021's Baptists and Bootleggers, Kathryn once again hit the road - this time following George Washington 1791 trail through the South to Augusta. She digs into the history of the towns along the way, especially during Prohibition. We’ll also talk about some of that history, and about Washington’s Mount Vernon distillery - one of the country’s biggest - which he operated after his presidency. Kathryn will also share some of the colorful stories and tasty cocktails that she discovered in her travels.

Photo illustration from a postcard, Camp Sevier, Greenville, SC; World War I(Special Collections and University Archives, Furman University)Greenville, South Carolina, has become an attractive destination, frequently included in lists of the "Best Small Cities" in America. But, the city's growth and renewal started over 100 years ago, during a remarkable period of progress during which World War I acted as a powerful catalyst.In her book, “Our Country First, Then Greenville" - A New South City during the Progressive Era and World War I (2023, USC Press) Courtney Tollison Hartness explores Greenville's home-front experience of race relations, dramatic population growth (the number of Greenville residents nearly tripled between 1900 and 1930s), the women's suffrage movement, and the contributions of African Americans and women to Greenville's history.In this episode of the Journal, we'll talk with Courtney about how Greenville's experience during this progressive period served to generate massive development

Mules on Church Street, Charleston, SC( Library of Congress)This episode we'll be talking with Christina Rae Butler about Charleston, SC: an equine-powered city - from colonial times to the 20th century - in which horses and mules pervaded all aspects of urban life. And we’ll learn about the people who made their living with these animals—from drivers, grooms, and carriage makers, to farriers, veterinarians, and trainers.Christine is the author of Charleston Horse Power - Equine Culture in the Palmetto City (2023, USC Press). She spoke with us before an audience at All Good Books, in Five Points, Columbia, SC.As well as being a professor of Historic Preservation at the American College of Building Arts in Charleston, Christina is an adjunct faculty member at the College of Charleston in the Historic Preservation and Community Planning Program. She is also the owner/operator of Butler Preservation LLC, and she works as a barn shift manager for Palmetto Carriage Works in Charleston.

Kosher collards and kugel.(Forrest Clonts)On this edition of The Journal, Rachel Gordin Barnett and Lyssa Kligman Harvey tell some of the stories and recipes from their book, Kugels & Collards: Stories of Food, Family, and Tradition in Jewish South Carolina (2023, USC Press). In the book, Lyssa and Rachel celebrate the unique and diverse food history of Jewish South Carolina. They have gathered stories and recipes from diverse Jewish sources – including Sephardic and Ashkenazi families who have been in the state for hundreds of years as well as more recent immigrants from Russia and Israel.In our conversation today, we’ll explore how these cherished dishes were influenced by available ingredients and complemented by African American and regional culinary traditions.

The international African American Museum at Gadsden's Wharf in Charleston is scheduled to open June 27, 2023.(IAAM / Provided)This week we will talk with Dr. Bernard Powers about the establishment of the International African American Museum in Charleston, SC. Bernie powers is professor emeritus of history at the College of Charleston and is director of the college’s Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston. He is also on the Board of Directors of the International African American Museum.Bernie is in a unique position to tell the story of the Museum, as he has been involved in the efforts to create the institution from the start - 23 years ago. He will talk with us about those efforts, the evolution of the concept behind the museum, and about some of the stories that the museum strives to tell.

Group of Union officers who escaped from Confederate prison at Columbia, S.C., in the fall of '64 also three guides procured in the mountains of Tennessee.(Library of Congress )In Captured Freedom (2023, Steve Procko), author Steve Procko tells the true story of nine Union prisoners-of-war who escaped from a Confederate prison in Columbia, South Carolina, in November 1864, and traveled north in brutal winter conditions more than 300 miles with search parties and bloodhounds hot on their trail. On the difficult journey they relied on the help of enslaved men and women, as well as Southerners who sympathized with the North, before finally reaching Union lines in Knoxville, Tennessee, on New Years Day 1865.On that day, hoping to commemorate what they had accomplished, the nine officers and their three mountain guides found a local photographer and posed together for a photograph. The instant, frozen in time, showed twelve ragged men with determination strong on their faces – a compelling image that moved Steve

In 1722, Mark Catesby stepped ashore in Charles Town in the Carolina colony. Over the next four years, this young naturalist made history as he explored America’s natural wonders, collecting and drawing plants and animals which had never been seen back in the Old World. Nine years later Catesby produced his magnificent and groundbreaking book, The Natural History of Carolina, the first-ever illustrated account of American flora and fauna.In this episode of the Journal we talk with Patrick Dean, author of Nature's Messenger: Mark Catesby and His Adventures in a New World (2023, Simon & Schuster). As Dean will tell us, Catesby was a pioneer in many ways, with his careful attention to the knowledge of non-Europeans in America—the enslaved Africans and Native Americans who had their own sources of food and medicine from nature— which set him apart from other Europeans of his time.

Arthur and Joel Springarn( Arthur Springarn: Library of Congress; Joel Springarn: unknown)In her book, The Spingarn Brothers: White Privilege, Jewish Heritage, and the Struggle for Racial Equality (2023, Johns Hopkins University), Katherine Reynolds Chaddock tells a story that many today might see as unlikely: two Jewish brothers in New York, privileged in some ways but considered “the other” by many in society, find common cause with African Americans suffering from racial discrimination. And, Joel and Arthur Spingarn become leaders in the struggle for racial equality and equality – even serving as presidents of the NAACP.Joel and Arthur had very different personalities, interests, and professional goals. Yet together they would become essential leaders in the struggle for racial justice and equality, serving as presidents of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, exposing inequities, overseeing key court cases, and lobbying presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy

Dr. Eric Crawford(Travis Bell / Courtesy of Dr. Crawford)This week, Dr. Eric Crawford, a Gullah/Geechee scholar and Associate Professor of Musicology at Claflin University in Orangeburg, joins us to talk about Gullah culture and about editing a second edition of the late Dr. Wilbur Cross’ book, Gullah Culture in America (Blair, 2022).The book chronicles the history and culture of the Gullah people, African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of the American South, telling the story of the arrival of enslaved West Africans to the sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia; the melding of their African cultures, which created distinct creole language, cuisine, traditions, and arts; and the establishment of the Penn School, dedicated to education and support of the Gullah freedmen following the Civil War.Musical recordings included in this episode: Claflin University Concert Choir directed by Dr. Charlie Toomer performing "Cum Ba Yuh;" arrangement by Dr. Eric Crawford and used with his permission."This

Adam Parker(Mark Stetler / Courtesy of Adam Parker)Veteran journalist Adam Parker has covered just about everything for The Charleston Post and Courier, though he has spent most of his time writing about race, religion, and the arts. Us: A Journalist's Look at the Culture, Conflict and Creativity of the South (2022, Evening Post Books) is a collection of in-depth articles published over the course of nearly 20 years, and it reveals the breadth and scope of Parker's uncanny ability to pull back the scrim and take a hard look at ourselves and our community.Adam joins us to talk about his life and work, and to share some of the stories that he has written.

"Treaty with the Creeks"( NY Public Library Digital Collections - The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection)The Creek War is one of the most tragic episodes in American history, leading to the greatest loss of Native American life on what is now U.S. soil.Peter Cozzens, author of A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South, tells us the story of the war that shaped the American South, and which would likely not have been won by the fledgling republic without Andrew Jackson’s unbridled ambition, cruelty, and fraught sense of honor and duty.

Ben Beard(Courtesy of the author)In his book, The South Never Plays Itself, author, and film critic Ben Beard explores the history of the Deep South on screen, beginning with silent cinema and ending in the streaming era, from President Wilson to President Trump, from musical to comedy to horror to crime to melodrama. Opinionated, obsessive, sweeping, often combative, sometimes funny―a wild narrative tumble into culture both high and low―Beard attempts to answer the haunting question: what do movies know about the South that we don’t?This is a return visit for Ben – we had so much fun talking about movies last time, we asked him back!

John Martin Taylor( Courtesy of the author)Charleston, South Carolina’s John Martin Taylor is a culinary historian and cookbook author. His first book, Hoppin' John's Lowcountry Cooking, has been continuously in print for thirty years, and his writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Gastronomica.With the release of his latest book, Charleston to Phnom Penh - A Cook's Journal, he joins us for a conversation about his career, his travels, and, of course, food.

"Marion Crossing the Pedee"( William T. Ranney (1813 - 1857) / On loan from Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, to the Florence County Museum, Florence, SC )In this episode Ben Zeigler and Stephen Motte from the Florence County Museum in Florence, SC, talk with us about the legend of Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion. The current exhibition at the museum, Legend: Francis Marion in the Pee Dee, examines the early decades of American Independence, when poets and painters turned General Francis Marion into a mythical figure; part fact, part folk legend. Those efforts were so effective that the cultural impact of their words and images lingers today. Ben and Stephen will help us separate some of the facts from the fiction.

Cecil Williams( Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum )Acclaimed civil rights photographer Cecil Williams, founder of the Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum talks with us this this time, along with Jannie Harriot, the museum’s Executive Director. Cecil began photographing the events and people of the Civil Rights era in the early 1950s and continued through the 1970s, eventually amassing nearly a million images. Now, in 2023, he and Jannie are committed to community engagement and are working to build a new home for the museum. We recently talked with them about the Civil Rights Movement, the importance of South Carolina in the movement, and their efforts to build a new home for the museum.

The hardened frontiersmen Patrick Ferguson challenged - portrayed here on a marker at Kings Mountain National Military Park - proved more than he could handle.(Bob Thompson / Courtesy of the author)Bob Thompson wanted to walk the battlefields of the American Revolution – maybe not all, but a lot of them. Why? Bob’s a retired journalist and had decided awhile back that seeing the places where historical figures walked helped him tell the best story.In his book, Revolutionary Roads: Searching for the War That Made America Independent...and All the Places It Could Have Gone Terribly Wrong (2022, Hachette), he takes readers along, walking history-shaping battlefields from Georgia to Quebec; and hanging out with passionate lovers of revolutionary.In this episode of Walter Edgar’s Journal, Bob talks about one of his favorite battles in New England (Saratoga) and then explores some of the decisive battles that decided the outcome of the Revolution – battles that took place in the Carolinas. And he spotlights

Cypress logging area, Santee River Cypress Lumber Co., Clarendon Co., South Carolina.(The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.)This week we are going to be talking about an innovative strategy undertaken by the town of Sumter, SC, in the early 1920s to try to survive the economic devastation that came about when the boll weevil came to the state devastating the town’s biggest cash crop: cotton. And that innovation involved the entire community of Sumter.As Dr. Jessica Elfenbein will tell us, that little weevil wiped out the main source of revenue in Sumter – and in much of the state as well as the rest of the South. So, when the leaders of the greater Sumter community and area businesses got together, they decided that the best strategy for recovery was to bring in new industries. Industries that would use the abundant supply of timber in the area. And they set up a community-run board to recruit companies to come to Sumter

Woody Collins(Courtesy of the author)People have been catching and eating shrimp off the coast of the Carolinas for centuries. The shrimping industry in South Carolina, however, only started about 100 years ago. And trawling, or “fishing,” for shrimp became a way of life in the Lowcountry, as well as a way of making a living.“Captain Woody” Collins was shrimping for 40 of those years and he has stories to tell.And he’s a pretty good historian, the proof being his book, Where Have All the Shrimp Boats Gone? (2022 SP Books) The book, self-published, is about sold out – but, have no fear, we got Woody in the studio for a lively conversation, sharing his stories, the history of shrimping in South Carolina, and answering the question posed in his book’s title.

Walter Edgar in the studio in 2019 with producer Alfred Turner(Tabitha Safdi / SCETV)Someone once said, “All roads lead to Rome.” Maybe...But longtime historian, author, and radio host Walter Edgar believes it’s a safer bet that all roads pass through South Carolina. And lot of them start here! For almost 23 years Walter Edgar’s Journal has been exploring the arts, culture, and history of South Carolina and the American South, to find out, among other things... the mysteries of okra, how many "Reconstructions" there have been since the Civil War, and why the road through the Supreme Court to civil rights has been so rocky. Beginning June 2023, Walter Edgar, Alfred Turner, and their guests will continue to delve into the arts, culture, and history of the Palmetto State in a new podcast-only version of Walter Edgar’s Journal. Available, on-demand, on our website the podcast will also be available by subscription through the major podcast providers.For this last radio episode, Walter is joined by prod

Scottish colonies in North America(Cene Ketcham / Wikimedia Commons)In his new book, Carolina's Lost Colony: Stuarts Town and the Struggle for Survival in Early South Carolina (2022, USC Press), historian Peter N. Moore examines the dual colonization of Port Royal at the end of the seventeenth century. From the east came Scottish Covenanters, who established the small outpost of Stuarts Town. Meanwhile, the Yamasee arrived from the south and west. These European and Indigenous colonizers made common cause as they sought to rival the English settlement of Charles Town to the north and the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine to the south. Also present were smaller Indigenous communities that had long populated the Atlantic sea islands. It is a global story whose particulars played out along a small piece of the Carolina coast.However, as Moore tells Walter Edgar, religious idealism and commercial realities came to a head as the Scottish settlers made informal alliances with the Yamasee and helped to reinvigorat

Joseph Drew Lanham, onrnithologist, naturalist, and writer, and now a 2022 MacArthur Fellow, in Clemson, S.C.(John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)Edgefield native Drew Lanham wasn’t entirely sure what the phone call from Chicago was about. And, after he heard what the person on the phone had to say, he wasn’t altogether sure he believed the news: Drew had just won a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the “genius grant.”The MacArthur Foundation says that “The 2022 MacArthur Fellows are architects of new modes of activism, artistic practice, and citizen science. They are excavators uncovering what has been overlooked, undervalued, or poorly understood. They are archivists reminding us of what should survive.”Drew Lanham, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University, talks with Walter Edgar about his life, his work, his writing, and about what may lie hopes to achieve through his work.- Originally released12/05/22 -

C. Vann Woodward( UNC Press)With an epic career that spanned two-thirds of the twentieth century, C. Vann Woodward (1908–1999) was a historian of singular importance. A brilliant writer, his work captivated both academic and public audiences. He also figured prominently in the major intellectual conflicts between left and right during the last half of the twentieth century. Woodward's vision still permeates our understandings of the American South and of the history of race relations in the United States.In his fresh and revealing biography, C. Vann Woodward: America's Historian (2022, UNC Press), James Cobb shows, explores how Woodward displayed a rare genius and enthusiasm for crafting lessons from the past that seemed directly applicable to the concerns of the present—a practice that more than once cast doubt on his scholarship. Dr. Cobb talks with Walter Edgar about Woodward and the changing interpretations of Southern history.- Originally released 01/09/23 -News and Music Stations: Fri, May 05, at 12

( Courtesy of the author)With his book, Crécy: Battle of Five Kings (2022, Osprey), Michael Livingston, professor of medieval history at The Citadel, has authored a remarkable new study on the Battle of Crécy, in which the outnumbered English under King Edward III won a decisive victory over the French and changed the course of the Hundred Years War.The Battle of Crécy in 1346 is one of the most famous and widely studied military engagements in history. The repercussions of this battle, in which forces led by England’s King Edward III decisively defeated a far larger French army, were felt for hundreds of years, and the exploits of those fighting reached legendary status. Yet new, groundbreaking research by Michael Livingston has shown that nearly everything that has been written about this dramatic event may be wrong.Michael Livingston talks with Walter Edgar about how he has used archived manuscripts, satellite technologies and traditional fieldwork to reconstruct this important conflict, including the

(Mahdi Abdulrazak / Flickr)Since The Birth of a Nation became the first Hollywood blockbuster in 1915, movies have struggled to reckon with the American South—as both a place and an idea, a reality and a romance, a lived experience, and a bitter legacy. Nearly every major American filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter has worked on a film about the South, from Gone with the Wind to 12 Years a Slave, from Deliverance to Forrest Gump. In The South Never Plays Itself: A Film Buff’s Journey Through the South on Screen (2023, UGA Press), author and film critic B. W. Beard explores the history of the Deep South on screen, beginning with silent cinema and ending in the streaming era. Beard talks with Walter Edgar about what the movies got right, and what stereotypes they created or perpetuate.

"Battle of Camden - death of De Kalb"( The New York Public Library Digital Collections / The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library)In 1780, Camden was the oldest and largest town in the Carolina backcountry. It was strategic to both the British Army and the Patriots in the Revolutionary War. Following a series of strategic errors before and during the Battle of Camden, the Patriot army under command of Major General Horatio Gates was soundly defeated, ushering in changes in military leadership that altered the war’s course. After the battle, Major General Nathanael Greene was promoted to command of the Southern Campaign, and his leadership ultimately led to the evacuation of the British army from Charleston, SC in December 1782.In November of 2022, the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust announced a significant, historic discovery at the Revolutionary War Camden Battlefield. The Trust, acting on behalf of Historic Camden F

Mable Owens Clarke is the sixth-generation steward and matriarch of Soapstone Baptist Church in the rural Pickens County community of Liberia. In 1999, a few days before she died at the age of 104, Mable’s mother, Lula Mae, made her daughter promise never to let the historically Black church close.Mabel Owens Clarke and Carlton Owen, President of the Soapstone Preservation Endowment, join Walter Edgar this week to tell the remarkable story of how Mable set out to keep that promise through her monthly, fundraising fish fries held at the church - and how word of her delicious, traditional foods spread the word about Soapstone Church around the world.Soapstone Baptist Church was founded in the mid-1860s when freed slaves from surrounding South Carolina counties sought a path from being property to owning property. They felt God led them to a rocky outcrop of greenish-black soapstone and the surrounding rolling hills of northern Pickens County. They worked the land and through sales of vegetables and livestock

Battle of the Waxhaws(Dale Watson / SC Battleground Preservation Trust)America’s independence was secured in South Carolina, across its swamps, fields, woods and mountains. These events of 1779-1782 directly led to victory in the Revolutionary War.The Liberty Trail – developed through a partnership between the American Battlefield Trust and the South Carolina Battleground Trust – connects battlefields across South Carolina and tells the stories of this transformative chapter of American history.On this week’s episode of Walter Edgar’s Journal Dr. Edgar talks with Doug Bostick, Exec. Dir and CEO of the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust, and Catherine Noyes, Liberty Trail Program Director for the American Battlefield Trust, about their vision for The Liberty Trail: to permanently protect more than 2,500 acres of battlefield land and ultimately link nearly 80 sites.- Originally broadcast 07/22/22 -News and Music Stations: Fri, Mar 31, at 12 pm; Sat, Apr 01, at 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Fri

Drayton Hall( Drayton Hall Preservation Trust)George McDaniel served as the Executive Director of Drayton Hall, a mid-18th-century plantation located on the Ashley River near Charleston for more than 25 years. His new book, Drayton Hall Stories: A Place and Its People (2022, Evening Post Books) focuses on this historic site’s recent history, using interviews with descendants (both White and Black), board members, staff, donors, architects, historians, preservationists, tourism leaders, and more to create an engaging picture of this one place.McDaniel talks with Walter Edgar about the never-before-shared family moments, major decisions in preservation and site stewardship, and pioneering efforts to transform a Southern plantation into a site for racial conciliation.- Originally released 07/29/22 -

The glass house at Historic Columbia's Boyd Foundation Horticultural Center on the grounds of the Hampton-Preston Mansion in Columbia, SC.( Historic Columbia Foundation)In 1961, the Historic Columbia Foundation was formed. It's goal: to save the the 135-year-old Robert Mills House from demolition and restore it. Over 60 years later, the Foundation manages six properties and continues to embrace new opportunities to preserve places and share complex stories from the past that connect vistors of varied backgrounds with history while inspiring a hopeful future.Historic Columbia’s Boyd Foundation Horticultural Center, located on the grounds of the Hampton-Preston Mansion & Gardens on Blanding Street opened this year. Its greenhouse allows the historic site to serve as a hub for horticultural research and plant propagation, alongside ongoing interpretation, and programming. The greenhouse and gatehouse constructions are based on historic structures that once stood on the property. And, the greenhouse facility se

Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened, and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed.In his book, Black Snow - Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb, Charleston author James M. Scott tells the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: “If we lose the war, we’ll be tried as war criminals.”James Scott talks with Walter Edgar about the development of the B-29, the capture of the Marianas for use as airfields, and the change in strategy from high-altitude daylight “precision” bombing to low-altitude nighttime incendiary bombing. Most importantly, the raid represented a significant moral shift for America, marking the first-time commanders deliberately

(Illustration from Harper's Weekly, August 17, 1861/NY State Library)In War Stuff: The Struggle for Human and Environmental Resources in the American Civil War, her path-breaking work on the American Civil War, Joan E. Cashin explores the struggle between armies and civilians over the resources necessary to wage war.This war 'stuff' included the skills of white Southern civilians, as well as such material resources as food, timber, and housing. At first, civilians were willing to help Confederate or Union forces, but the war took such a toll that all civilians, regardless of politics, began focusing on their own survival. Both armies took whatever they needed from human beings and the material world, which eventually destroyed the region's ability to wage war. In this fierce contest between civilians and armies, the civilian population lost. Cashin draws on a wide range of documents, as well as the perspectives of environmental history and material culture studies.Dr. Cashin talks about this history with Walt

(Tor Books) Dr. Michael Livingston(Super Festivals / Wikimedia Commons)In his latest book, Origins of The Wheel of Time: The Legends and Mythologies that Inspired Robert Jordan (2022, Tor), author Michael Livingston, a professor of medieval literature at The Citadel, takes a deep dive into the real-world history and mythology that inspired the world of the late Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time. This series of books has sold over 100 million copies worldwide and has been adapted as a streaming television series for Prime Video, with season one released in 2021. James Oliver Rigney Jr., whose pen name was Robert Jordan, was a native of Charleston, graduated from The Citadel with a degree in physics. He served two tours in Vietnam with the U.S. Army and received multiple decorations for his service. Michael Livingston’s book is a companion to Jordan’s internationally bestselling series and it delves into the creation of his masterpiece, drawing from interviews and an unprecedented examination of his unpub

The Cannon Street All-Stars watch from the stands at the 1955 Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. (Courtesy of Ramon Jackson and Little League Baseball.)When the 11- and 12-year-olds on the Cannon Street YMCA all-star team registered for a baseball tournament in Charleston, South Carolina, in July 1955, it put the team and the forces of integration on a collision. White teams refused to take the field with the Cannon Street all-stars, the first Black Little League team in South Carolina.The Cannon Street team won two tournaments by forfeit. If they won the regional tournament in Rome, Georgia, they would have advanced to the Little League World Series. But Little League officials ruled the team ineligible to play in the tournament because they had advanced by winning on forfeit and not on the field, denying the boys their dream. This became a national story for a few weeks but then faded and disappeared altogether as Americans read of other civil rights stories, including the horrific

Abraham Lincoln, February 9, 1864(Anthony Berger / Library of Congress)In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln promised that the nation’s sacrifices during the Civil War would lead to a “new birth of freedom.” Lincoln’s Unfinished Work: The New Birth of Freedom from Generation to Generation (2022, LSU Press) analyzes how the United States has attempted to realize—or subvert—that promise over the past century and a half. The volume is not solely about Lincoln, or the immediate unfinished work of Reconstruction, or the broader unfinished work of America coming to terms with its tangled history of race; it investigates all three topics.Editors Vernon Burton and Peter Eisenstadt talk with Walter Edgar about the wide-ranging ideas explored in this volume.News and Music Stations: Fri, Feb 03, 12 pm; Sat, Feb 04, 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Fri, Feb 03, 12 pm; Sun, Feb 05, 4 pm

(Library of Congress, from Central Michigan University, Clark Historical Library)(Originally broadcast on 03/08/19) - In this week's episode of Walter Edgar's Journal, Richard Gergel details the impact of the 1946 blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard on both President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring, and traces their influential roles in changing the course of America's civil rights history.On February 12 of 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran of World War II, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver’s disrespectful treatment of him. Woodard, in uniform, was arrested by the local police chief, Lynwood Shull, and beaten and blinded while in custody.President Harry Truman was outraged by the incident. He established the first presidential commission on civil rights and his Justice Department filed criminal charges against Shull. In July 1948, following his Commission’s recommendation, Truman ordered a

C. Vann Woodward( UNC Press)With an epic career that spanned two-thirds of the twentieth century, C. Vann Woodward (1908–1999) was a historian of singular importance. A brilliant writer, his work captivated both academic and public audiences. He also figured prominently in the major intellectual conflicts between left and right during the last half of the twentieth century. Woodward's vision still permeates our understandings of the American South and of the history of race relations in the United States.In his fresh and revealing biography, C. Vann Woodward: America's Historian (2022, UNC Press), James Cobb shows, explores how Woodward displayed a rare genius and enthusiasm for crafting lessons from the past that seemed directly applicable to the concerns of the present—a practice that more than once cast doubt on his scholarship. Dr. Cobb talks with Walter Edgar about Woodward and the changing interpretations of Southern history.01/09/23

(Virginia State Parks [CC BY 2.0] via Flickr)How did conceptions of a tradition-bound, "timeless" South shape Americans' views of themselves and their society's political and cultural fragmentations, following the turbulent 1960s? In his book, The South of the Mind: American Imaginings of White Southerness, 1960–1980 (2018, UGA Press), Zachary J. Lechner bridges the fields of southern studies and southern history in an effort to answer that question. Wide-ranging chapters detail the iconography of the white South during the civil rights movement; hippies' fascination with white southern life; the Masculine South of George Wallace, Walking Tall, and Deliverance; the differing southern rock stylings of the Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd; and the healing southerners of Jimmy Carter. The South of the Mind demonstrates that we cannot hope to understand recent U.S. history without exploring how people have conceived the South, as well as what those conceptualizations have omitted.-(Originally released

Duke University football coach Wallace Wade at practice in the 1930s. Duke was a member of the Southern Conference from 1928 to 1953.(Duke University Archives / Flickr)In the winter of 1921, fifteen prominent colleges and universities met in Atlanta, Georgia, to form a new organization to promote intercollegiate athletics competition. That organization, soon to become known as the Southern Conference (SoCon), remains a strong and viable member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) 100 years later. Southern Conference roots may be found throughout college athletics from the Mid-Atlantic region to the deep South. All but three of the current Southeastern Conference (SEC) members once belonged to the Southern Conference. Likewise, a majority of present Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) institutions formerly were SoCon members.This time on Walter Edgar’s Journal, former SoCon commissioner John Iamarino, author of A Proud Athletic History: 100 Years of The Southern Conference (2021, Mercer Univers

"Battle of Camden - death of De Kalb"( The New York Public Library Digital Collections / The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library)In 1780, Camden was the oldest and largest town in the Carolina backcountry. It was strategic to both the British Army and the Patriots in the Revolutionary War. Following a series of strategic errors before and during the Battle of Camden, the Patriot army under command of Major General Horatio Gates was soundly defeated, ushering in changes in military leadership that altered the war’s course. After the battle, Major General Nathanael Greene was promoted to command of the Southern Campaign, and his leadership ultimately led to the evacuation of the British army from Charleston, SC in December 1782.In November of 2022, the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust announced a significant, historic discovery at the Revolutionary War Camden Battlefield. The Trust, acting on behalf of Historic Camden F

Joseph Drew Lanham, onrnithologist, naturalist, and writer, and now a 2022 MacArthur Fellow, in Clemson, S.C.(John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)Edgefield native Drew Lanham wasn’t entirely sure what the phone call from Chicago was about. And, after he heard what the person on the phone had to say, he wasn’t altogether sure he believed the news: Drew had just won a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the “genius grant.”The MacArthur Foundation says that “The 2022 MacArthur Fellows are architects of new modes of activism, artistic practice, and citizen science. They are excavators uncovering what has been overlooked, undervalued, or poorly understood. They are archivists reminding us of what should survive.”Drew Lanham, the Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University, talks with Walter Edgar about his life, his work, his writing, and about what may lie hopes to achieve through his work.

The Black River at Kingstree, SC(Robin M. Keith / Wikimedia Commons)(Originally broadcast 04/22/22) - The Open Space Institute’s mission is to protect scenic, natural, and historic landscapes to provide public enjoyment, conserve habitat and working lands, and sustain communities. Over the past 40 years, the institute has saved 2,285,092 acres of land through direct acquisition, grants, and loans. Having begun by focusing on land in New York State, they have in recent years saved significant, complex, and large-scale tracts in South Carolina, Florida, and New Jersey through direct acquisitions.In December 2021, the Open Space Institute (OSI) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) announced the purchase of three properties along the Santee River in South Carolina, expanding the largest contiguous block of protected coastal lands in the state. OSI’s Vice-President and Director of the Southeast, Maria Whitehead, joins Walter Edgar to talk about the acquisition and about the Institute’s plans for land protection

FILE - An aerial view taken from a Coast Guard helicopter showing the continuing effects of flooding caused by Hurricane Joaquin in areas surrounding Charleston, S.C., Oct. 5, 2015. (U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Stephen Lehmann / U.S. Coast Guard )The signs are there: our coastal cities are increasingly susceptible to flooding as the climate changes. Charleston, South Carolina, is no exception, and is one of the American cities most vulnerable to rising sea levels. Lowcountry at High Tide: A History of Flooding, Drainage, and Reclamation in Charleston, South Carolina (USC Press, 2010) is the first book to deal with the topographic evolution of Charleston, its history of flooding from the seventeenth century to the present, and the efforts made to keep its populace high and dry, as well as safe and healthy.For centuries residents have made many attempts, both public and private, to manipulate the landscape of the low-lying peninsula on which Charleston sits, surrounded by wetlands, to maximize drai

The Cannon Street All-Stars watch from the stands at the 1955 Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. (Courtesy of Ramon Jackson and Little League Baseball.)When the 11- and 12-year-olds on the Cannon Street YMCA all-star team registered for a baseball tournament in Charleston, South Carolina, in July 1955, it put the team and the forces of integration on a collision. White teams refused to take the field with the Cannon Street all-stars, the first Black Little League team in South Carolina.The Cannon Street team won two tournaments by forfeit. If they won the regional tournament in Rome, Georgia, they would have advanced to the Little League World Series. But Little League officials ruled the team ineligible to play in the tournament because they had advanced by winning on forfeit and not on the field, denying the boys their dream. This became a national story for a few weeks but then faded and disappeared altogether as Americans read of other civil rights stories, including the horrific

(National Archives and Records Administration)November 11th is currently celebrated as Veteran’s Day in the United States. But it was first known here, as it still is around the world, as Armistice Day – the day in 1918 when Germany and its allies signed the armistice to end World War I. Armistice Day is still a very important day of commemoration throughout Europe.In 2014, the 100th anniversary of the start of The Great War, Paul MacKenzie, the Caroline McKissick Dial Professor of History at USC, an expert on the war, joined us to look back on the beginning of The War to End All Wars.- (Originally broadcast 11-11-14) -News and Music Stations: Fri, Nov 11, 12 pm; Sat, Nov 12, 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Fri, Nov 11, 12 pm; Sun, Nov 13, 4 pm

Hootie and the Blowfish(Micheal McLaughlin / Courtesy of the University of South Carolina Press)In 1985, Mark Bryan heard Darius Rucker singing in a dorm shower at the University of South Carolina and asked him to form a band. For the next eight years, Hootie & the Blowfish—completed by bassist Dean Felber and drummer Soni Sonefeld—played every frat house, roadhouse, and rock club in the mid-Atlantic and Southeast, becoming one of the biggest independent acts in the region.In Only Wanna Be with You (2022, USC Press), Tim Sommer, the ultimate insider who signed Hootie to Atlantic Records, pulls back the curtain on a band that defied record-industry odds to break into the mainstream by playing hacky sack music in the age of grunge.He chronicles the band's indie days; the chart-topping success—and near-cancelation—of their major-label debut, cracked rear view; the year of Hootie (1995) when the album reached no. 1, the "Only Wanna Be with You" music video collaboration with ESPN's SportsCenter became a s

( Courtesy of the author)With his book, Crécy: Battle of Five Kings (2022, Osprey), Michael Livingston, professor of medieval history at The Citadel, has authored a remarkable new study on the Battle of Crécy, in which the outnumbered English under King Edward III won a decisive victory over the French and changed the course of the Hundred Years War.The Battle of Crécy in 1346 is one of the most famous and widely studied military engagements in history. The repercussions of this battle, in which forces led by England’s King Edward III decisively defeated a far larger French army, were felt for hundreds of years, and the exploits of those fighting reached legendary status. Yet new, groundbreaking research by Michael Livingston has shown that nearly everything that has been written about this dramatic event may be wrong.Michael Livingston talks with Walter Edgar about how he has used archived manuscripts, satellite technologies and traditional fieldwork to reconstruct this important conflict, including the

Okra for sale at the North Charleston Farmers' Market.(Ryan Johnson / Flickr)Chris Smith’s first encounter with okra was of the worst kind: slimy fried okra at a greasy-spoon diner.Despite that dismal introduction, Smith developed a fascination with okra, and as he researched the plant and began to experiment with it in his own kitchen, he discovered an amazing range of delicious ways to cook and eat it, along with ingenious and surprising ways to process the plant from tip-to-tail: pods, leaves, flowers, seeds, and stalks. Smith talked okra with chefs, food historians, university researchers, farmers, homesteaders, and gardeners. The summation of his experimentation and research comes together in The Whole Okra: A Seed to Stem Celebration (2019, Chelsea Green), a lighthearted but information-rich collection of okra history, lore, recipes, craft projects, growing advice, and more.The Whole Okra includes classic recipes such as fried okra pods as well as unexpected delights including okra seed pancakes and o

The smoke was thick, the music was loud, and the beer was flowing. In the fast-and-loose 1980s, Jackson Station Rhythm & Blues Club in Hodges, South Carolina, was a festive late-night roadhouse filled with people from all walks of life who gathered to listen to the live music of high-energy performers. Housed in a Reconstruction-era railway station, the blues club embraced local Southern culture and brought a cosmopolitan vibe to the South Carolina backcountry.Over the years, Jackson Station became known as one of the most iconic blues bars in the South. It offered an exciting venue for local and traveling musical artists, including Widespread Panic, the Swimming Pool Qs, Bob Margolin, Tinsley Ellis, and R&B legend Nappy Brown, who loved to keep playing long after sunrise.The good times ground to a terrifying halt in the early morning hours of April 7, 1990. A brutal attack—an apparent hate crime—on the owner Gerald Jackson forever altered the lives of all involved.- Originally released 04/30/21 -News and

In their new book, Taste the State: South Carolina's Signature Foods, Recipes, and Their Stories (2021, USC Press), authors Kevin Mitchell and David S. Shields present the cultural histories of native ingredients and showcase the evolution of the dishes and the variety of preparations that have emerged. They talk with Walter Edgar about true Carolina cooking in all of its cultural depth, historical vividness, and sumptuous splendor—from the plain home cooking of sweet potato pone to Lady Baltimore cake worthy of a Charleston society banquet.- Originally broadcast 01/21/22 -News and Music Stations: Fri, Oct 07, at 12 pm; Sat, Oct 08, 2022, at 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Fri, Oct 07, at 12 pm; Sun, Oct 09, 2022, at 4 pm

Poster: Rural Electrification Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture( Library of Congress)Early in the twentieth century, for-profit companies such as Duke Power and South Carolina Electric and Gas brought electricity to populous cities and towns across South Carolina, while rural areas remained in the dark. It was not until the advent of publicly owned electric cooperatives in the 1930s that the South Carolina countryside was gradually introduced to the conveniences of life with electricity. Today, electric cooperatives serve more than a quarter of South Carolina's citizens and more than seventy percent of the state's land area.In his book, Empowering Communities: How Electric Cooperatives Transformed Rural South Carolina (USC Press, 2022), Dr. Lacy K. Ford and co-author Jared Bailey tell the story of the rise of "public" power – electricity serviced by member-owned cooperatives and sanctioned by federal and state legislation. It is a complicated saga, encompassing politics, law, finance, and rural

Sculpture of an enslave woman at Brookgreen Gardens, a vast complex of sculpture gardens, ecosystem trails, a wildlife preserve and a small zoo on four former rice plantations in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina.(Carol M. Highsmith / Library of Congress)In 2022, USC Press published Brookgreen Gardens: Ever Changing. Simply Amazing. More than just a beautiful coffee table book highlighting the art and fauna of Brookgreen, the volume tells the story of the creation and growth of Brookgreen Gardens, as well as stories of the peoples who lived on and worked the land in the past.Walter Edgar talks with President and CEO Page Kiniry and Ron Daise, VP of Creative Education about the history and mission of Brookgreen Gardens.News and Music Stations: Fri, Sep 09, 12 pm; Sat, Sep 10, 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Fri, Sep 09, 12 pm; Sun, Sep 11, 4 pm

Dr. Constance Schulz(John Allen / University of SC)Dr. Constance Schulz, Distinguished Professor Emerita of the University of South Carolina’s Public History Program, joins Walter Edgar this week to talk about the importance of “public history” and how it has evolved as a field of study over the last 50 years. Schulz is the winner of the Robert Kelley Memorial Award from the National Council on Public History.She is currently at work on The Pinckney Papers Project – based on two digital documentary editions: The Papers of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and Harriott Pinckney Horry and The Papers of the Revolutionary Era Pinckney Statesmen – which explores one of our South Carolina’s most prominent families, specifically examining the importance of women's social connections and relationships during that time.- Originallly released 05/30/22 - News and Music Stations: Fri, Sept 16, 12 pm; Sat, Sept 17, 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Fri, Sept 16, 12 pm; Sun, Sept 18, 4 pm

Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, c. 1910.jpg( Courtesy of Middleton Place)Alice Ravenel Huger Smith (1876–1958), a leader of the Charleston Renaissance, immortalized the beauty and history of the Carolina Lowcountry and helped propel the region into an important destination for cultural tourism.In the book Alice: Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Charleston Renaissance Artist, Dwight McInvail and his co-authors draw on unpublished papers, letters, and interviews to create a personal account of the artist’s life and work. The book is enriched by over 200 illustrations of paintings, prints, sketches, and photographs, many shared for the first time.McInvaill and internationally renowned South Carolina Artist Jonathan Green join Walter Edgar in conversation about Alice Ravenel Huger Smith and her work.- Originally released 07/09/21 -

(Alexandra Olgin)Shrimp, one of our most delicious food sources, was once only considered worthy of bait. In her new book, Shrimp Tales: Small Bites of History (2022, Primedia eLaunch), author Beverly Bowers Jennings tells the fascinating story of the shrimp industry, from the shrimp boats and their captains to fishing family lore, tasty recipes and more.Jennings talks with Walter Edgar about what she learned in a decade spent interviewing shrimpers and others associated with commercial shrimping to produce permanent exhibits for the Port Royal Sound Maritime Center and the Coastal Discovery Museum on Hilton Head. That work served as the basis of Shrimp Tales, a book that reveals the old ways of shrimping and celebrates today’s awakening about the foods we eat and the people who make it all happen.- Originally broadcast 05/20/22 -

Aerial photo of a portion of Charleston Harbor and the Port of Charleston.(Dennis Franklin) / US Army)In 2021, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers celebrates the 150th anniversary of its founding. The Corps' Charleston District has a unique and varied program that grows larger every year. The Civil Works, Navigation, Regulatory, Emergency Management, Military, and Interagency and International Services programs serve a diverse group of customers that span not only South Carolina, but also globally, which keeps the staff of more than 240 quite busy.Lt Colonel Andrew Johannes, Charleston District Commander; and Brian Williams, the District’s Civil Works Chief, join Walter Edgar for a conversation on the Corps’ history, its missions, and the many ways its work impacts South Carolina, including the deepening of Charleston Harbor.News and Music Stations: Fri, Dec 17, at 12 pm; Sat, Dec 18, at 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Friday, Dec 17, at 12 pm; Sun, Dec 19, at 4 pm

Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened, and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed.In his book, Black Snow - Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb, Charleston author James M. Scott tells the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: “If we lose the war, we’ll be tried as war criminals.”James Scott talks with Walter Edgar about the development of the B-29, the capture of the Marianas for use as airfields, and the change in strategy from high-altitude daylight “precision” bombing to low-altitude nighttime incendiary bombing. Most importantly, the raid represented a significant moral shift for America, marking the first-time commanders deliberately

Stephen Swails( LSU Press)Stephen Atkins Swails is a forgotten American hero. A free Black in the North before the Civil War began, Swails exhibited such exemplary service in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry that he became the first African American commissioned as a combat officer in the United States military. After the war, Swails remained in South Carolina, where he held important positions in the Freedmen’s Bureau, helped draft a progressive state constitution, served in the state senate, and secured legislation benefiting newly liberated Black citizens. Swails remained active in South Carolina politics after Reconstruction until violent Redeemers drove him from the state.After Swails died in 1900, state and local leaders erased him from the historical narrative. Gordon C. Rhea’s biography, Stephen A. Swails: Black Freedom Fighter in the Civil War and Reconstruction (2021, LSU Press, restores Swails’s remarkable legacy. Gordon Rhea talks with Walter Edgar about Swails’s life story, a saga of an in

The glass house at Historic Columbia's Boyd Foundation Horticultural Center on the grounds of the Hampton-Preston Mansion in Columbia, SC.( Historic Columbia Foundation)In 1961, the Historic Columbia Foundation was formed. It's goal: to save the the 135-year-old Robert Mills House from demolition and restore it. Over 60 years later, the Foundation manages six properties and continues to embrace new opportunities to preserve places and share complex stories from the past that connect vistors of varied backgrounds with history while inspiring a hopeful future.Historic Columbia’s Boyd Foundation Horticultural Center, located on the grounds of the Hampton-Preston Mansion & Gardens on Blanding Street opened this year. Its greenhouse allows the historic site to serve as a hub for horticultural research and plant propagation, alongside ongoing interpretation, and programming. The greenhouse and gatehouse constructions are based on historic structures that once stood on the property. And, the greenhouse facility se

Drayton Hall( Drayton Hall Preservation Trust)George McDaniel served as the Executive Director of Drayton Hall, a mid-18th-century plantation located on the Ashley River near Charleston for more than 25 years. His new book, Drayton Hall Stories: A Place and Its People (2022, Evening Post Books) focuses on this historic site’s recent history, using interviews with descendants (both White and Black), board members, staff, donors, architects, historians, preservationists, tourism leaders, and more to create an engaging picture of this one place.McDaniel talks with Walter Edgar about the never-before-shared family moments, major decisions in preservation and site stewardship, and pioneering efforts to transform a Southern plantation into a site for racial conciliation.News and Music Stations: Fri, Jul 29, at 12 pm; Sat, Jul 30, at 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Fri, Jul 29, at 12 pm; Sun, Jul 31, at 4 pm

Battle of the Waxhaws(Dale Watson / SC Battleground Preservation Trust)America’s independence was secured in South Carolina, across its swamps, fields, woods and mountains. These events of 1779-1782 directly led to victory in the Revolutionary War.The Liberty Trail – developed through a partnership between the American Battlefield Trust and the South Carolina Battleground Trust – connects battlefields across South Carolina and tells the stories of this transformative chapter of American history.On this week’s episode of Walter Edgar’s Journal Dr. Edgar talks with Doug Bostick, Exec. Dir and CEO of the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust, and Catherine Noyes, Liberty Trail Program Director for the American Battlefield Trust, about their vision for The Liberty Trail: to permanently protect more than 2,500 acres of battlefield land and ultimately link nearly 80 sites.

FILE(TexasGOPVote.com / Flickr)The Supreme Court is usually seen as protector of our liberties: it ended segregation, was a guarantor of fair trials, and safeguarded free speech and the vote. But this narrative derives mostly from a short period, from the 1930s to the early 1970s. Before then, the Court spent a century largely ignoring or suppressing basic rights, while the fifty years since 1970 have witnessed a mostly accelerating retreat from racial justice.In their book, Justice Deferred - Race and the Supreme Court (2021, Belknap Press), historian Orville Vernon Burton and civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the Court’s race record—a legacy at times uplifting, but more often distressing and sometimes disgraceful. Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the Court’s race jurisprudence.In this episode of Walter Edgar’s Journal, Burton and Derfner tell us many of the sometimes-surprising stories behind the Supreme Court’s rulings.- Originally publishe

A pelican standing in front of a lake in which two other pelicans are already hunting for food. Coloured wood engraving by J W Whimper. (Josiah Wood Whymper (1813–1903) / Wellcome Collection)At once a literary crime novel and an intergenerational family drama, Roy Hoffman’s novel, The Promise of the Pelican (2022, Arcade Crimewise) is set in the multicultural South, where justice might depend on the color of your skin and your immigration status. The protagonist, Hank Weinberg, is a modern-day Atticus Finch, recently retired as a defense attorney in Mobile, Alabama, and a Holocaust survivor, who fled the Nazis as a young child. With his daughter in rehab, he's now taking care of his special needs grandson with the help of Lupita, a young Honduran babysitter. When her brother Julio, an undocumented immigrant, is accused of murder, Hank must return to the courtroom to defend him while also trying to save his daughter and grandson's life from spinning out of controlRoy Hoffman joins Walter Edgar to talk abou

FILE - (Nov. 11, 2008) World War II veteran Harry J. Thomas, right, stands with Brig. Gen. Brett T. Williams, during the singing of the national anthem at a Veterans Day ceremony at the 18th Wing headquarters at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan.(Ryan C. Delcore, U.S. Navy, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)In 2020, Maj. General (Ret.) William F. Grimsley became South Carolina's first Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs. From the beginning, Grimsley and his staff have defined the purpose of the new Department of Veterans’ Affairs as leading and enabling “a state-wide coalition of partners to create and sustain an environment in which Veterans and their families can thrive as valued and contributing members of the South Carolina community and the Nation.”Grimsley talks with Walter Edgar about how the Department strives to achieve that purpose and the way it is expanding and building partnerships to do so.- Originally released 04/15/22 -

(Courtesy of Middleton Place Foundation)Charles Duell inherited the historic properties Middleton Place and the Edmondston-Alston House, Charleston, SC, in 1969. He was 31 years old.A graduate of Yale, he had begun a career in finance on Wall Street. But the circumstances of his sudden inheritance compelled him to leave New York City and move his family to South Carolina. There he would take up the challenge of reviving the houses, gardens, and forestlands of his forebears. He convinced countless relatives, friends, and associates to work with him. Their collective efforts over the last half-century have resulted in a dynamic balance of historic preservation and innovative interpretation. Moreover, Middleton Place has become a nexus for truth seeking and reconciliation as Americans pursue a fuller understanding of their past.Virginia Beach, author of American Landmark: Charles Duell and the Rebirth of Middleton Place, and Tracey Todd, President and CEO of Middleton Place Foundation, talk with Walter Edgar abo

Hootie and the Blowfish(Micheal McLaughlin / Courtesy of the University of South Carolina Press)In 1985, Mark Bryan heard Darius Rucker singing in a dorm shower at the University of South Carolina and asked him to form a band. For the next eight years, Hootie & the Blowfish—completed by bassist Dean Felber and drummer Soni Sonefeld—played every frat house, roadhouse, and rock club in the mid-Atlantic and Southeast, becoming one of the biggest independent acts in the region.In Only Wanna Be with You (2022, USC Press), Tim Sommer, the ultimate insider who signed Hootie to Atlantic Records, pulls back the curtain on a band that defied record-industry odds to break into the mainstream by playing hacky sack music in the age of grunge.He chronicles the band's indie days; the chart-topping success—and near-cancelation—of their major-label debut, cracked rear view; the year of Hootie (1995) when the album reached no. 1, the "Only Wanna Be with You" music video collaboration with ESPN's SportsCenter became a s

Interior of a crowded bar moments before midnight, June 30, 1919, when wartime prohibition went into effect New York City.(New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection / Library of Congress)In her book, Baptists and Bootleggers: A Prohibition Expedition Through the South (2021, Evening Post Books) Kathryn Smith takes you to major cities and small towns, all of which struggled between the Baptists and their teetotaling allies who preached temperance and the bootleggers who got rich providing what their customers couldn’t buy legally.Smith talks with Walter Edgar about her Prohibition expedition through hotels, bars, speakeasies, museums and cemeteries, and shares some vintage cocktail recipes she picked up along the way.- Originally released 02/25/22 -

( pixhere.com)Timmonsville native Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, been bucked off horses, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives -- all in the name of finding a good story. He was won a record nine Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, a Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and has been called by Booklist magazine "among the best western writers at work today."He joins Walter Edgar to talk about his career, his love of the American West, and about his new book, The Cobbler of Spanish Fort and Other Frontier Stories (2022, Five Star Publishing).- (Originally broadcast 02/25/22) -News and Music Stations: Fri, May 27, at 12 pm; Sat, May 28, at 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Friday, May 27, at 12 pm; Sun, May 29, at 4 pm

(Alexandra Olgin)Shrimp, one of our most delicious food sources, was once only considered worthy of bait. In her new book, Shrimp Tales: Small Bites of History (2022, Primedia eLaunch), author Beverly Bowers Jennings tells the fascinating story of the shrimp industry, from the shrimp boats and their captains to fishing family lore, tasty recipes and more.Jennings talks with Walter Edgar about what she learned in a decade spent interviewing shrimpers and others associated with commercial shrimping to produce permanent exhibits for the Port Royal Sound Maritime Center and the Coastal Discovery Museum on Hilton Head. That work served as the basis of Shrimp Tales, a book that reveals the old ways of shrimping and celebrates today’s awakening about the foods we eat and the people who make it all happen.

Poster: Rural Electrification Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture( Library of Congress)Early in the twentieth century, for-profit companies such as Duke Power and South Carolina Electric and Gas brought electricity to populous cities and towns across South Carolina, while rural areas remained in the dark. It was not until the advent of publicly owned electric cooperatives in the 1930s that the South Carolina countryside was gradually introduced to the conveniences of life with electricity. Today, electric cooperatives serve more than a quarter of South Carolina's citizens and more than seventy percent of the state's land area.In his book, Empowering Communities: How Electric Cooperatives Transformed Rural South Carolina (USC Press, 2022), Dr. Lacy K. Ford and co-author Jared Bailey tell the story of the rise of "public" power – electricity serviced by member-owned cooperatives and sanctioned by federal and state legislation. It is a complicated saga, encompassing politics, law, finance, and rural

(Florida Center for Instructional Technology (https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/)“In the most barren inhospitable unhealthy part of North America, opposed by the most savage, inveterate perfidious cruel Enemy, with zeal and with Bayonets only, it was resolv’d to follow Green’s Army, to the end of the World.” So wrote British general Charles O’Hara about the epic confrontation between Nathanael Greene and Charles Cornwallis during the winter of 1780-81. Only Greene’s starving, threadbare Continentals stood between Cornwallis and control of the South—and a possible end to the American rebellion.Daniel Morgan’s stunning victory at Cowpens over a superior British force set in motion the “Race to the Dan,” Greene’s month-long strategic retreat across the Carolinas. In constant rain and occasional snow, Greene’s soldiers—tracking the ground with their bloody feet—bound toward a secret stash of boats on the Dan River. Just before Cornwallis could close his trap, the Continentals crossed into Vi

A map of ye English Empire in ye continent of America : viz Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, New York, New Iarsey, New England, Pennsilvania(Morden, Robert (d. 1703), Bookseller; Binneman, Walter, Engraver Daniel, R. (Richard), Cartographer / NY Public Library)In his book, The Grim Years: Settling South Carolina, 1670-1720 (2020, University of SC Press), Dr. John Navin explains how eight English aristocrats, the Lords Proprietors, came to possess the vast Carolina land grant and then enacted elaborate plans to recruit and control colonists as part of a grand moneymaking scheme. In his conversation with Walter Edgar, Navin tells of a cadre of men who rose to political and economic prominence, while ordinary colonists, enslaved Africans, and indigenous groups became trapped in a web of violence and oppression.But those plans went awry, and the mainstays of the economy became hog and cattle ranching, lumber products, naval stores, deerskin exports, and the calamitous Indian slave trade. The settlers' relentless pur

The Black River at Kingstree, SC(Robin M. Keith / Wikimedia Commons)The Open Space Institute’s mission is to protect scenic, natural, and historic landscapes to provide public enjoyment, conserve habitat and working lands, and sustain communities. Over the past 40 years, the institute has saved 2,285,092 acres of land through direct acquisition, grants, and loans. Having begun by focusing on land in New York State, they have in recent years saved significant, complex, and large-scale tracts in South Carolina, Florida, and New Jersey through direct acquisitions.In December 2022, the Open Space Institute (OSI) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) announced the purchase of three properties along the Santee River in South Carolina, expanding the largest contiguous block of protected coastal lands in the state. OSI’s Vice-President and Director of the Southeast, Maria Whitehead, joins Walter Edgar to talk about the acquisition and about the Institute’s plans for land protection in the state.

FILE - (Nov. 11, 2008) World War II veteran Harry J. Thomas, right, stands with Brig. Gen. Brett T. Williams, during the singing of the national anthem at a Veterans Day ceremony at the 18th Wing headquarters at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan.(Ryan C. Delcore, U.S. Navy, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)In 2020, Maj. General (Ret.) William F. Grimsley became South Carolina's first Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs. From the beginning, Grimsley and his staff have defined the purpose of the new Department of Veterans’ Affairs as leading and enabling “a state-wide coalition of partners to create and sustain an environment in which Veterans and their families can thrive as valued and contributing members of the South Carolina community and the Nation.”Grimsley talks with Walter Edgar about how the Department strives to achieve that purpose and the way it is expanding and building partnerships to do so.News and Music Stations: Fri, Apr 15, at 12 pm; Sat, Apr 16, at 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Friday, Apr

( Kuro Neko Niyah / Wikimedia Commons)For many years scholars made assumptions about how Europeans traded with West Africans for other, enslaved Africans, about how many voyages were made by slave ships to the English colonies in North America before 1808, and about why the institution of slavery almost died out in New England. Beginning in the late 1960s, however, a movement began that challenged these assumptions and the viewpoints of generations of Euro-centric scholars began to give way to work by data-driven historians.Dr. Donald Wright, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York College at Cortland, is one of the historians who was part of this sea change in scholarship. He spent decades writing about African history, beginning as graduate student collecting oral histories in Gambia, as well as African American history, and Atlantic history. His books include Oral Traditions from the Gambia and African Americans in the Colonial Era: From African Origins Through the Ame

Troops wearing the Revolutionary War uniforms of the 9th Virginia Regiment, Corps of the Continental Line, participate in a drill and firing demonstration during the Cessation of Hostilities Bicentennial Celebration at the Pentagon River Plaza. The flag of the ceremonial 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment, Corps of the Continental Line, is carried in the background.(Sanborn / U. S. National Archive)(Originally broadcast 11/12/21) - In his new book, Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (2021, Simon and Schuster), Dr. Woody Holton gives a sweeping reassessment of the American Revolution, showing how the Founders were influenced by overlooked Americans—women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters.Using more than a thousand eyewitness accounts, Holton explores countless connections between the Patriots of 1776 and other Americans whose passion for freedom often brought them into conflict with the Founding Fathers.Woody Holton joins Walter Edgar to talk about this “hid

(Photo by E.C. Jones and Cecil J. Williams. Courtesy of Cecil J. Williams)(Originally broadcast 10/01/21) - In his book, The Slow Undoing: The Federal Courts and the Long Struggle for Civil Rights in South Carolina, Dr. Stephen H. Lowe argues for a reconsideration of the role of the federal courts in the civil rights movement. It places the courts as a central battleground at the intersections of struggles over race, law, and civil rights. During the long civil rights movement, Black and White South Carolinians used the courts as a venue to contest the meanings of the constitution, justice, equality, and citizenship.Lowe joins Walter Edgar to discuss how African Americans used courts and direct action in tandem to bring down legal segregation throughout the long civil rights era. But the process was far from linear, and the courts were not always a progressive force. The battles were long, the victories won were often imperfect, and many of the fights remain.Stephen H. Lowe is a professor of history at the Un

Stephen Swails( LSU Press)Stephen Atkins Swails is a forgotten American hero. A free Black in the North before the Civil War began, Swails exhibited such exemplary service in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry that he became the first African American commissioned as a combat officer in the United States military. After the war, Swails remained in South Carolina, where he held important positions in the Freedmen’s Bureau, helped draft a progressive state constitution, served in the state senate, and secured legislation benefiting newly liberated Black citizens. Swails remained active in South Carolina politics after Reconstruction until violent Redeemers drove him from the state.After Swails died in 1900, state and local leaders erased him from the historical narrative. Gordon C. Rhea’s biography, Stephen A. Swails: Black Freedom Fighter in the Civil War and Reconstruction (2021, LSU Press, restores Swails’s remarkable legacy. Gordon Rhea talks with Walter Edgar about Swails’s life story, a saga of an in

(Courtesy of Middleton Place Foundation)Charles Duell inherited the historic properties Middleton Place and the Edmondston-Alston House, Charleston, SC, in 1969. He was 31 years old.A graduate of Yale, he had begun a career in finance on Wall Street. But the circumstances of his sudden inheritance compelled him to leave New York City and move his family to South Carolina. There he would take up the challenge of reviving the houses, gardens, and forestlands of his forebears. He convinced countless relatives, friends, and associates to work with him. Their collective efforts over the last half-century have resulted in a dynamic balance of historic preservation and innovative interpretation. Moreover, Middleton Place has become a nexus for truth seeking and reconciliation as Americans pursue a fuller understanding of their past.Virginia Beach, author of American Landmark: Charles Duell and the Rebirth of Middleton Place, and Tracey Todd, President and CEO of Middleton Place Foundation, talk with Walter Edgar abo

Night at the Saluda Riverfront Park(Eric P. Harkins / Courtesy of The River Alliance)(Originally released 08/06/2021) - For decades, Columbia’s rivers were seen as dividing lines between cities and counties. In 1994, the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce along with the Cities of Columbia, Cayce and West Columbia as well as Richland and Lexington Counties began to look at what the Midland’s over 90 miles of river could be. They saw a need for a dedicated organization that could provide to the community the benefits of the Congaree, Broad, and Saluda rivers, and The River Alliance was formed.The River Alliance is uniquely involved in the goals of protecting the region’s rivers, creating public river access, and providing positive benefits to the surrounding communities. The Three Rivers Greenway; the Congaree National Park access and the Visitors Center; the Broad River Blueway; and the concurrent economic activity along the riverfront are the result of The River Alliance’s vision and direct action.R

( pixhere.com)Timmonsville native Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, been bucked off horses, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives -- all in the name of finding a good story. He was won a record nine Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, a Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and has been called by Booklist magazine "among the best western writers at work today."He joins Walter Edgar to talk about his career, his love of the American West, and about his new book, The Cobbler of Spanish Fort and Other Frontier Stories (2022, Five Star Publishing).

Interior of a crowded bar moments before midnight, June 30, 1919, when wartime prohibition went into effect New York City.(New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection / Library of Congress)In her book, Baptists and Bootleggers: A Prohibition Expedition Through the South (2021, Evening Post Books) Kathryn Smith takes you to major cities and small towns, all of which struggled between the Baptists and their teetotaling allies who preached temperance and the bootleggers who got rich providing what their customers couldn’t buy legally.Smith talks with Walter Edgar about her Prohibition expedition through hotels, bars, speakeasies, museums and cemeteries, and shares some vintage cocktail recipes she picked up along the way.

FILE - The view from Lady's Island looking out at the Beaufort River(Victoria Hansen / SC Public Radio)Few people are familiar with the full history that shaped and preserved the fish and wildlife of coastal South Carolina. From Native Americans to the early colonists to plantation owners and their slaves to market hunters and commercial fishermen, all viewed fish and wildlife as limitless. Through time, however, overharvesting led to population declines, and the public demanded conservation. The process that produced fish and game laws, wardens and wildlife refuges was complex and often involved conflict, but synergy and cooperation ultimately produced one of the most extensive conservation systems on the East Coast. Author James O. Luken presents this fascinating story in his new book, Coastal South Carolina Fish and Game: History, Culture and Conservation.- Originally released 09/10/21 -

Troops wearing the Revolutionary War uniforms of the 9th Virginia Regiment, Corps of the Continental Line, participate in a drill and firing demonstration during the Cessation of Hostilities Bicentennial Celebration at the Pentagon River Plaza. The flag of the ceremonial 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment, Corps of the Continental Line, is carried in the background.(Sanborn / U. S. National Archive)This week on Walter Edgar’s Journal we offer a conversation recorded before an audience, live as well as virtual, at the Charleston Literary Festival in November of 2021. Walter Edgar talks with Stuart Bennett about his novel, The Charleston Gambit (2021, Evening Post Books) - a rousing tale of Revolutionary War South Carolina. Along with the battles, it gives glimpses of Charleston fashion and society, faces head-on issues of slavery and plantation life, and tells an engaging love story.Dr. Edgar and the author talk about Bennett's love of history, the novel's main characters, and the attitudes and personalities on both

A scan of John Speed's 1611 map of the Wirral Peninsula, showing 'Brunburgh' on the eastern shore. ( Courtesy of Michael Livingston)Late in AD 937, four armies met in a place called Brunanburh. On one side stood the shield-wall of the expanding kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons. On the other side stood a remarkable alliance of rival kings - at least two from across the sea - who'd come together to destroy them once and for all. The stakes were no less than the survival of the dream that would become England. The armies were massive. The violence, when it began, was enough to shock a violent age. Brunanburh may not today have the fame of Hastings, Crécy or Agincourt, but those later battles, were fought for an England that would not exist were it not for the blood spilled this day. Generations later it was still called, quite simply, the ‘great battle'. But for centuries, its location has been lost.In his book, Never Greater Slaughter: Brunanburh and the Birth of England (Osprey, 2021) Dr. Michael Livingston, tel

(Sponchia / Pixabay)James Lundy's book, The History of the Poetry Society of South Carolina: 1920 to 2021, is a chronicle of the first 100 years of the oldest state poetry society in America, the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Founded in Charleston in 1920 by DuBose Heyward, John Bennett, Josephine Pinckney, Hervey Allen, and Laura Bragg, the Society's first 101 seasons run from the Jazz Age to the COVID era, where everyone from Carl Sandburg, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Ogden Nash, Billy Collins, Sherwood Anderson, Jericho Brown, Thornton Wilder, Robert Pinsky, and hundreds of others appeared before the membership.Talking with Walter Edgar, Lundy, also currently the Society's president, gives us an insider's view, with insights into the inner workings and disfunctions of the organization and its slow progress from a Whites-only organization of the segregated South founded in the aftermath of World War I and the Spanish Flu Pandemic, through the Roaring Twenties,

Okra for sale at the North Charleston Farmers' Market.(Ryan Johnson / Flickr)The American South has experienced remarkable change over the past half century. Black voter registration has increased, the region’s politics have shifted, and in-migration has increased its population many fold. At the same time, many outward signs of regional distinctiveness have faded. But two professors of political science write that these changes have allowed for new types of Southern identity to emerge.In their new book, The Resilience of Southern Identity: Why the South Still Matters in the Minds of Its People (2017, UNC Press), Western Carolina University's Chris Cooper and the College of Charleston's Gibbs Knotts  argue that, for some, identification with the South has become more about a connection to the region’s folkways or to place than about policy or ideology. For others, the contemporary South is all of those things at once—a place where many modern-day southerners navigate the region’s confusing and omn

Tom Fowler and Walter Edgar broadcasting a live episode of Walter Edgar's Journal in 2002 from Columbia's Woodhill Mall at part of the observance of SC Public Radio's 30th anniversary.( SC Public Radio)This fall Walter Edgar's Journal has been celebrating 21 years on the air by offering encore episodes from our vault. This week we bring you a special episode of The Journal with Walter and long-time Journal producer Alfred Turner as guests, and with SC Public Radio reporter Victoria Hansen guiding a discussion of the history of the program.In 2000 a special program aired on South Carolina Public Radio (then South Carolina Educational Radio). It featured a veteran broadcaster and a university professor as hosts and doing live news coverage of the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state house dome. The program featured called-in comments from listeners.From that one-time broadcast came an idea for a live, weekly talk program with broadcaster Tom Fowler and historian Dr. Walter Edgar who would inter

Aerial photo of a portion of Charleston Harbor and the Port of Charleston.(Dennis Franklin) / US Army)In 2021, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers celebrates the 150th anniversary of its founding. The Corps' Charleston District has a unique and varied program that grows larger every year. The Civil Works, Navigation, Regulatory, Emergency Management, Military, and Interagency and International Services programs serve a diverse group of customers that span not only South Carolina, but also globally, which keeps the staff of more than 240 quite busy.Lt Colonel Andrew Johannes, Charleston District Commander; and Brian Williams, the District’s Civil Works Chief, join Walter Edgar for a conversation on the Corps’ history, its missions, and the many ways its work impacts South Carolina, including the deepening of Charleston Harbor.News and Music Stations: Fri, Dec 17, at 12 pm; Sat, Dec 18, at 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Friday, Dec 17, at 12 pm; Sun, Dec 19, at 4 pm

The late Noel Polk and Tudier Harris, with Walter Edgar, taping "Take on the South."(SCETV/SC Public Radio)As part of our continuing celebration of Walter Edgar’s Journal at 21 we present an encore broadcast from May of 2009.Internationally renowned Southern literature scholars Trudier Harris, University Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Alabama, and the late Noel Polk, formerly of Mississippi State University join Dr. Edgar to debate the question “What was the most influential Southern novel of the 20th century?” This episode is a companion of the SCETV’s Take on the South: What was the most influential Southern novel of the 20th century? That was originally broadcast on Wednesday, May 13, 2009. Take on the South is a series of eight, one-hour, live-to-tape debates produced by SCETV for the University of South Carolina's Institute for Southern Studies (ISS) under a grant provided by Watson-Brown Foundation, Inc. You can watch this program, on demand, at knowitall.org.News and Musi

FILE(TexasGOPVote.com / Flickr)The Supreme Court is usually seen as protector of our liberties: it ended segregation, was a guarantor of fair trials, and safeguarded free speech and the vote. But this narrative derives mostly from a short period, from the 1930s to the early 1970s. Before then, the Court spent a century largely ignoring or suppressing basic rights, while the fifty years since 1970 have witnessed a mostly accelerating retreat from racial justice.In their book, Justice Deferred - Race and the Supreme Court (2021, Belknap Press), historian Orville Vernon Burton and civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the Court’s race record—a legacy at times uplifting, but more often distressing and sometimes disgraceful. Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the Court’s race jurisprudence.In this episode of Walter Edgar’s Journal, Burton and Derfner tell us many of the sometimes-surprising stories behind the Supreme Court’s rulings.

Deb Richardson-Moore, former pastor of Triune Mercy Center, Greenville, SC( Courtesy of Deb Richardson-Moore)Deb Richardson-Moore, a middle-aged suburban mom and journalist was inspired to become a pastor after writing a story exploring God’s call in our lives. Then, in 1996, a recent graduate of Erskine Theological Seminary, she took a position as pastor of the non-denominational Triune Mercy Center, an inner-city mission to the homeless in Greenville, S.C.“What I found there absolutely flattened me,” she says. It also inspired her. Today, she and a dedicated staff continue to build a worshiping community that focuses on drug rehab, jobs, and housing for the homeless.Walter Edgar visits Pastor Richardson-Moore in her study at the Center to talk about the growth of its ministry and her journey, as well as her recent memoir, The Weight of Mercy: A Novice Pastor on the City Streets (Monarch Books, 2012)- Originally broadcast 12/13/13 -News and Music Stations: Fri, Nov 26, at 12 pm; Sat, Nov 27, at 7 amNew

In celebration of Walter Edgar’s Journal at 21, this week's episode is an encore from 2012. In Ric Burns’ American Experience documentary, Death and the Civil War, he explores the 19th century idealization of a “good death,” and how that concept was brutally changed by battles like that at Gettysburg.With the coming of the Civil War, and the staggering casualties it ushered in, death entered the experience of the American people as it never had before -- permanently altering the character of the republic and the psyche of the American people.Burns joins Dr. Edgar to talk about the film, and the ways in which the Civil War forever changed the way Americans deal with death. Also taking part in the discussion are David W. Blight, Professor of American History at Yale University, and the Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale; and Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, the Lincoln Professor of History in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her Pulitzer-Priz

Troops wearing the Revolutionary War uniforms of the 9th Virginia Regiment, Corps of the Continental Line, participate in a drill and firing demonstration during the Cessation of Hostilities Bicentennial Celebration at the Pentagon River Plaza. The flag of the ceremonial 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment, Corps of the Continental Line, is carried in the background.(Sanborn / U. S. National Archive)In his new book, Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (2021, Simon and Schuster), Dr. Woody Holton gives a sweeping reassessment of the American Revolution, showing how the Founders were influenced by overlooked Americans—women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters.Using more than a thousand eyewitness accounts, Holton explores countless connections between the Patriots of 1776 and other Americans whose passion for freedom often brought them into conflict with the Founding Fathers.Woody Holton joins Walter Edgar to talk about this “hidden history.”

Tom Fowler and Walter Edgar broadcasting a live episode of Walter Edgar's Journal in 2002 from Columbia's Woodhill Mall at part of the observance of SC Public Radio's 30th anniversary.( SC Public Radio)This fall Walter Edgar's Journal has been celebrating 21 years on the air by offering encore episodes from our vault. This week we bring you a special episode of The Journal with Walter and long-time Journal producer Alfred Turner as guests, and with SC Public Radio reporter Victoria Hansen guiding a discussion of the history of the program.In 2000 a special program aired on South Carolina Public Radio (then South Carolina Educational Radio). It featured a veteran broadcaster and a university professor as hosts and doing live news coverage of the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state house dome. The program featured called-in comments from listeners.From that one-time broadcast came an idea for a live, weekly talk program with broadcaster Tom Fowler and historian Dr. Walter Edgar who would inter

FILE - Pat Conroy(Robert C. Clark / Wikimedia Commons)In celebration of Walter Edgar’s Journal at 21, this week's episode is an encore from 2014 with world-renowned author, the late Pat Conroy in conversation with 4 of his 5 siblings.In his 2013 memoir, The Death of Santini (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) author Pat Conroy admits that his father, Don, is the basis of abusive fighter pilot he created for the title role of his novel, The Great Santini, and that his mother, Peg, and his brothers and sisters have all served as models for characters in The Prince of Tides and his other novels. Now, for the first time, Pat gathers with four of his surviving siblings, Kathy, Tim, Mike, and Jim, to talk about the intersection of “real life” and Pat’s fiction, and what it was like to grow up with “The Great Santini” as a father.- Originally broadcast 04/18/14 -

(Jennifer Woodard Maderazo / Wikimedia Commons)In celebration of Walter Edgar’s Journal at 21, this week's episode is an encore from 2010 featuring John T. Edge, author and Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, University of Mississippi; and Matt and Ted Lee, award winning cookbook authors. The conversation was a preview of a debate on the topic, "What is Real Southern Cooking?" which aired on SCETV’s Take on the South.- Originally broadcast 07/09/2010 -

Coffin Point Praise House, 57 Coffin Point Rd, St. Helena Island, South Carolina( Richard N Horne / Wikimedia Commons)In Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands (USC Press, 2021) musicologist Eric Crawford traces Gullah/Geechee songs from their beginnings in West Africa to their height as songs for social change and Black identity in the twentieth century American South. While much has been done to study, preserve, and interpret Gullah culture in the lowcountry and sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia, some traditions like the shouting and rowing songs have been all but forgotten. Crawford talks with Walter Edgar about his work, which focuses primarily on South Carolina's St. Helena Island, illuminates the remarkable history, survival, and influence of spirituals since the earliest recordings in the 1860s.Grounded in an oral tradition with a dynamic and evolving character, spirituals proved equally adaptable for use during social and political unrest and in u

(SCETV)(Originally broadcast 06/29/12) - In celebration of Walter Edgar’s Journal at 21, this week's episode is an encore from 2012, featuring the late T. Moffatt Burriss. Burriss was a former Columbia area contractor, Republican state lawmaker and American World War II battlefield hero.An Anderson native, Burris was a concentration camp liberator who also participated in the invasions of Sicily and Italy. During Operation Market Garden in Holland, he led the amphibious assault across the Waal River made famous in the movie, A Bridge Too Far. Burriss is the subject of an ETV special Man and Moment: T. Moffatt Burriss and the Crossing. He joined Walter Edgar, former State newspaper reporter Jeff Wilkinson, and documentary producer Lee Ann Kornegay, to talk about the war and about making the film.News and Music Stations: Fri, Oct 8, at 12 pm; Sat, Oct 9, at 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Friday, Oct 8, at 12 pm; Sun, Oct 10, at 4 pm

(Photo by E.C. Jones and Cecil J. Williams. Courtesy of Cecil J. Williams)In his book, The Slow Undoing: The Federal Courts and the Long Struggle for Civil Rights in South Carolina, Dr. Stephen H. Lowe argues for a reconsideration of the role of the federal courts in the civil rights movement. It places the courts as a central battleground at the intersections of struggles over race, law, and civil rights. During the long civil rights movement, Black and White South Carolinians used the courts as a venue to contest the meanings of the constitution, justice, equality, and citizenship.Lowe joins Walter Edgar to discuss how African Americans used courts and direct action in tandem to bring down legal segregation throughout the long civil rights era. But the process was far from linear, and the courts were not always a progressive force. The battles were long, the victories won were often imperfect, and many of the fights remain.Stephen H. Lowe is a professor of history at the University of South Carolina Union a

A view toward Jackson Square in New Orleans in the 1920s.(Arnold Genthe, 1869-1942 / Library of Congress)A part of our celebration of Walter Edgar's Journal at 21 we present an encore from 2014 with guest John Shelton Reed, talking about his book, Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s.In the years following World War I, the New Orleans French Quarter attracted artists and writers with low rent, a faded charm, and colorful street life. By the 1920s Jackson Square became the center of a vibrant but short-lived bohemia. A young William Faulkner and his roommate William Spratling, an artist who taught at Tulane, were among the "artful and crafty ones of the French Quarter." In Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s (LSU Press, 2012) John Shelton Reed introduces Faulkner's circle of friends ranging from the distinguished Sherwood Anderson to a gender-bending Mardi Gras costume designer and brings to life the people and places of New Orleans in the jazz age.Dr. John Shelton Reed is the Wi

The track of the 1856 hurricane that destroyed Isle Deniere( Wikimedia Commons)In the summer of 1853, many of New Orleans’s citizens traveled to Isle Derniere, an emerging island retreat on the Gulf of Mexico, presuming it a safe haven from yellow fever. On August 10, 1856, a hurricane swept across the island, killing most of its 400 inhabitants. What remained of the island was a forest stranded in the sea, a sign of a land that would eventually vanish. Map of Isle Dernier as it appeared in 1853(Williams et al. under contract of U.S. Geological Survey / Wikimedia Commons)Dr. Abby Sallenger’s book, Island in a Storm: A Rising Sea, a Vanishing Coast, and a Nineteenth-Century Disaster that Warns of a Warmer World, is the riveting true story of the people who faced this fierce hurricane, their bravery and cowardice, luck and misfortune, life and death. It also chronicles a coast in perpetual motion and a rising sea that made the Isle Derniere particularly vulnerable to a great hurricane. Sallenger joins Dr. E

Lyndon Harris, priest in charge of St. Paul's Chapel, NY City, pictured here outside the chapel, across from the collapsed World Trade Center towers. For 8 months following the terrorist attack, he helped run a ministry that provided food, counselling, and respite to emergency personnel and workers at Ground Zero.(Provided)On the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, Walter Edgar's Journal offers this special encore of a conversation with Lyndon Harris, who was on Wall Street the day the World Trade Center towers fell. At that time, Gaffney, SC, native Lyndon Harris was the Priest in Charge of St. Paul's Episcopal Chapel, which was across from the World Trade Center. In September of 2011, Harris returned to his home state to take part in an exhibition at the Cherokee County History and Arts Museum, Eyewitnesses to 9/11: From Tragedy to Transformation. He joined Walter Edgar in our studio to tell the story of the extraordinary ministry begun at St. Paul’s on 9/12 and about his work with

FILE - The view from Lady's Island looking out at the Beaufort River(Victoria Hansen / SC Public Radio)Few people are familiar with the full history that shaped and preserved the fish and wildlife of coastal South Carolina. From Native Americans to the early colonists to plantation owners and their slaves to market hunters and commercial fishermen, all viewed fish and wildlife as limitless. Through time, however, overharvesting led to population declines, and the public demanded conservation. The process that produced fish and game laws, wardens and wildlife refuges was complex and often involved conflict, but synergy and cooperation ultimately produced one of the most extensive conservation systems on the East Coast. Author James O. Luken presents this fascinating story in his new book, Coastal South Carolina Fish and Game: History, Culture and Conservation.

FILE - Pat Conroy(Robert C. Clark / Wikimedia Commons)As part of our continuing series of encore episodes celebrating The Journal at 21, we encore a 2014 episode with the late novelist Pat Conroy, author of The Water is Wide, The Great Santini, The Prince of Tides, and The Death of Santini. Conroy joins Walter Edgar for an event celebrating the author’s life; his work; and One Book, One Columbia’s 2014 selection, My Reading Life (Nan A. Talese, 2010). The conversation was recorded before an audience of over 2000, at Columbia’s Township Auditorium, on the evening of February 27.- Originally broadcast 04/04/14 -

On January 16, 1963, the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered Clemson to admit Gantt who became its first African American student. The ruling was the result of a lawsuit filed on Gantt's behalf by then-attorney Matthew J. Perry( Clemson University Library) FILE - Judge Matthew J. Perry( Library of Congress)This week on Walter Edgar's Journal, we offer another in our series of encore broadcasts celebrating The Journal at 21, with a 2004 conversation with the late U. S. District Judge Matthew Perry. Perry takes us on a journey from his humble beginnings in a segregated South Carolina to his part in helping to break down the color barrier. In between he spins some delightful stories about the people who helped shape South Carolina throughout the turbulent 60’s and 70’s.- Originally broadcast 03/19/04- News and Music Stations: Fri, Aug 27, at 12 pm; Sat, Aug 28, at 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Friday, Aug 27, at 12 pm; Sun, Aug 29, at 4 pm

The Old Plantation (Slaves Dancing on a South Carolina Plantation), ca. 1785-1795. Watercolor on paper.( Attributed to John Rose, Beaufort County, South Carolina. / Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA.)(Courtesy of Coastal Carolina University)In Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community, Charles Joyner takes readers on a journey back in time, up the Waccamaw River through the Lowcountry of South Carolina, past rice fields made productive by the labor of enslaved Africans, past rice mills and forest clearings into the antebellum world of All Saints Parish. In this community, and many others like it, the enslaved people created a new language, a new religion - indeed, a new culture - from African traditions and American circumstances.From the letters, diaries, and memoirs of the plantation whites and their guests, from quantitative analysis of census and probate records, and above all from slave folklore and oral history, Joyner has gathers the story of a society

Night at the Saluda Riverfront Park(Eric P. Harkins / Courtesy of The River Alliance)For decades, Columbia’s rivers were seen as dividing lines between cities and counties. In 1994, the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce along with the Cities of Columbia, Cayce and West Columbia as well as Richland and Lexington Counties began to look at what the Midland’s over 90 miles of river could be. They saw a need for a dedicated organization that could provide to the community the benefits of the Congaree, Broad, and Saluda rivers, and The River Alliance was formed.The River Alliance is uniquely involved in the goals of protecting the region’s rivers, creating public river access, and providing positive benefits to the surrounding communities. The Three Rivers Greenway; the Congaree National Park access and the Visitors Center; the Broad River Blueway; and the concurrent economic activity along the riverfront are the result of The River Alliance’s vision and direct action.River Alliance CEO Mike Dawson talks

FILE - Cokie Roberts and Luci Baines Johnson - On Tuesday, February 28th, 2017, the LBJ Presidential Library held An Evening With Cokie Roberts. (Jay Godwin / LBJ Library)For this episode celebrating Walter Edgar's Journal at 21, we’ve dusted off a 2004, on-the-road program, recorded at Litchfield Books on Pawleys Island. Walter's guest is the late Cokie Roberts, longtime NPR correspondent and commentator. Roberts talks politics, personal history, and about her book, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation.Cokie Roberts, herself known as a “Founding Mother” of National Public Radio, served as a congressional correspondent at NPR for more than 10 years and later appeared as a commentator on Morning Edition. In addition to her work for NPR, Roberts was a political commentator for ABC News, and, from 1996-2002, she and Sam Donaldson co-anchored the weekly ABC interview program This Week. In her more than forty years in broadcasting, she has won countless awards, including three Emmys.- Originally

( Courtesy Post & Courier)The late Ken Burger spent almost 40 years writing for two South Carolina newspapers, during a career that included stints covering sports, business, politics, and life in the Palmetto State.Burger’s book, Baptized in Sweet Tea, is a collection of columns he wrote for the Charleston Post & Courier. As the title hints, the common thread running through the collection is Burger’s southern-ness… and, more specifically, his identity as a born-and-bred South Carolinian. While he may have been baptized in sweet tea, his essays are steeped in a bittersweet nostalgia for a way of life that’s passing into memory… and a reverence for those timeless qualities that abide.This encore broadcast is part of our series celebrating Walter Edgar's Journal at 21.- Originally broadcast 02/21/13) -

(Linda O'Bryon/SCETV)On June 17, 2015, twelve members of the historically black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina welcomed a young white man to their evening Bible study. He arrived with a pistol, 88 bullets, and hopes of starting a race war. Dylann Roof’s massacre of nine innocents during their closing prayer horrified the nation. Two days later, some relatives of the dead stood at Roof’s hearing and said, “I forgive you.” That grace offered the country a hopeful ending to an awful story. But for the survivors and victims’ families, the journey had just begun.In Grace Will Lead Us Home (2019, St. Martin’s Press) Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jennifer Berry Hawes provides a definitive account of the tragedy’s aftermath. And she tells the stories of survivors, first responders, city and state officials, as well as South Carolina citizens, and their personal journeys.- Originally broadcast 10/25/19)-

Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, c. 1910.jpg( Courtesy of Middleton Place)Alice Ravenel Huger Smith (1876–1958), a leader of the Charleston Renaissance, immortalized the beauty and history of the Carolina Lowcountry and helped propel the region into an important destination for cultural tourism.In the book Alice: Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Charleston Renaissance Artist, Dwight McInvail and his co-authors draw on unpublished papers, letters, and interviews to create a personal account of the artist’s life and work. The book is enriched by over 200 illustrations of paintings, prints, sketches, and photographs, many shared for the first time.McInvaill and internationally renowned South Carolina Artist Jonathan Green join Walter Edgar in conversation about Alice Ravenel Huger Smith and her work.News and Music Stations: Fri, Jul 09, 12 pm; Sat, Jul 10, 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Fri, Jul 09, 12 pm; Sun, Jul 11, 4 pm

A view of the cooker around which the1991 Imperial Foods chicken processing plant fire was centered. Taken from a report by the United States Fire Administration.(United States Fire Administration / Wikimedia)On the morning of September 3, 1991, the never-inspected chicken-processing plant a stone’s throw from city hall in tiny Hamlet, NC, burst into flames. Twenty-five people perished that day behind the plant’s locked and bolted doors. It remains one of the deadliest accidents ever in the history of the modern American food industry.For decades, the small, quiet town of Hamlet, North Carolina, thrived thanks to the railroad. But by the 1970s, it had become a postindustrial backwater, a magnet for businesses in search of cheap labor and almost no oversight. Imperial Food Products was one of those businesses. The company set up shop in Hamlet in the 1980s. Workers who complained about low pay and hazardous working conditions at the plant were silenced or fired. But jobs were scarce in town, so workers kep

"Radical members of the first legislature after the war, South Carolina" - Photomontage of members of the first South Carolina legislature following the Civil War, mounted on card with each member identified. (Lawrence Cain, center, third from left)( Library of Congress)Kevin Cherry's book, The Virtue of Cain: From Slave to Senator (2021, Rocky Pond Press) focuses on the short but extraordinary life of Reconstruction era Senator Lawrence Cain of Edgefield, South Carolina. He was considered an honorable and virtuous man and helped shape South Carolina politics between 1865 and 1877 as one of the leaders of the Radical Republican movement. He rose above numerous obstacles to go from slave to state senatorThe facts of his life had been forgotten by his descendants, like much of African American history during Reconstruction. But they were re-discovered Lawrence Cain's great great-grandson, Kevin M. Cherry, with the help of family, genealogy research, archived papers and genetic DNA results. Cherry is joined in c

Portrait of Gertioe Sanford, 29.(Courtesy of Kathryn Smith)Kathryn Smith, author of Gertie: The Fabulous Life of Gertrude Sanford Legendre, Heiress, Explorer, Socialite, Spy (2021, Evening Post Publishing Company) joins Walter Edgar to tell the amazing story of Gertrude Sanford Legendre, a woman whose adventurous life spanned the twentieth century, beginning in Aiken, S.C. in 1902 and ending at her plantation outside Charleston in 2000.Gertie was a daring and fearless woman whose adventures included being the first American woman in uniform held as a POW by the Germans during World War II. She also partied on the Riviera with the Murphys, the Fitzgeralds and Harpo Marx in the 1920s, undertook numerous challenging expeditions for natural history museums (and lead four) and befriended some of the greatest personalities of the 20th century, including Dr. Albert Schweitzer, General George S. Patton, Lilly Pulitzer, and Bing Crosby. In her later years, she became an ardent conservationist, fighting for habitat pre

George Singleton(Courtesy of Hub City Press)George Singleton joins Walter Edgar to talk about his new collection of short stories, You Want More, some of his favorite stories, and his life as a writer.With his signature darkly acerbic and sharp-witted humor, George Singleton has built a reputation as one of the most astute and wise observers of the South. Singleton’s latest book, You Want More: Selected Stories of George Singleton (2020, Hub City Press) is a compilation of acclaimed and prize-winning short fiction spanning twenty years and eight collections. These stories bear the influence of Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver, at other times Lewis Nordan and Donald Barthelme, and touch on the mysteries of childhood, the complexities of human relationships, and the absurdity of everyday life, its inexorable defeats, and small triumphs. Assembled here for the very first time, You Want More showcases the body of work, hilarious and incisive, that has cemented George Singleton’s place among the South’

Mary Alice Monroe( Courtesy of the Artist)In a wide-ranging conversation, New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe talks with Walter Edgar about 2020 - "a year like no other" - and the personal challenges of living through it.The also discuss her latest novel, The Summer of Lost and Found, in which many of the characters are facing the challenges and the same tough choices. And yet, they find support and even joy in "the beach house."Monroe is the author of 27 books, including the Beach House series: The Beach House, Swimming Lessons, Beach House Memories, Beach House for Rent, Beach House Reunion, and On Ocean Boulevard. More than 7.5 million copies of her books have been published worldwide.News and Music Stations: Fri, May 28, 12 pm; Sat, May 29, 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Fri, May 28, 12 pm; Sun, May 30, 4 pm

The Gulf of Mexico(NASA / Flickr)Gulf events of global historical importance are detailed, such as the only defeat of armed and armored steamships by wooden sailing vessels, the first accurate deep-sea survey and bathymetric map of any ocean basin, the development of shipping containers by a former truck driver frustrated with antiquated loading practices, and the worst environmental disaster in American annals.This week on Walter Edgar’s Journal, John S. Sledge’s talks with Walter about his book, The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History (2021, USC Press). In it, Sledge presents a compelling, salt-streaked narrative of the earth's tenth largest body of water. In this beautifully written and illustrated volume, Sledge explores the people, ships, and cities that have made the Gulf's human history and culture so rich.Occasionally shifting focus ashore, Sledge explains how people representing a gumbo of ethnicities built some of the world's most exotic cities—Havana, way station for conquistadores and treasur

A map of ye English Empire in ye continent of America : viz Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, New York, New Iarsey, New England, Pennsilvania(Morden, Robert (d. 1703), Bookseller; Binneman, Walter, Engraver Daniel, R. (Richard), Cartographer / NY Public Library)In his book, The Grim Years: Settling South Carolina, 1670-1720 (2020, University of SC Press), Dr. John Navin explains how eight English aristocrats, the Lords Proprietors, came to possess the vast Carolina land grant and then enacted elaborate plans to recruit and control colonists as part of a grand moneymaking scheme. In his conversation with Walter Edgar, Navin tells of a cadre of men who rose to political and economic prominence, while ordinary colonists, enslaved Africans, and indigenous groups became trapped in a web of violence and oppression.But those plans went awry, and the mainstays of the economy became hog and cattle ranching, lumber products, naval stores, deerskin exports, and the calamitous Indian slave trade. The settlers' relentless pur

Mrs. Juliann Jane Tillman, preacher of the A.M.E. Church(A. Hoffy ; printed by P.S. Duval, 1844 / Library of Congress)Dr. Marks examines how these individuals built lives in freedom for themselves and their families in two of the Atlantic World's most important urban centers: Cartagena, along the Caribbean coast of modern-day Colombia, and Charleston, in the Lowcountry of North America's Atlantic coast. His conversation on this edition of Walter Edgar’s Journal focuses on the world of free people of color in and around Charleston.

The smoke was thick, the music was loud, and the beer was flowing. In the fast-and-loose 1980s, Jackson Station Rhythm & Blues Club in Hodges, South Carolina, was a festive late-night roadhouse filled with people from all walks of life who gathered to listen to the live music of high-energy performers. Housed in a Reconstruction-era railway station, the blues club embraced local Southern culture and brought a cosmopolitan vibe to the South Carolina backcountry.Over the years, Jackson Station became known as one of the most iconic blues bars in the South. It offered an exciting venue for local and traveling musical artists, including Widespread Panic, the Swimming Pool Qs, Bob Margolin, Tinsley Ellis, and R&B legend Nappy Brown, who loved to keep playing long after sunrise.The good times ground to a terrifying halt in the early morning hours of April 7, 1990. A brutal attack—an apparent hate crime—on the owner Gerald Jackson forever altered the lives of all involved.News and Music Stations: Fri, Apr 30, 12

Duke University football coach Wallace Wade at practice in the 1930s. Duke was a member of the Southern Conference from 1928 to 1953.(Duke University Archives / Flickr)In the winter of 1921, fifteen prominent colleges and universities met in Atlanta, Georgia, to form a new organization to promote intercollegiate athletics competition. That organization, soon to become known as the Southern Conference (SoCon), remains a strong and viable member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) 100 years later. Southern Conference roots may be found throughout college athletics from the Mid-Atlantic region to the deep South. All but three of the current Southeastern Conference (SEC) members once belonged to the Southern Conference. Likewise, a majority of present Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) institutions formerly were SoCon members.This time on Walter Edgar’s Journal, former SoCon commissioner John Iamarino, author of A Proud Athletic History: 100 Years of The Southern Conference (2021, Mercer Univers

"Radical members of the first legislature after the war, South Carolina" - Photomontage of members of the first South Carolina legislature following the Civil War, mounted on card with each member identified. (Lawrence Cain, center, third from left)( Library of Congress)Kevin Cherry's book, The Virtue of Cain: From Slave to Senator (2021, Rocky Pond Press) focuses on the short but extraordinary life of Reconstruction era Senator Lawrence Cain of Edgefield, South Carolina. He was considered an honorable and virtuous man and helped shape South Carolina politics between 1865 and 1877 as one of the leaders of the Radical Republican movement. He rose above numerous obstacles to go from slave to state senatorThe facts of his life had been forgotten by his descendants, like much of African American history during Reconstruction. But they were re-discovered Lawrence Cain's great great-grandson, Kevin M. Cherry, with the help of family, genealogy research, archived papers and genetic DNA results. Cherry is joined in c

A view of the cooker around which the1991 Imperial Foods chicken processing plant fire was centered. Taken from a report by the United States Fire Administration.(United States Fire Administration / Wikimedia)For decades, the small, quiet town of Hamlet, North Carolina, thrived thanks to the railroad. But by the 1970s, it had become a postindustrial backwater, a magnet for businesses in search of cheap labor and almost no oversight. Imperial Food Products was one of those businesses. The company set up shop in Hamlet in the 1980s. Workers who complained about low pay and hazardous working conditions at the plant were silenced or fired. But jobs were scarce in town, so workers kept coming back, and the company continued to operate with impunity.Then, on the morning of September 3, 1991, the never-inspected chicken-processing plant a stone’s throw from Hamlet’s city hall burst into flames. Twenty-five people perished that day behind the plant’s locked and bolted doors. It remains one of the deadliest acci

Portrait of Gertioe Sanford, 29.(Courtesy of Kathryn Smith)Gertie was a daring and fearless woman whose adventures included being the first American woman in uniform held as a POW by the Germans during World War II. She also partied on the Riviera with the Murphys, the Fitzgeralds and Harpo Marx in the 1920s, undertook numerous challenging expeditions for natural history museums (and lead four) and befriended some of the greatest personalities of the 20th century, including Dr. Albert Schweitzer, General George S. Patton, Lilly Pulitzer, and Bing Crosby. In her later years, she became an ardent conservationist, fighting for habitat preservation on the South Carolina coast and leaving her 7,000-acre plantation in a conservation easement, a place where the beasts can grow old and die.

George Singleton(Courtesy of Hub City Press)With his signature darkly acerbic and sharp-witted humor, George Singleton has built a reputation as one of the most astute and wise observers of the South. Singleton’s latest book, You Want More: Selected Stories of George Singleton (2020, Hub City Press) is a compilation of acclaimed and prize-winning short fiction spanning twenty years and eight collections.These stories bear the influence of Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver, at other times Lewis Nordan and Donald Barthelme, and touch on the mysteries of childhood, the complexities of human relationships, and the absurdity of everyday life, its inexorable defeats, and small triumphs. Assembled here for the very first time, You Want More showcases the body of work, hilarious and incisive, that has cemented George Singleton’s place among the South’s greatest living writers.- Originally broadcast 03/29/21 -News and Music Stations: Fri, Jun 04, 12 pm; Sat, Jun 05, 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Fri, Jun 04, 12

(Library of Congress, from Central Michigan University, Clark Historical Library)On February 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran of World War II, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver’s disrespectful treatment of him. Woodard, in uniform, was arrested by the local police chief, Lynwood Shull, and beaten and blinded while in custody.President Harry Truman was outraged by the incident. He established the first presidential commission on civil rights and his Justice Department filed criminal charges against Shull. In July 1948, following his Commission’s recommendation, Truman ordered an end to segregation in the U.S. armed forces.An all-white South Carolina jury acquitted Shull, but the presiding judge, J. Waties Waring, was conscience-stricken by the failure of the court system to do justice by the soldier. Waring described the trial as his “baptism of fire,” and began issuing major civil rights de

(Courtesy of the League of Women Voters of SC)(www.lwv.org)The League of Women Voters of South Carolina has a long and colorful history. Born out of the women's suffrage movement, the South Carolina League was organized in 1920, the year of the ratification of the 19th Amendment that ended a 72-year struggle for women’s right to vote.The League in South Carolina went dormant in the 1930s, only to revive in the late 1940s, with a state board in place in 1951, just in time for the struggle over desegregation of the public schools. Over the years, the South Carolina League has always focused on voter education, voting rights, empowerment of women, as well as advocacy for constitutional reform, environmental protection, public education, and transparent and accountable government. Joining Walter Edgar to talk about the League are Dr. Sheila Haney, author of In Her Shoes: A History of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina, 1920-2020, and Dr. Holley Ulbrich, co-president of the League.News and Music Stati

(Library of Congress)After World War I, Black South Carolinians, despite poverty and discrimination, began to organize and lay the basis for the civil rights movement that would occur after World War II. Dr. Bobby Donaldson of the University of South Carolina talks about the efforts by black South Carolinians to obtain justice and civil rights during a time of economic collapse and political change.- Originally broadcast 01/31/20 -News and Music Stations: Fri, Feb 26, 12 pm; Sat, Feb 27, 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Fri, Feb 26, 12 pm; Sun, Feb 28, 4 pm

(Victoria Hansen/SC Public Radio) Four years before the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, a federal judge in Charleston hatched his secret plan to end segregation in America. Julius Waties Waring was perhaps the most unlikely civil rights hero in history. An eighth-generation Charlestonian, the son of a Confederate veteran and scion of a family of slave owners, Waring was appointed to the federal bench in the early days of World War II.Faced with a growing demand for equal rights from black South Carolinians, and a determined and savvy NAACP attorney named Thurgood Marshall, Waring did what he thought was right: He followed the law, and the United States Constitution. In fact, he helped guide Marshall down a narrow legal path that led to the end of segregation schools.Brian Hicks talks with Walter Edgar about Waring’s plan, and about his life, in the new book, In Darkest South Carolina: J. Waties Waring and the Secret Plan that Sparked a Civil Rights Movement (2017, Post an

In her new book, Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina (2020, USC Press), journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, cross burnings, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured—as well as the astonishing courage, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for equality.Through extensive research and interviews with more than 150 civil rights activists, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins.These intimate stories of courage, both heartbreaking and inspiring, shine a light on the progress achieved by nonviolent civil rights activists while also revealing white South Carolinians’ often violent resistance to change. Although significant racial disparities remain, the sacrifices of  everyday folk that produced real progress—and hope for the future.Brinson joins Walter Edgar and Dr. Valinda Littlefield to talk about the stories of these brave and tenacious men an

(Clemson University)“In me, there is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. I am, in the deepest sense, colored.” From these fertile soils—of love, land, identity, family, and race—emerges The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature (2016, Milkweed Editions) a big-hearted, unforgettable memoir by ornithologist J. Drew Lanham.Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, readers meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be “the rare bird, the oddity”—to find joy and freedom in the same land his ancestors were tied to by forced labor, and then to be a black man in a profoundly white field.By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a meditation on nature and belonging

(USC/Thomas Cooper Library)In spite of a growing movement for journalistic neutrality in reporting the news of the 20th century, journalists enlisted on both sides of the mid-century struggle for civil rights. Indeed, against all odds, the seeds of social change found purchase in South Carolina with newspaperman John McCray and his allies at the Lighthouse and Informer, who challenged readers to "rebel and fight"--to reject the "slavery of thought and action" and become "progressive fighters" for equality.In Newspaper Wars: Civil Rights and White Resistance in South Carolina, 1935-1965 (University of Illinois Press, 2017), Sid Bedingfield, a University of Minnesota Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications, traces the role journalism played in the fight for civil rights in South Carolina from the 1930s through the 1960s. Bedingfield tells the stories of African American progress which sparked a battle to shape South Carolina's civic life, with civil rights activists arrayed against white journalists det

(The Colored American, February 24, 1900 / Library of Congress/Chronicling America)Richard Theodore Greener (1844–1922) was a renowned black activist and scholar. The first black graduate of Harvard College, he became the first black faculty member at the University of South Carolina, during Reconstruction. He was even the first black US diplomat to a predominately-white country, serving in Vladivostok, Russia. A notable speaker and writer for racial equality, he also served as a dean of the Howard University School of Law and as the administrative head of the Ulysses S. Grant Monument Association. Yet he died in obscurity, his name barely remembered.Richard Greener’s story demonstrates the human realities of racial politics throughout the fight for abolition, the struggle for equal rights, and the backslide into legal segregation. With Uncompromising Activist: Richard Greener, First Black Graduate of Harvard College (2017, Johns Hopkins University Press)Katherine Reynolds Chaddock, distinguished professo

In her new book, Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina (2020, USC Press), journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, cross burnings, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured—as well as the astonishing courage, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for equality.Through extensive research and interviews with more than 150 civil rights activists, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins.These intimate stories of courage, both heartbreaking and inspiring, shine a light on the progress achieved by nonviolent civil rights activists while also revealing white South Carolinians’ often violent resistance to change. Although significant racial disparities remain, the sacrifices of  everyday folk that produced real progress—and hope for the future.Brinson joins Walter Edgar and Dr. Valinda Littlefield to talk about the stories of these brave and tenacious men an

(Pontificalibus [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons)It is hard to imagine what South Carolina would be today if not for the then-British colony of Barbados. From the settlement of this West Indian island in 1627 to the time of Carolina's settlement in 1670, Barbados changed from an uninhabited island to a Colony where land owners created small plantations using indentured laborers in the quest to find the most profitable cash crop and then to a mostly-clear-cut land that was planted with sugar cane, almost to the ocean's edge.Sugar, with the introduction of enslaved African laborers, made landowners wealthy, wrecked the island's ecology, and created an economic system that would be copied in Carolina. Another thing shared by émigrés to both colonies: the desire to get rich.Walter Edgar talks with Dr. Russell Fielding, Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies in the HTC Honors College at Coastal Carolina University, about the history of the Carolina-Barbados connection, and it's lasting influences o

(Courtesy of Jared Ames)Since its first publication in 1968, Bill C. Malone’s Country Music USA has won universal acclaim as the definitive history of American country music. Starting with the music’s folk roots in the rural South, it traces country music from the early days of radio into the twenty-first century. In the 2019, fiftieth-anniversary edition, Malone, the featured historian in Ken Burns’ 2019 documentary on country music, revised every chapter to offer new information and fresh insights.Coauthor Tracey Laird tracks developments in country music in the new millennium, exploring the relationship between the current music scene and the traditions from which it emerged.Dr. Edgar talks with Bill Malone about Country Music’s origins and impact on popular and about his involvement in Ken Burn’s documentary series Country Music, available to PBS Passport subscribers.- Originally broadcast 09/06/99 -News and Music Stations: Fri, Oct 09, 12 pm; Sat, Oct 10, 7 am | News & Talk Stations: Fri, O

(The Johnson Collection)Spanning the decades between the late 1890s and early 1960s, The Johnson Collection’s new exhibition and its companion book, Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection, examine the particularly complex challenges Southern women artists confronted in a traditionally conservative region during a period in which women’s social, cultural, and political roles were being redefined and reinterpreted. How did the variables of historical gender norms, educational barriers, race, regionalism, sisterhood, suffrage, and modernism mitigate and motivate women seeking expression on canvas or in clay? Whether in personal or professional arenas? Working from studio space in spare rooms at home or on the world stage, the artists considered made remarkable contributions by fostering future generations of artists through instruction, incorporating new aesthetics into the fine arts, and challenging the status quo.To discuss the book and exhibition, Dr. Edgar is joined by L

(Library of Congress/Hine, Lewis Wickes)South Carolina in 1918 was still struggling with the changes to its economic and social systems brought about by the Civil War and Reconstruction. The United States’ entry into World War I affected the daily work life of South Carolinians and the state’s economy in a way that was unique to our state.This week, guest host, Dr. Mark Smith of the University of South Carolina, talks with Dr. James C. Cobb, B. Phinizy Spalding Professor of History Emeritus of the University of Georgia,  about South Carolina’s Economy during World War I. This conversation was recorded at the University of South Carolina’s Capstone Conference Center, in Columbia, on February 13, 2018. It was part of the series “Conversations on South Carolina History,” presented in January and February, 2018, and sponsored by the USC College of Arts and Sciences.- Originally broadcast 03/09/18 - All Stations: Fri, Aug 07, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Aug 09, 4 pm

(Library of Congress)Upon the United States' entrance into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson told the nation that the war was being fought to "make the world safe for democracy." For many African-American South Carolinians, the chance to fight in this war was a way to prove their citizenship, in hopes of changing things for the better at home.Dr. Janet Hudson from the University of South Carolina joins Dr. Edgar for a public Conversation on Black South Carolinian in World War I. The conversation took place at USC’s Capstone Conference Center, in Columbia, on January 30, 2018. It was part of a series presented in January and February, 2018, and sponsored by the USC College of Arts and Sciences.- Originally broadcast 02/23/18 - All Stations: Fri, Jul 24, 12pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Jul26, 4 pm

With the United States’ entrance into World War I, three Army training bases were set up in South Carolina. The social and economic impact on a state still suffering from the devastation of the Civil War was dramatic. Three infantry divisions, including support personnel, swelled the Upstate and Midlands population by 90,000. On the coast, recruits flocked to Charleston’s Navy base. And some of those trainees were African Americans, which caused political turmoil and civil strife in a Jim Crow state.Dr. Andrew Myers from the University of South Carolina Upstate joins Dr. Edgar for a public Conversation on South Carolina History, World War I to talk about S.C. and the Military. This public conversation was recorded as part of a series presented in January and February, 2018, and sponsored by the USC College of Arts and Sciences.- Originally broadcast 02/09/18 -All Stations: Fri, Jul 17, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Jul 19, 4 pm

(Library of Congress)Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has said, "Reconstruction is one of the most important and consequential chapters in American history. It is also among the most overlooked, misunderstood and misrepresented." For an overview of this fraught era in American history, Dr. Walter Edgar is joined by Dr. J. Brent Morris, Director of the University of South Carolina at Beaufort's Institute for the Study of the Reconstruction Era, for a discussion of Reconstruction and its aftermath, beginning with the hopeful moment of  Civil War's end and Emancipation in 1865, and carrying through to 1915, when the nation was fully entrenched in Jim Crow segregation.- Originally broadcast 04/05/19 -All Stations: Fri, Jun 26, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Jun 28, 4 pm

(Austin History Center, Austin Public Library)(Steve Exum)On June 19th, 1865, Union general Gordon Granger read federal orders in Galveston, Texas, that all previously enslaved people in Texas were free. The news of Emancipation had finally come to the state. Today, this day is celebrated as Juneteenth.What did it mean to these newly freed people to "be free"? What power, or "agency" did freedom bring? What agency had the enslaved managed to create before Emancipation?Dr. Heather Andrea Williams of Pennsylvania State University has spent her career putting black people at the center of the histories she has written. She joins Dr. Walter Edgar for a public conversation about agency in the lives of people of color before and after Emancipation at the end of the Civil War. Williams award-winning first book, Self-Taught: African-American Education in Slavery and Freedom (University of North Carolina Press, 2005), argued that education was inseparable from the fight against slavery.All Stations: Fri, Jun 19, 1

(Chappel, Alonzo, 1828-1887 (artist), Jeens, Charles Henry, 1827-1879 (engraver), Anne S. K. Brown Collection at Brown University)(Civil War Trust/Lindsey Morrison) General U.S. history courses in many high schools depict the American Revolutionary War as a series of battles in the Northeast--Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, etc.--that lead inexorably to British General Charles Cornwallis's surrender of 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a French and American force at Yorktown, Virginia, October 19, 1781.The truth is much more complicated, of course. And a major component of the war, one that paved the way to Yorktown, was the fighting that took place in 1780 - 81 in the South.In essence, according to Dr. Jack Warren and Dr. Walter Edgar, the war was won in the South.Warren talks with Dr. Edgar as part of a series of public conversations presented by the University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences, Institute of Southern Studies in 2016. Their topic: Colonial and Revolutionary South Carolin

(North Carolina State Archives)​In his book, Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756 - 1763, (2015, UNC Press) Dr. Daniel J. Tortora, assistant professor of history at Colby College, explores how the Anglo-Cherokee War reshaped the political and cultural landscape of the colonial South. Tortora joins Walter Edgar for a discussion of these events in one of a a series of public conversations, “Conversations on Colonial and Revolutionary South Carolina.” The series was presented in 2016 by the University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences.In their discussion, Dr. Tortora argues that the political and military success of the Cherokees led colonists to a greater fear of slave resistance and revolt and ultimately nurtured South Carolinians' rising interest in the movement for independence.- Originally broadcast 02/19/16 -All Stations: Fri, Jun 05, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jun 07, 4 pm

(SC Public Radio)In They Stole Him Out of Jail (2019, USC Press), William B. Gravely presents the most comprehensive account of the Willie Earle's lynching ever written, exploring it from background to aftermath and from multiple perspectives. Gravely meticulously re-creates the case’s details, analyzing the flaws in the investigation and prosecution that led in part to the acquittals. Vivid portraits emerge of key figures in the story, including both Earle and cab driver T. W. Brown, Solicitor Robert T. Ashmore, Governor Strom Thurmond, and Rebecca West, the well-known British writer who covered the trial for the New Yorker magazine.Before daybreak on February 17, 1947, twenty-four-year-old Willie Earle, an African American man arrested for the murder of a Greenville, South Carolina, taxi driver named T. W. Brown, was abducted from his jail cell by a mob, and then beaten, stabbed, and shot to death. An investigation produced thirty-one suspects, most of them cabbies seeking revenge for one of their own. Th

(Ovation)This week on Walter Edgar's Journal, Mat Lee and Ted Lee drop in to talk about their new book, Hotbox: Inside Catering, the Food World’s Riskiest Business (2019, Henry Holt). In Hotbox, the Lee brothers take on the competitive, wild world of high-end catering, exposing the secrets of a food business few home cooks or restaurant chefs ever experience. Known for their modern take on Southern cooking, the Lee brothers steeped themselves in the catering business for four years, learning the culture from the inside-out. It’s a realm where you find eccentric characters, working in extreme conditions, who must produce magical events and instantly adapt when, for instance, the host’s toast runs a half-hour too long, a hail storm erupts, or a rolling rack of hundreds of ice cream desserts goes wheels-up.- Originally broadcast 02/14/20 -All Stations: Fri, May 01, 2020, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 03, 4 pm

(Library of Congress)According to the South Carolina Encyclopedia, “’The Sport of Kings’ emerged in South Carolina as soon as colonists gained firm footing and began amassing property and wealth enough to emulate the lifestyles of England and the Caribbean.” Horse racing and horse culture became an important part of South Carolina’s economic life in the 20th century and continue to thrive. Dr. E. Gabrielle Kuenzli of the University of South Carolina joins Dr. Edgar to talk about horses in the Palmetto State, as well as the rest of the South, and about the important roles of Latinos to equestrian sports in the region.All Stations: Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Mar 08, 4 pm

(Tumisu via Pixabay) Every four years presidential hopefuls and the national media travel the primary election circuit through Iowa and New Hampshire. Once the dust settles in these states, the nation's focus turns to South Carolina, the first primary in the delegate-rich South. Historically Iowa and New Hampshire have dominated the news because they are first, not because of their predictive ability or representativeness. In First in the South: Why South Carolina's Presidential Primary Matters (2020, USC Press), H. Gibbs Knotts and Jordan M. Ragusa make the case for shifting the national focus to South Carolina because of its clarifying and often-predictive role in selecting presidential nominees for both the Republican and Democratic Parties.Knotts and Ragusa talk with Walter Edgar about how they established the foundation for their claim, and then detail how South Carolina achieved its coveted "First in the South" status and examine the increasing importance of this primary since the first contest in 1980.

(Ovation)This week on Walter Edgar's Journal, Mat Lee and Ted Lee drop in to talk about their new book, Hotbox: Inside Catering, the Food World’s Riskiest Business (2019, Henry Holt). In Hotbox, the Lee brothers take on the competitive, wild world of high-end catering, exposing the secrets of a food business few home cooks or restaurant chefs ever experience. Known for their modern take on Southern cooking, the Lee brothers steeped themselves in the catering business for four years, learning the culture from the inside-out. It’s a realm where you find eccentric characters, working in extreme conditions, who must produce magical events and instantly adapt when, for instance, the host’s toast runs a half-hour too long, a hail storm erupts, or a rolling rack of hundreds of ice cream desserts goes wheels-up.All Stations: Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Feb 16, 4 pm

(Gift of the artist; 1937.009.0027027. Courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art)In the years after WWI, art, poetry, historic preservation, and literature flourished in Charleston, SC, and the Lowcountry during what has been called the Charleston Renaissance. Angela Mack, Executive Director & Chief Curator of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, talks with Walter Edgar about the people and circumstances that came together to create this flowering of the beaux arts in the Holy City.Mack and Edgar will also examine the obligations of museums to seek out the artistic voices of this period that were excluded from museum collections because of race or class, as well as how we must re-interpret art from this perod that represented African Americans and their lives as "lesser."All Stations: Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jan 26, 4 pm

( Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information)This week on Walter Edgar's Journal, our third program on South Carolina Between the World Wars, features Dr. Vernon Burton of Clemson University, in conversation with Walter Edgar about the politics of the period. During this time, State politics remained a politics very much based on friends and neighbors – white friends and neighbors, at least. Coming out of the relative progressivism of the First World War, politics took a swing back to conservativism which ran headlong into the federal programs and policies of the New Deal – polices which helped the state start digging out of the depression.  On the national scene, South Carolinians played major roles helping create and forward the strategies of the New Deal.Dr. Vernon Burton, the Judge Matthew J. Perry Distinguished Chair of History at Clemson University, talks with Walter Edgar about the politics of the times and how they both changed, and,

(Victoria Hansen/SC Public Radio)Four years before the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, a federal judge in Charleston hatched his secret plan to end segregation in America. Julius Waties Waring was perhaps the most unlikely civil rights hero in history. An eighth-generation Charlestonian, the son of a Confederate veteran and scion of a family of slave owners, Waring was appointed to the federal bench in the early days of World War II.Faced with a growing demand for equal rights from black South Carolinians, and a determined and savvy NAACP attorney named Thurgood Marshall, Waring did what he thought was right: He followed the law, and the United States Constitution. In fact, he helped guide Marshall down a narrow legal path that led to the end of segregation schools.Brian Hicks talks with Walter Edgar about Waring’s plan, and about his life, in the new book, In Darkest South Carolina: J. Waties Waring and the Secret Plan that Sparked a Civil Rights Movement (2017, Post and C

(1997 ABC, Inc Steve Fenn)Veteran journalist Cokie Roberts has died at age 75.  Roberts joined NPR in 1978, the start of a remarkable career that led her to ABC News in 1988, though she remained on NPR as a commentator until her death. Roberts died Tuesday due to complications from breast cancer, according to a family statement.Walter Edgar interviewed Roberts during a 2004 book tour promoting her book, Founding Mothers, when she made a stop at Litchfield Books. Listen the the entire episode, below.

(NOAA)Thirty years ago this month, the strongest and most costly hurricane to strike South Carolina in the 20th century made landfall. Hurricane Hugo was a Category 4 storm when it came ashore just slightly north of Charleston, on Isle of Palms on September 22. The hurricane had 140 mph sustained winds, with gusts to more than 160 mph and brought a storm surge of over 20 feet to McClellanville, SC. Thirty-five people lost their lives to the storm and its aftermath in South Carolina. Damage from Hugo in South Carolina was estimated at $5.9 billion.Walter Edgar talks with Bo Peterson of Charleston’s Post & Courier newspaper about the impact of Hugo. And, we’ll delve into the Journal’s archive for a past conversation with survivors of the storm surge in McClellanville.All Stations: Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Sep 15, 4 pm

(Courtesy of Harper Collins)On Monday, September 2, 2019, South Carolina lost a beloved author. Dorothea Benton Frank, author of 20 best-selling novels set in the Lowcountry, died at the age of 67 after a brief illness.We’d like to share with you an excerpt of Dottie Frank’s last visit with us at Walter Edgar's Journal, broadcast August 14, 2015.  Listen to Dorothea Benton Frank's first appearance on Walter Edgar's Journal

(NOAA Photo Library [CC BY 2.0] via Flickr)In their new book, A Wholly Admirable Thing (2018, Evening Post Books), Virginia and Dana Beach chronicle ten stories that showcase the rise of the Coastal Conservation League to one of the country’s most tenacious and innovative conservation groups. The book highlights transformational initiatives undertaken by the Conservation League over three decades in partnership with community activists up and down the South Carolina coast. Dana Beach joins Walter Edgar to talk about the history of the League and about his journey into the world of enviromental activism.All Stations: Fri, Jul 26, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jul 28, 4 pm

(Courtesy of NASA, July 16, 1969)Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke joins documentary producer/director Robert Stone  to talk with Walter Edgar about the Space Race of the 1960s, and about making the documentary Chasing the Moon.Chasing the Moon, the upcoming American Experience documentary (premieres July 8 on PBS), thoroughly reimagines the race to the moon for a new generation, upending much of the conventional mythology surrounding the effort. The three-part series recasts the Space Age as a fascinating stew of scientific innovation and PR savvy, political calculation and media spectacle, visionary impulses and personal drama.(Courtesy of NASA)With no narration and using only archival footage — including a visual feast of previously lost or overlooked material — the film features new interviews with a diverse cast of characters who played key roles in these historic events. Among those included are astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Frank Borman and Bill Anders; Freeman Dyson, the renowned futurist and theor

(USC Beaufort)(Originally broadcast 03/10/17) - In this final installment of public Conversations on South Carolina: The State and the New Nation, 1783-1828, Dr. Brent Morris, associate professor of history and chair of the humanities at the University of South Carolina-Beaufort, talks with Dr. Walter Edgar about the unification of the a divided South Carolina, and its evolution from a strongly nationally-oriented states to a leader in the states' rights movement.All Stations: Fri, May 31, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jun 02, 4 pm

(Originally broadcast 02/17/17) - For the second lecture in this four-part series of Conversations on South Carolina: The State and the New Nation, 1783-1828. Dr. Larry Watson discusses slavery in South Carolina. Professor Watson is Associate Professor of History & Adjunct Professor of History South Carolina State University and the University of South Carolina. He is author of numerous articles on African American life in the American South.This series of public conversations is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Southern Studies Institute.All Stations: Fri, May 17, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 19, 4 pm

(U.S. Senate)Former S.C. Governor and U.S. Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings died on Saturday, April 6, 2019 at the age of 97. A Democrat, he held elective office for over fifty years. In 2008, Hollings talked with Walter Edgar about his life in politics and government, and about how to "make government work" again."Performance is better than promise" has long been the motto of Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings, a former Governor of South Carolina and six-term U.S. Senator who has distinguished himself as a stalwart advocate of fiscally responsible progressive programs. In his political memoir, "Making Government Work," Hollings takes aim at our increasingly flawed political system and a government that has gone "into the ditch." As remedy he pulls antidotes from anecdotes about his personal experiences in making government work in spite of itself for the past half century.Hollings joins Dr. Edgar to talk about the book and about the changes in government and politics he has seen in his decades of public service.All S

(Library of Congress)Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has said, "Reconstruction is one of the most important and consequential chapters in American history. It is also among the most overlooked, misunderstood and misrepresented." Gates' new four-part television series for PBS, Reconstruction: America after the Civil War begins it run on April 9 on SCETV.For an overview of this era in American history, Dr. Walter Edgar is joined by a fellow historian, Dr. J. Brent Morris, Director of the University of South Carolina Beaufort's Institute for the Study of the Reconstruction Era, for a discussion of Reconstruction and its aftermath, beginning with the hopeful moment of war's end and emancipation in 1865 and carrying through to 1915, when the nation was fully entrenched in Jim Crow segregation.All Stations: Fri, Apr 05, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Apr 07, 4 pm

Believe it or not, there is no standardized design for the South Carolina state flag. There are, however, historical versions which vary from period to period. And there are countless variations on shirts, decals, caps, sweatshirts – each manufacturer creates its own version.Last year, the state legislature created a committee to come up with recommendations for a standard flag designs. On this week’s episode of The Journal, two members of that committee, Walter Edgar and Dr. Eric Emerson, head of the state’s Department of Archives and History, explore the history of the flag and its various versions.

(Greg Turner [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0] via Flickr)January and February gave us the State of the Union address and the State of the State address – important stuff. But, for a Southerner, there are specific, important areas of life in these United States that these addresses didn't cover – areas that we need to check on once in a while. So, in early 2019, what is the State of Southern Cuisine?Is it still making inroads in the food ways of other sections of the country? Are chain restaurants affecting what people in the South call ‘Southern Food?’ Who is innovating Southern Cuisine while staying true to traditions?To find out, Walter Edgar talks with Hanna Raskin, Food Editor and Chief Critic for Charleston’s Post & Courier newspaper; and, Melissa Hall, Managing Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, a member-supported organization based at the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture.All Stations: Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Feb 17, 4 pm

With recent controversies over the use of trade tariffs by the United States, it might be a good time to take a look back at the history of their use. It’s a complicated, often fraught history. In fact, friction between the North and South over tariffs in the early 19th century almost launched the Civil War, 30 years “early.”Dr. James C. Cobb, B. Phinizy Spalding Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the History of the American South, University of Georgia, talks with Walter Edgar about the way tariffs have been used by the U. S. from 1789 to the 20th century, and the consequences of those uses.All Stations: Fri, Feb 01, 2019, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Feb 03, 4 pm

(Victoria Hansen/SC Public Radio)(Post and Courier) Four years before the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, a federal judge in Charleston hatched his secret plan to end segregation in America. Julius Waties Waring was perhaps the most unlikely civil rights hero in history. An eighth-generation Charlestonian, the son of a Confederate veteran and scion of a family of slave owners, Waring was appointed to the federal bench in the early days of World War II.Faced with a growing demand for equal rights from black South Carolinians, and a determined and savvy NAACP attorney named Thurgood Marshall, Waring did what he thought was right: He followed the law, and the United States Constitution. In fact, he helped guide Marshall down a narrow legal path that led to the end of segregation schools.Brian Hicks talks with Walter Edgar about Waring’s plan, and about his life, in the new book, In Darkest South Carolina: J. Waties Waring and the Secret Plan that Sparked a Civil Rights Movemen

The film producer, actor, and Columbia Native Julian Adams joins Walter Edgar to talk about his new film, The Last Full Measure, and to talk about his journey into the world of filmmaking. Adam’s previous features include Phantom (2013) and Amy Cook: The Spaces in Between (2009).The Last Full Measure tells the true story of William Pitsenbarger (Jeremy Irvine), an Air Force medic who saved over sixty men in one of the harshest battles of the Vietnam War. Offered the chance to escape on the last helicopter out of the combat zone, Pitsenbarger stayed behind to save and defend the lives of his fellow soldiers. Twenty years later, Pitsenbarger's comrade in arms (William Hurt) and father (Christopher Plummer) seek the help of investigator Scott Huffman (Sebastian Stan) and other surviving veterans of the battle to finally procure him The Congressional Medal of Honor he deserved.All Stations: Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Jan 20, 4 pm

(SCETV)(Tut Underwood/SC Public Radio)This week's program is an encore of an episode aired in 2012, featuring T. Moffatt Burriss. Burriss was a former Columbia area contractor, Republican state lawmaker and American World War II battlefield hero. He died January 4, 2019 at age 99.  (Broadcast 06/29/12) - Anderson native T. Moffatt Burris is a WWII veteran and concentration camp liberator who also participated in the invasions of Sicily and Italy. During Operation Market Garden in Holland, he led the amphibious assault across the Waal River made famous in the movie, A Bridge Too Far. Burriss is the subject of the upcoming ETV special Man and Moment: T. Moffatt Burriss and the Crossing. He joins Dr. Edgar, State newspaper reporter Jeff Wilkinson, and documentary producer Lee Ann Kornegay, to talk about the war and about making the film.Watch the film, Man and Moment: T. Moffatt Burriss and the CrossingAll Stations: Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Jan 13, 4 pm

(Lewis Hines/National Archives)(Originally broadcast 10/12/18) - New York Times bestselling author Wiley Cash’s 2017 novel, The Last Ballad (2017, Willam Morrow) is set in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina in 1929 and inspired by actual events. It chronicles an ordinary woman’s struggle for dignity and her rights in a textile mill; The Last Ballad is a moving tale of courage in the face of oppression and injustice. It is based on true events and tells the story of Ella Mae Wiggins, whose ballads about the poverty of mill workers in the South, and their repression by mill owners, lived on after her death in a Gaston, NC, workers’ strike.Dr. Edgar talks with author Wiley Cash about what drew him to the real-life story of Ella Mae Wiggins and about what it was like to be working in the mills of the Carolinas in the 1920s and 1930s.All Stations: Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Jan 06, 4 pm

(George Peter Alexander Healy)In the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln spoke of the need to conclude “the unfinished work which they who fought here so nobly advanced.”  In his second Inaugural Address, he spoke in similar vein: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.” It’s likely that, in Lincoln’s mind, the most immediate “unfinished work” was the Civil War itself as well as many other unfinished tasks. An upcoming conference at Clemson University will discuss some of the dimensions of Lincoln’s “unfinished work” as a springboard for exploring the United States after his death. The question of Lincoln’s unfinished work remains pertinent to those who care about American democracy.The organizers the conference, Dr. Vernon Burton and Dr. Peter Eisentstadt join two of its presenters, Dr. Bill Hine and Dr. Darlene Hine, and Walter Edgar to talk about Lincoln’s Unfinish

(Lewis Hines/National Archives)New York Times bestselling author Wiley Cash’s 2017 novel, The Last Ballad (2017, Willamm Morrow) is set in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina in 1929 and inspired by actual events. It chronicles an ordinary woman’s struggle for dignity and her rights in a textile mill; The Last Ballad is a moving tale of courage in the face of oppression and injustice. It is based on true events and tells the story of Ella Mae Wiggins, whose ballads about the poverty of mill workers in the South, and their repression by mill owners, lived on after her death in a Gaston, NC, workers’ strike.Dr. Edgar talks with author Wiley Cash about what drew him to the real-life story of Ella Mae Wiggins and about what it was like to be working in the mills of the Carolinas in the 1920s and 1930s.All Stations: Fri, Oct 12 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Oct 14, 4 pm

The late Noel Polk and Tudier Harris, with Walter Edgar, taping "Take on the South."(SCETV/SC Public Radio)This month, a PBS series, The Great American Read, celebrates the joy of reading and the books we love. Celebrities, authors, and book lovers reveal the novels that have affected their lives. And, the national vote gets under way, to decide America’s Best-Loved Novel.Back in 2009, SCETV's Take on the South took a similar poll, and  asked the question, "What was the most influential 20th-Century Southern Novel?"On Walter Edgar's Journal, internationally-renowned Southern-literature scholars Trudier Harris of UNC and Noel Polk of Mississippi State University join Dr. Edgar to debate the topic.So, while the nation votes on "America's Best-Loved Novel," we thought we'd revisit our discussion of May 8, 2009 with this podcast. This episode is a companion to the SCETV series.

(U.S. National Archives)What are the guarantees of free speech found in the Constitution of the United States? Are there limits to free speech? And what are the responsibilities of citizens who exercise their right to free speech? Dr. Michael Lipscomb of Winthrop University, talks with Dr. Edgar about these and other questions.Dr. Lipscomb will be making a Constitution Day presentation, Free Speech and the Responsibilities of Citizenship.at Winthrop on September 17, 2018, as part of the “News Literacy and Future of Journalism” series, a seven-month collaborative effort among SC Humanities, Winthrop University. The series is part of the national initiative on “Democracy and the Informed Citizen” administered by the Federation of State Humanities Councils and funded by the Mellon Foundation.All Stations: Fri, Sep 14, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Sep 16, 4 pm

(David Mark, via Pixabay [CC0 1.0])Crossroads: Change in Rural America is a traveling Smithsonian exhibit that offers small towns a chance to look at their own paths and to highlight the changes that affected their fortunes over the past century. Sponsored by SC Humanities in partnership with local communities, Crossroads: Change in Rural America will tour South Carolina in 2018 – 2019, visiting six communities: Union, Denmark, Newberry, Hopkins, Barnwell, and Dillon. Each host community will host the exhibit for six weeks and will present collateral programming from local exhibits to oral histories to movie screenings.In 1900, about 40% of Americans lived in rural areas. By 2010, less than 18% of the U.S. population lived in rural areas. Yet, only 10% of the U.S. landmass is considered urban. Despite the massive economic and demographic impacts brought on by these changes, America’s small towns continue to creatively focus on new opportunities for growth and development. Economic innovation and

(Napoleon Sarony/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institite)In August of 2013, Walter Edgar's Journal featured a conversation with Maureen D. Lee, about her biography Sissieretta Jones, "The Greatest Singer of Her Race," 1868-1933 (USC Press, 2012), which told the forgotten story of the pioneering African American diva whose remarkable career paved the way for many who followed her. Recently, the New York Times, in their series,"Overlooked," published a detailed obituary of Jones. The series is an effort by the Times to correct what they have declared to be historical biases in their obituaries, against non-white people as well as women.This caught our attention, and we thought we'd again share our conversation with Maureen Lee.___(Originally broadcast 08/16/13) - Sissieretta Jones, "The Greatest Singer of Her Race," 1868-1933 (USC Press, 2012), recounts the life of  Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, a classically trained soprano who was also called the "Black Patti," a nickname that likened her to

(Library of Congress)Upon the United States' entrance into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson told the nation that the war was being fought to "make the world safe for democracy." For many African-American South Carolinians, the chance to fight in this war was a way to prove their citizenship, in hopes of changing things for the better at home.Dr. Janet Hudson from the University of South Carolina joins Dr. Edgar for a public Conversation on South Carolina History, World War I: Black South Carolinian Soldiers. The conversation took place at USC’s Capstone Conference Center, in Columbia, on January 30, 2018. It was part of a series presented in January and February, 2018, and sponsored by the USC College of Arts and Sciences.- Originally broadcast 02/23/18 -All Stations: Fri, Aug 17, 12pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Aug 19, 4 pm

(Originally broadcast 02/09/18) - With the United States’ entrance into World War I, three Army training bases were set up in South Carolina. The social and economic impact on a state still suffering from the devastation of the Civil War was dramatic. Three infantry divisions, including support personnel, swelled the Upstate and Midlands population by 90,000. On the coast, recruits flocked to Charleston’s Navy base. And some of those trainees were African Americans, which caused political turmoil and civil strife in a Jim Crow state.Dr. Andrew Myers from the University of South Carolina Upstate joins Dr. Edgar for a public Conversation on South Carolina History, World War I to talk about S.C. and the Military. This public conversation was recorded as part of a series presented in January and February, 2018, and sponsored by the USC College of Arts and Sciences.All Stations: Fri, Aug 10, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Aug 12, 4 pm

(Library of Congress)(Originally broadcast 02/02/18) - When the United States entered the First World War in 1918 they women of South Carolina figuratively rolled up their sleeves, and went to work to support their state and their country. At this time, the average woman in the state was black, lived in a rural setting, worked in agriculture or as a domestic worker. White women, while more likely to be in the middle class, were still largely living in rural areas or small towns, and working in agriculture or in textile mills.Dr. Amy McCandless, professor emerita of history at the College of Charleston, joins Dr. Edgar for a public Conversation on South Carolina History, World War I: S.C. Women during the War. The conversation took place at USC’s Capstone Conference Center, in Columbia, on January 16, 2018. It was part of a series presented in January and February, 2018, and sponsored by the USC College of Arts and Sciences.All Stations: Fri, Aug 03, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Aug 05, 4 pm

(SCETV/Original SC)(Originally broadcast 10/13/17) - The Southern Campaign was critical in determining the outcome of the American Revolutionary War, yet the South’s importance has been downplayed in most historical accounts to date.The National Park Service has recognized the importance of the Southern Campaign with the creation of its Southern Campaign of the American Revolution Parks group. The group includes Cowpens National Battlefield, Kings Mountain National Military Park, Ninety Six National Historic Site, and Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail. Walter Edgar talks with John Slaughter, superintendent of the parks, about the creation of this group, and its importance in telling the story of the American Revolution in the War.All Stations: Fri, July 06, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, July 08, 4 pmResources: SCETV’s The Southern Campaign of the American Revolution

The topic of this year’s History Alive festival presented by Greenville Chautauqua is “Courage.” Historical interpreters will appear in character under the Chautauqua tent bringing to life the stores of Alice Paul, Francis Marion, Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, and Winston Churchill.Greenville Chautauqua’s Caroline McIntyre joins Dr. Edgar along with historical interpreters Becky Stone (Harriet Tubman) and Leslie Goddard (Clara Barton and Alice Paul) to talk about his summer’s History Alive festival.All Stations: Fri, May 11, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, May 13, 4 pm

(Peace Center)Peace Voices is a spoken word outreach program of Greenville's Peace Center that uses poetry as a vehicle to tell unique, personal stories. Participants engage in master classes with Peace Center Poet-in-Residence Glenis Redmond, both at the Peace Center and in the community.On April 26, 2018, Peace Voices will present a Poetic Conversation at the Peace Center, For Poetry's Sake: Celebrating National Poetry Month. Guest poets will include Cheryl Boyce Taylor and Charleston's Marcus Amaker. Joining Dr. Edgar to talk about Peace Voices and the upcoming Conversation are Glenis Redmond; Charleston Poet Laureate, Marcus Amaker; and Peace Center Vice President of Community Impact, Larisa Gelman.All Stations: Fri, Apr 20, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Apr 22, 4 pm

(Library of Congress/Hine, Lewis Wickes)South Carolina in 1918 was still struggling with the changes to its economic and social systems brought about by the Civil War and Reconstruction. The United States’ entry into World War I affected the daily work life of South Carolinians and the state’s economy in a way that was unique to our state.This week, guest host, Dr. Mark Smith of the University of South Carolina, talks with Dr. James C. Cobb, B. Phinizy Spalding Professor of History Emeritus of the University of Georgia,  about South Carolina’s Economy during World War I. This conversation was recorded at the University of South Carolina’s Capstone Conference Center, in Columbia, on February 13, 2018. It was part of the series “Conversations on South Carolina History,” presented in January and February, 2018, and sponsored by the USC College of Arts and Sciences.All Stations: Fri, Mar 09, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Mar 09, 4 pm

(Library of Congress)Upon the United States' entrance into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson told the nation that the war was being fought to "make the world safe for democracy." For many African-American South Carolinians, the chance to fight in this war was a way to prove their citizenship, in hopes of changing things for the better at home.Dr. Janet Hudson from the University of South Carolina joins Dr. Edgar for a public Conversation on South Carolina History, World War I: Black South Carolinian Soldiers. The conversation took place at USC’s Capstone Conference Center, in Columbia, on January 30, 2018. It was part of a series presented in January and February, 2018, and sponsored by the USC College of Arts and Sciences.All Stations: Fri, Feb 23, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Feb 25, 4 pm

(Fire Light Media) Film maker Stanley Nelson and Dr. Bobby Donaldson of the University of South Carolina talk with Walter Edgar about the story of historically black colleges and universities in the U. S., and about Mr. Nelson’s film Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities which airs on SCETV Monday, February 19, at 9:00 pm, as part of the PBS series Independent Lens.All Stations: Fri, Feb 16, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Feb 18, 4 pm

Dr. Andrew Myers from the University of South Carolina Upstate joins Dr. Edgar for a public Conversation on South Carolina History, World War I: S.C. and the Military, on January 23, 2018. It was part of a series presented in January and February, 2018, and sponsored by the USC College of Arts and Sciences.All Stations: Fri, Feb 09, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Feb 11, 4 pm

(Norman B. Leventhal Map Center (NBL Map Center) at the Boston Public Library (BPL) [CC BY 2.0])A two-decade, joint effort between South Carolina and North Carolina has sought to correct errors made surveying the boundary line between the two states. The errors began with the first survey, made in 1735, and were compounded over the years. Alan-Jon Zupan, a former project manager for the South Carolina Geological Survey, and David Ballard, currently with SCGS, join Walter Edgar to talk about the history of South Carolina’s northern line, and the modern-day efforts to get it right.All Stations: Fri, Dec 15, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Dec 17, 4 pm

(SC Hall of Fame)Justice Ernest A. Finney, Jr., South Carolina's first Africa-American chief justice, has died Sunday, December 3, 2017. He was 86. Finney was one of just a handful of black lawyers in the state when he graduated from the South Carolina State College School of Law in 1954. Finney was elected chief justice of South Carolina in 1994 and retired from the court in 2000.This podcast is the February 3, 2006, episode of Walter Edgar's Journal, in which Finney talks about the changes in civil rights in South Carolina over his lifetime, many of which he helped to bring about.  From the South Carolina Hall of Fame:

(National Library of Scotland)Furman University's Dr. Courtney Tollison co-curated “Over Here, Over There: Greenville in the Great War,” an exhibition on display in the spring of 2017 at Furman University’s James B. Duke Library. The exhibit examined World War I’s (1914-1918) impact on the Greenville community as well as the contributions of the area to the war effort, domestically and overseas; and it assessed the mixed legacy of progress emanating from the war years.Through exposure to new people and new ideas, and as a beneficiary of the nation’s great economic mobilization, World War I brought social and economic progress along with changes in infrastructure to the area, but fell short of what could have been accomplished during this time of national and international upheaval. Dr. Courtney Tollison, Furman University, shares what the research she and her students uncovered about how Greenville and the upstate participated in war efforts and the effects the war and its aftermath had on the regio

(blahedo [CC BY-SA 2.5] via Wikimedia Commons)In his new book, The Life and Times of General Andrew Pickens: Revolutionary War Hero, American Founder (2017, UNC Press), Dr. Rod Andrew, Jr., of Clemson University, explores the life of the hard-fighting South Carolina militia commander of the American Revolution, was the hero of many victories against British and Loyalist forces. In this book, Andrew offers an authoritative and comprehensive biography of Pickens the man, the general, the planter, and the diplomat. Andrew vividly depicts Pickens as he founds churches, acquires slaves, joins the Patriot cause, and struggles over Indian territorial boundaries on the southern frontier.After the war, Pickens sought a peaceful and just relationship between his country and the southern Native American tribes and wrestled internally with the issue of slavery. Andrew suggests that Pickens’s rise to prominence, his stern character, and his sense of duty highlight the egalitarian ideals of his generation as well as its

(SCETV/Original SC)The Southern Campaign was critical in determining the outcome of the American Revolutionary War, yet the South’s importance has been downplayed in most historical accounts to date.The National Park Service has recognized the importance of the Southern Campaign with the creation of its Southern Campaign of the American Revolution Parks group. The group includes Cowpens National Battlefield, Kings Mountain National Military Park, Ninety Six National Historic Site, and Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail. Walter Edgar talks with John Slaughter, superintendent of the parks, about the creation of this group, and its importance in telling the story of the American Revolution in the War.All Stations: Fri, Oct 13, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Oct 15, 4 pmResources: SCETV’s The Southern Campaign of the American Revolution

(Courtesy of Preservation SC)The Palmetto Trust for Historic Preservation is now Preservation South Carolina. The non-profit, statewide organization is a partner of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and has been operating in South Carolina since 1990. Executive Director Michael Bedenbaugh talks about Preservation South Carolina’s latest efforts to "protect and preserve the irreplaceable architectural heritage of South Carolina."All Stations: Fri, Oct 06, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Oct 08, 4 pm

(Marine Corp HMM-263 (Vietnam) Helicopter Squadron, know as The Peach Bush Book Club)Note: Coinciding with broadcast on SCETV of The Vietnam War, a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick,  Walter Edgar's Journal is re-publishing podcasts of some of our earlier programs.(Originally broadcast 05/27/11) - Walter Edgar talks with Col. Walt Ledbetter and Duncan McCrae, veterans of the 263rd Marine Helicopter Squadron. Their aim is to compile a history of their experiences in the Vietnam War in 1969-70. They share stories from some of the missions they flew. Ledbetter and McCrae are joined by Clint Chalmers, producer.

(Tibby Steedly) Note: Coinciding with broadcast on SCETV of The Vietnam War, a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick,  Walter Edgar's Journal is re-publishing podcasts of some of our earlier programs.(Broadcast 11-14-08) - When we talked to Vietnam War veteran Homer Steedly in 2007 the South Carolina native told us of his plans to return to Vietnam. One of his goals has been to, at last, meet face-to-face with the family of Hoang Ngoc Dam, the young North Vietnamese soldier (a medic) whom he'd killed in March of 1969; and to help locate Dam's remains and return them to his family's village for burial.In May of 2008, Homer started the journey back to Vietnam. He shares with Dr. Edgar the story of the events that followed: meeting the family, finding the remains, journeying to the Dam's home village of Thai Giang, meeting the family, and participating in the ceremonies and burial of Hoang Ngoc Dam's remains in their final resting place.It is a moving, powerful story. Homer's web site is www.swampfox.info.

(Originally broadcast 02/17/17) - For the second lecture in this four-part series of Conversations on South Carolina: The State and the New Nation, 1783-1828. Dr. Larry Watson discusses slavery in South Carolina. Professor Watson is Associate Professor of History & Adjunct Professor of History South Carolina State University and the University of South Carolina. He is author of numerous articles on African American life in the American South.This series of public conversations is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Southern Studies Institute.All Stations: Fri, Aug 11, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Aug 13, 4 pm

(David Mark, via Pixabay [CC0 1.0])York, SC, Mayor Ed Lee, and Reba Hull Campbell, Deputy Executive Director of the Municipal Association of South Carolina, join  Walter Edgar to talk about the challenges to economic growth faced by small towns in South Carolina, the history of those challenges, and the strategies many are using to promote such growth in the 21st century.All Stations: Fri, June 23, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, June 25, 4 pm

(Kai Stachowiak/Pixabay [CC0 1.0])Heirs' property is often land that has been passed down through generations without the benefit of a will so that the land is owned "in common" by all of the heirs, whether or not they live on the land, pay the taxes, or have set foot on the land. This unstable form of ownership puts heirs' property at high risk for loss because any heir can sell his/her percentage of ownership to another who can then force a sale of the entire property. The Center for Heirs' Property Preservation's Executive Director, Dr. Jennie L. Stephens, and Center client Marguirite DeLaine join Walter Edgar in conversation about the challenges heirs' property presents to its owners, and the help the center offers.All Stations: Fri, June 16, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, June 18, 4 pm

Best-selling author Mary Alice Monroe and Rudy Mancke, naturalist, teacher, host of NatureNotes and SCETV's NatureScene, share a deep love of the Lowcountry of South Carolina. They join Walter Edgar to talk about the unique, priceless treasure that is South Carolina's Coastal Plain. Monroe will also talk about her new novel, to be released on June 20, 2017, Beach House For Rent  (2017, Gallery Books). Beach House For Rent is written as a stand-alone novel. It also serves as the final installment of Monroe’s successful Beach House Series, which began with The Beach House, a novel first released in 2002. The Beach House is now being adapted to a Hallmark Channel original movie, starring three-time golden globe nominee Andie MacDowell, who is also an executive producer of the movie. The Hallmark Channel plans to air “The Beach House” in July.All Stations: Fri, June 09, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, June 11, 4 pm

(Greenville Chautauqua)Before radio and television, traveling cultural tent shows toured across America. The original Chautauqua was a road show of music, entertainment, and always a great speaker of the day. At their peak, Tent Chautauquas appeared in over 10,000 communities and preformed for more than 45 million people.Greenville Chautauqua has been in production since 1999. This year’s Summer program, The Power of Words, June 10 through June 25, features historical interpreters bringing to life Abraham Lincoln; poet Maya Angelou; workers advocate Cesar Chavez; Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring; and newsman Walter Cronkite. Walter Edgar talks with festival administrator and historical interpreter Caroline McIntyre (Rachel Carson) and historical interpreter Becky Stone (Maya Angelou).All Stations: Fri, May 26, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 28, 4 pm

(Penn State, via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])Internationally renowned author and poet Ron Rash recently donated his personal archive to the Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library and the University of South Carolina. Born in Chester, SC, Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall.Rash is joined by his brother Tom Rash and his sister Kathy Rash Brewer in conversation about the influence of family and place on his life and work.In addition to four prize-winning novels, including The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight, Rash has published four collections of poems and six collections of stories. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.All Stations: Fri, May 12, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 14, 4 pm

(Courtesy of the artist)(Courtesy of the Artist)Renowned South Carolina artist, Leo Twiggs, now 82, has long been fascinated by the contradictions of the South, and he has defined a unique iconography in his work by seizing on certain symbols, especially the Confederate battle flag, its stars and bars, the shape of an “X” and the image of a target, with its sequential rings and bull’s-eye.For a new series — nine paintings of Emanuel AME Church, “a testimony to the lives that were lost” — the “X” figure is repeatedly used. But this time it is transformed from a symbol of hate into a symbol of love and redemption. Twiggs joins Dr. Edgar to talk about the series, “Requiem for Mother Emanuel.” All Stations: Fri, Apr 21, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Apr 23, 4 pm

(DCA&HC McMahan Photo Collection via SC Humanities)The Way We Worked is a traveling Smithsonian exhibit that explores how work became such a central element in American culture by tracing the many changes that affected the workforce and work environment in the past 150 years. Adapted from an original exhibition designed by the National Archives, The Way We Worked shows how we identify with work – as individuals and as communities.SC Humanities is bringing The Way We Worked to South Carolina in 2017 for a year-long tour of six communities: St. George, Blythewood, Pickens, Chester, McClellanville, and Hartsville. Each host community will present collateral programming from local exhibits to oral histories to movie screenings. To talk about the exhibit, community involvement, the changing nature of work in South Carolina's history, Walter Edgar is joined by T.J. Wallace of SC Humanities; Dr. Melissa Walker of Converse College; and Dan Brennan of the Pickens County Museum of Art & History.All Stations: Fri, Ap

(HeritageDaily [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons)Archaeology in South Carolina: Exploring the Hidden Heritage of the Palmetto State (USC Press, 2016), edited by Adam King, contains an overview of the fascinating archaeological research currently ongoing in the Palmetto State and features essays by twenty scholars studying South Carolina's past through archaeological research. The scholarly contributions are enhanced by more than one hundred black-and-white and thirty-eight color images of some of the most important and interesting sites and artifacts found in the state.South Carolina has an extraordinarily rich history encompassing some of the first human habitations of North America as well as the lives of people at the dawn of the modern era. King talks with Dr. Edgar about the basic how's and why's of archaeology, as well as the current issues influencing the field of research. All Stations: Fri, Mar 31, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Apr 2, 4 pm

(Library of Congress; photographer unknown)South Carolina in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras (USC Press, 2016) is an anthology of the most enduring and important scholarly articles about the Civil War and Reconstruction era published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association. Past officers of the South Carolina Historical Association (SCHA) Michael Brem Bonner and Fritz Hamer have selected twenty-three essays from the several hundred published since 1931 to create this treasure trove of scholarship on an impressive variety of subjects including race, politics, military events, and social issues. Editors Hamer and  Bonner join Dr. Edgar to talk about the book and the wide-lens view it offers.All Stations: Fri, Mar 24, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Mar 26, 4 pm

(USC Beaufort)In this final installment of public Conversations on South Carolina: The State and the New Nation, 1783-1828, Dr. Brent Morris, associate professor of history and chair of the humanities at the University of South Carolina-Beaufort, talks with Dr. Walter Edgar about the unification of the slave state in South Carolina from 1783 to 1828.All Stations: Fri, Mar 10, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Mar 12, 4 pm

(University of South Carolina)Join us for the third public conversation in a four-part series of Conversations on South Carolina: The State and the New Nation, 1783-1828. Dr. Lacy Ford, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences University of South Carolina and author of Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860 and Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South, will discuss the ideology and public policy of slavery in the American republic. This series of public conversations is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Southern Studies InstituteAll Stations: Fri, Mar 03, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Mar 05, 4 pm

For the second lecture in this four-part series of Conversations on South Carolina: The State and the New Nation, 1783-1828, Dr. Larry Watson discusses slavery in South Carolina. Professor Watson is Associate Professor of History & Adjunct Professor of History South Carolina State University and the University of South Carolina. He is author of numerous articles on African American life in the American South.This series of public conversations is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Southern Studies Institute at the University of South Carolina.All Stations: Fri, Feb 24, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Feb 26, 4 pm

Detail of a leaf from the "Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands."(catesbytrust.org)English naturalist Mark Catesby’s love of exploration and learning lives on through a new program, entitled Creating a Better Way to Learn, developed by the Catesby Commemorative Trust in association with local educational entities.The Trust is working actively with the School of Education at the College of Charleston, SCETV, and curriculum specialists at the Charleston County School District on this program, developing lesson plans and innovative tools that will improve the learning experience for students across South Carolina and beyond.Creating a Better Way to Learn involves the very successful project/problem teaching approach used in high school college-credit advance placement classes, and adopting its use starting in the elementary grades. Lesson plans for science, social studies and art will include material from CCT's award-winning book, The Curious Mister Catesby: A "Truly Ingenious" Naturali

(Spartanburg County Foundation)Speaking Down Barriers is a non-profit group created by Marlanda Dekine and Scott Neely with a goal to “[transform] our life together across our differences through performance, consultation, trainings, and dialogue.” Dekine and Neely join Dr. Edgar to talk about the program’s efforts and goals.All Stations: Fri, Jan 13, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Jan 15, 4 pm

(Courtesy of the author) Sandra E. Johnson talks with Walter Edgar about her latest novel, Flowers for the Living. The novel tells the story of how a suicidal African-American teenager's forcing a young white cop to kill him devastates the teenager’s mother as well the rookie cop. It also sparks a massive race riot and puts the mother and rookie in the cross hairs of a deranged gunman.The only place Emma Jennings, the mother, and Russell “Rusty” Carter, Jr., the cop, find refuge from the chaos engulfing them is the teenager’s serenely beautiful grave.  Through initially awkward meetings there, Emma and Rusty establish a bond that they must ultimately rely on to rebuild their lives and help heal their city.  All Stations: Fri, Jan 06, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jan 08, 4 pm

New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash demonstrates his superb narrative skills in this suspenseful and evocative tale of two brothers whose lives are altered irrevocably by the events of one long-ago summer—and one bewitching young woman—and the secrets that could destroy their lives.While swimming in a secluded creek on a hot Sunday in 1969, sixteen-year-old Eugene and his older brother, Bill, meet the entrancing Ligeia. A sexy, free-spirited redhead from Daytona Beach banished to their small North Carolina town until the fall, Ligeia will not only bewitch the two brothers, but lure them into a struggle that reveals the hidden differences in their natures.Many years later, when a shocking reminder of the past unexpectedly surfaces, Eugene is plunged back into that fateful summer, and the girl he cannot forget. The deeper he delves into his memories, the closer he comes to finding the truth. But can Eugene’s recollections be trusted? And will the truth set him free and offer salvation . . . or dest

(Public Doman, via Wikimedia Commons)Two hundred and two years after the birth of Henry William Ravenel, a 19th century South Carolina planter and botanist, a dedicated team from North Carolina and South Carolina universities and colleges has made his manuscripts and collections available online.This new resource, Plants and Planter: Henry William Ravenel and the Convergence of Science and Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century South, digitally reunites 6,200 botanical specimens Ravenel collected and more than 3,000 pages of his manuscripts, all of which are currently housed by a variety of higher education institutions throughout the Carolinas.Dr. Herrick Brown, of the University of South Carolina’s A.C. Moore Herbarium, talks with Dr. Edgar about Ravenel, his work, and this extraordinary new resource.All Stations: Fri, Oct 28, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Oct 30, 4 pm

(mozlase/Pixabay)All history is “local history” to someone. And the preservation, interpretation, and presentation of local history rest on the efforts of countless individuals in communities around the Palmetto State. This week, Dr. Edgar talks with three individuals who know well what it takes to discover and preserve the history of local communities: Dr. Eric Emerson, Director of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History; Don Mathis, President of the Lee County Historical Society; and Janson Cox, former director of the SC Cotton Museum.All Stations: Fri, Oct 21, 4 pm | News Stations: Sun, Oct 23, 4 pm

Hobcaw Barony is a 16,000 acre tract on the Waccamaw Neck, between the Winyah Bay and the Atlantic Ocean in Georgetown County, SC. Once owned by the investor, philanthropist, presidential advisor, and South Carolina native Bernard M. Baruch, the property was used as a hunting preserve between 1905 and 1907. It is now owned and operated by the non-profit Belle W. Baruch Foundation as a site for research in the environmental sciences. In addition, over 70 cultural sites on the plantation including cemeteries, slave cabins, and the Baruch’s homes all provide a time capsule for educators.The Foundation’s Executive Director, George Chastain, and its Senior Interpreter, Lee G. Brockington, join Dr. Edgar for a conversation about the ecological, historical, and cultural riches of Hobcaw Barony.Related Link: Between the Waters inactive web documentaryAll Stations: Fri, Oct 7, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Oct 9, 4 pm

(Courtesy of Coastal Carolina University)Becoming Southern Writers: Essays in Honor of Charles Joyner (2016, USC Press) is a collection of essays that pay tribute to the late South Carolinian Charles Joyner’s more than fifty years as a writer of Southern history, folklore, music and literature. (Dr. Joyner died on Tuesday, September 13, 2016.) The contributors, exceptional writers of fact, fiction, and poetry, describe their experiences of living in and writing about the South.The editors, Dr. Orville Vernon Burton and Dr. Eldred “Wink” Prince, talk with Dr. Edgar about the writers, their contributions, and about the life and work of the man who inspired them all, Dr. Charles Joyner. All Stations: Fri, Sep 23, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Sep 25, 4 pm

(E. Percy Moran/Library of Congress)In her book, Revolutionary Mothers: Women and the Struggle for American Independence (2015, Knopf) Dr. Carol Berkin makes the argument that the American Revolution is a story of both women and men. Women played an active and vital role in the war; although history books have often greatly minimized or completely left out the contributions of women in the creation of our nation, or greatly romanticized their role.Dr. Berkin talks with Dr. Edgar about the role of Colonial white women, Native Americans, and African-Americans in war.Broadcast Sept 17, 2016

(Gibbes Museum)  The Middleton Place Foundation is helping to share the artistic legacy of Charleston Renaissance artist Alice Ravenel Huger Smith with exhibits at the Middleton Place House Museum and the Edmondston-Alston House, a Smith exhibit from October 23, 2016, to June 17, 2017.Charleston’s Middleton Place was established early in the life of the Carolina colony as a base of operations for a Low Country planter family; it also contained a dynamic, African-American, slave community. When Charles Duell, a direct Middleton descendant, inherited Middleton Place, he realized that the history of the site needed to be preserved, interpreted, and shared. Duell helped to found the Middleton Place Foundation forty years ago, and he joins Dr. Edgar this week  along with board member Ann Gaud Tinker to talk about the ongoing mission of the site, as well as the upcoming Smith exhibition.All Stations: Fri, Sep 10, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Sep 12, 4 pm

(Louisiana State University)  (Originally broadcast 02/07/15) -In an encore from the 2015 series, Conversations on the Civil War, sponsored by the University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Humanities, William Cooper talks with Walter Edgar about the life of Jefferson Davis, an American soldier and politician who became president of the Confederate States of America. Dr. William J. Cooper, Jr.,  is the Boyd professor of history at Louisiana State University, and the author of Jefferson Davis and the Civil War Era (2013, LSU Press) and Jefferson Davis, American (2000, Knopf) winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. All Stations: Fri, Aug 05, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Aug 07, 4 pm

(University of South Carolina)  (Originally broadcast 07/05/13) - Dr. Mark Smith, Carolina Distinguished Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, takes part in this discussion of the battle of Gettysburg, which marked the beginning of the end of the Confederate States’ rebellion in the American Civil War. Smith is widely considered America's leading practitioner of the new and burgeoning field of "sensory history." This encore presentation is from a series of “Conversations on the Civil War, 1863,” which took place at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, in the spring of 2013, and was sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences.All Stations: Fri, Jul 01, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jul 03, 4 pm

(Courtesy Converse College)  Betsy Fleming, outgoing president of Converse College in Spartanburg, talks with Walter Edgar about her 11 years leading the 125-year-old institution dedicated to offering women a high quality, liberal arts education. Fleming became President of Converse in October 2005.  After reducing the tuition by 43 percent, the school became a national leader in affordability and value. Fleming has said that the tuition reset was an important marker in transforming the college's future.An Aspen Institute Liberty Fellow, Fleming currently serves on the Council of Presidents for the Association of Governing Boards (AGB), the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) Steering Committee in the Future of Higher Education, and on the Board of Directors for both Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Charlotte Branch and Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina.All Stations: Fri, Jun 24, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jun 26, 4 pm

(iStock photo © Massimo Fanelli)  The Charleston World Heritage Commission's mission is to nominate iconic buildings and landscapes representative of the Charleston Lowcountry, plantation-driven culture as a UNESCO World Heritage Site – the highest cultural and historic designation bestowed on a place or site.The UNESCO World Heritage List is comprised of 1031 natural and cultural sites that are deemed important to all mankind and was developed by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to encourage international peace and cooperation, as well as help preserve sites of world significance. Brittany Tulla, Executive Director of the CWHC, and board member Tom Tisdale talk with Walter Edgar about why the Commission believes Charleston’s history is worthy of global recognition. Classical Stations: Fri, Jun 10, 1 pm | News Stations: Fri, Jun 10, 12 pm; Sun, Jun 12, 4 pm

In his 40 years as Mayor of Charleston, Joe Riley has led the historic port city through its greatest period of growth, economic development and unity. His authorized biography, The Mayor: Joe Riley and the Rise of Charleston (Evening Post Publishing Company, 2015), is the inside story of his life and how he built -- and forever transformed -- one of the nation's oldest cities.Brian Hicks is a metro columnist for The Post and Courier and the author or coauthor of seven previous books. A native of Cleveland, Tennessee, Hicks lives in Charleston.This week at a special time on our Classical Stations: Fri, Jun 03, 1 pm | News Stations: Fri, Jun 03, 12 pm; Sun, Jun 05, 498

(Library of Congress)  (Originally broadcast 02/19/16) - ​In his book, Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756 - 1763, (2015, UNC Press) Dr. Daniel J. Tortora, assistant professor of history at Colby College, explores how the Anglo-Cherokee War reshaped the political and cultural landscape of the colonial South. Tortora joins Walter Edgar for a discussion of these events in one of a a series of public conversations, “Conversations on Colonial and Revolutionary South Carolina,” presented earlier this year by the University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences.In their discussion, Dr. Tortora argues that the political and military success of the Cherokees led colonists to a greater fear of slave resistance and revolt and ultimately nurtured South Carolinians' rising interest in the movement for independence.All Stations: Fri, May 20, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 22, 4 pm

(iStock)  (Originally broadcast 02/12/16) - In January and February of 2016 the University Of South Carolina College Of Arts and Sciences’ Institute of Southern presented a series of public conversations with Dr. Walter Edgar and guest scholars: “Conversations on Colonial and Revolutionary South Carolina”. In this first conversation, Dr. Larry Rowland talks with Dr. Edgar about “The Colonial Melting Pot.”All Stations: Fri, May 13, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 15, 4 pm

(Moving Image Research Collections, University of South Carolina)  On Mother's Day 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Kingstree, South Carolina and gave a remarkable public speech urging the audience of more than 5,000 to exercise their right to vote as a means to pursue social and economic justice. On August 6, 1965—just a eight months prior to Dr. King's speech— President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act, allowing the majority of Kingstree's citizens the right to vote.On May 8, 2016, a commemoration of this “March on the Ballot Boxes” speech will be held. Michael Allen, Community Partnership Specialist with the National Park Service and a member of the Commemoration Planning Committee will talk about the event. Dr. Bobby Donaldson, professor of history and USC, will help put King’s speech into the context of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.All Stations: Fri, May 06, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 08, 4 pmRelated Links: WIS-TV News coverage and outtakes

(SCETV)  In December of 2015, the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded a grant to Humanities SC for From the Jazz Age to the Digital Age: Pulitzer Prize Winners in South Carolina, a program to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Prizes in 2016 through Pulitzer’s Campfires Initiative. Humanities SC has partnered with SCETV to produce three, 30-minute TV programs spotlighting the state’s Pulitzer winners, hosted by Charles Bierbauer, Dean of the USC College of Information and Communication. The first of these programs, Celebrating Pulitzer Commentary with Kathleen Parker & Jim Hoagland will air on SCETV on May 5.This week on Walter Edgar’s Journal, Jim Hoagland talks about his career, including the stories on South African apartheid which won him a Pulitzer for his reporting. He also talks about the commentary on the breakup of the Soviet Union, which won him a second Pulitzer. And he shares his observations about the global political and cultural stories of today.All Stations: Fri, Apr 29, 12 pm | News St

(The Johnson Collection)  The radical changes wrought by the rise of the salon system in nineteenth-century Europe provoked an interesting response from painters in the American South. Painterly trends emanating from Barbizon and Giverny introduced a visual vocabulary of style, color, and content that was soon successfully adopted by American artists. Many painters in the South took up the stylistics of Tonalism, Impressionism, and Naturalism to create equally picturesque works that celebrated the Southern scene as an exotic other, a locale offering refuge from an increasingly mechanized urban environment.In its presentation of some forty paintings created between 1880 and 1940—including landscapes and genre scenes— Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from The Johnson Collection (USC Press, 2015) traces an international aesthetic's journey to and germination in the American South. Martha Severens, co-author with Estill Curtis Pennington, talks with Walter Edgar about the art, its history, and

Pat Conroy, the beloved author of The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline and The Prince of Tides,  died March 4,  among his family, at home in Beaufort, S.C. He was 70 years old. He had announced his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in early February.In 2014, Conroy recorded two remarkable episodes of Walter Edgar's Journal, the second of which "Pat Conroy and Family - The Death of Santini"  will be rebroadcast this week.  In his 2013 memoir, The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and his Son,  author Pat Conroy admits that his father, Don, is the basis of abusive fighter pilot he created for the title role of his novel, The Great Santini, and that his mother, Peg, and his brothers and sisters have all served as models for characters in The Prince of Tides and his other novels. Now, for the first time, Pat gathers with four of his surviving siblings, Kathy, Tim, Mike, and Jim, to talk about the intersection of “real life” and Pat’s fiction, and what it was like to grow up with “the

Pat Conroy, the beloved author of The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline and The Prince of Tides, has died. Conroy — who announced last month that he had pancreatic cancer — died, March 4,  at his home among his family in Beaufort, S.C. He was 70 years old.In 2014, Conroy recorded two remarkable episodes of Walter Edgar's Journal, the first of which will be rebroadcast this week.In "A Conversation with Pat Conroy," the author joined Dr. Edgar for an event celebrating the author’s life;  his work; and One Book, One Columbia’s 2014 selection of his memoir, My Reading Life (Nan A. Talese, 2010). The conversation was recorded before an audience of over 2000, at Columbia’s Township Auditorium, on the evening of February 27, 2014. (This interview was first broadcast on Walter Edgar' Journal on April 4, 2014.)A transcription of this conversation, and others, has been published as Conversations with the Conroys: Interviews with Pat Conroy and His Family (USC Press, 2016)All Stations: Fri, Mar 1

(Chappel, Alonzo, 1828-1887 (artist), Jeens, Charles Henry, 1827-1879 (engraver), Anne S. K. Brown Collection at Brown University)  General U.S. history courses in many high schools depict the American Revolutionary War as a series of battles in the Northeast--Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, etc.--that lead inexorably to British General Charles Cornwallis's surrender of 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a French and American force at Yorktown, Virginia, October 19, 1781.The truth is much more complicated, of course. And a major component of the war, one that paved the way to Yorktown, was the fighting that took place in 1780 - 81 in the South. In essence, according to Dr. Jack Warren and Dr. Walter Edgar, the war was won in the South.Earlier this year, the University Of South Carolina College Of Arts and Sciences’ Institute of Southern presented a series of public conversations with Dr. Walter Edgar and guest scholars: “Conversations on Colonial and Revolutionary South Carolina.” In this fourth c

(White House photo by Eric Draper via Wikimedia Commons)  With today's news of the death of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Harper Lee, at age 89, we offer two encore episodes of Walter Edgar's Journal, each dealing with her book To Kill a Mockingbird.The first is a discussion  between two internationally-renowned Southern-literature scholars: Dr. Trudier Harris of UNC and Dr. Noel Polk of Mississippi State University. They talk Dr. Edgar to prior to a televised debate in the SCETV series Take on the South​. The topic: "What was the most influential Southern novel of the 20th century?"Prof. Polk chose William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom. Prof. Harris chose Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. This episode of the Journal was intended as a companion to the May 2009 installment of the SCETV series Take on the South: "What was the most influential 20th-century Southern novel?"The second episode of Walter Edgar's Journal aired in October 2015, and was entitled How Does Harper Lee's "Go Set a Watchman" in

(North Carolina State Archives)​In his book, Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756 - 1763, (2015, UNC Press) Dr. Daniel J. Tortora, assistant professor of history at Colby College, explores how the Anglo-Cherokee War reshaped the political and cultural landscape of the colonial South. Tortora joins Walter Edgar for a discussion of these events in one of a a series of public conversations, “Conversations on Colonial and Revolutionary South Carolina,” presented earlier this year by the University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences.In their discussion, Dr. Tortora argues that the political and military success of the Cherokees led colonists to a greater fear of slave resistance and revolt and ultimately nurtured South Carolinians' rising interest in the movement for independence.All Stations: Fri, Feb 19, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Feb 21, 4 pm

(iStock)  Earlier this year, the University of South Carolina College of Arts and Sciences’ Institute of Southern presented a series of public conversations with Dr. Walter Edgar and guest scholars: “Conversations on Colonial and Revolutionary South Carolina”. In this first conversation, Dr. Larry Rowland, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History for the University of South Carolina Beaufort, talks with Dr. Edgar about “The Colonial Melting Pot.”All Stations: Fri, Feb 5, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Feb 7, 4 pm

(SC Public Radio)Dr. Susan Cutter knows about disasters.  She is director of the University of South Carolina’s Hazards & Vulnerability Research Institute, and she has studied disaster preparedness, response. She has also headed teams that were on the ground after the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 and after hurricane Katrina flooded much of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.The October 2015 floods in South Carolina offered her and her team the unique chance to be part of a disaster as it unfolded.Cutter has noted the strong response of South Carolinians to their neighbors' needs both during and after the flood. And, she has also seen some survivors move rapidly to re-build damaged or destroyed buildings and homes. Concerned, Cutter wrote an editorial for The State newspaper, urging survivors to resist rebuilding too quickly, but, instead, to rebuild wisely, in order to reduce risk, and build resilience into reconstruction to protect against the next flood.Susan Cutter joins Dr. Edgar t

75% of all enslaved Africans coming to America came in through the ports of Charleston, Beaufort and Georgetown, South Carolina. The result of this mingling of slaves from West Africa with the plantation culture awaiting them in America became Gullah; the genesis and taproot of African American culture.The PBS special, Circle Unbroken – A Gullah Journey from Africa to America, portrays the history of these resilient people in music by The Gullah Kinfolk and narrative through the eyes of South Carolinian Anita Singleton-Prather – ‘The First Lady of Gullah™.’ Producer Ron Small and Anita Singleton-Prather talk about Gullah history, culture, as well as the making of this TV special.All Stations: Fri, Jan 8, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jan 10, 4 pm

(independentmail.com)    Journey Proud (Abe Books, 2013) is the story of four white children growing up in the early 1960s in a middle-class neighborhood in Columbia, South Carolina. This coming-of-age tale set in the South during the civil rights movement exposes the inequities of the period and shows how childhood innocence is often replaced by harsh realities.Walter Edgar talks with author Salley McAden McInerney. McInerney is a journalist, freelance writer and former columnist for the Anderson Independent-Mail, the Gwinnett Daily News, The Columbia Record and The State newspapers.All Stations: Fri, Dec 18, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Dec 19, 4 pm

The Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in August of1965. This landmark legislation aimed to eliminate obstacles created by state and local governments to keep African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment (1870) to the Constitution.Walter Edgar talks with University of South Carolina historians Bobby Donaldson and Patricia Sullivan about the history leading to passage of the Voting Rights Act, and about its impact through the years.All Stations: Fri, Dec 11, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Dec 13, 4 pm

Charleston surgeon Richard Hagerty began painting before medical school honed his eye and hand coordination. He is a self taught artist who draws his surreal, fantastical imagery from dreams, mythology, history, science and stories. He works in a variety of media, including pen and ink, watercolor and oil. Hagerty and art curator Roberta Sokolitz talk with Walter Edgar about his art, his career, and about the new collection of his work, American Surrealist: The Art of Richard Hagerty (Evening Post Books, 2015), and exhibition of Hagerty’s work at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park, Charleston.All Stations: Fri, Dec 4, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Dec 6, 4 pm

In September of 2014, the Violence Policy Center ranked South Carolina second in nation in rate of women killed by men. Their report was release just weeks after Charleston's The Post and Courier newspaper ran a three-week series on criminal domestic violence called “Till Death Do Us Part," which later won the Pulitzer Prize.Jennifer Hawes was part of The Post & Courier team that reported and wrote the series. She joins Sara Barber, Executive Director of The South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, talk with Walter Edgar about the problem of domestic violence in South Carolina, and what's being done about it.

(iStock)  Several miles outside of Moncks Corner is, arguably, the most significant extant Revolutionary War site in South Carolina. Fair Lawn Plantation’s Revolutionary War significance stems from historic battles, events, famous people, geographic location, and landscape architecture. Near Stony Landing on Biggin Creek, the fortified Colleton house and separate redoubt fort played a substantial role on many occasions as a post, support base, and hospital.The Lord Berkeley Conservation Trust and The South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust are partnering in a project to protect and preserve Fort Fair Lawn. SC Battleground Preservation Trust Director Douglas Bostick talks with Walter Edgar about this site, and some of the other Revolutionary War sites the Trust is working to preserve.All Stations: Friday, Nov 6, 12 pm | News Stations: Sunday, Nov 8, 4 pm

( Courtesy Post & Courier) The late Ken Burger’s A Sporting Life (Evening Post Books, 2015) is a collection of his best and most requested columns from his legendary career as a sports writer for the Charleston Post & Courier. At the end of each piece is a post script - updating the reader about the person or event. This book resonates with Southerners, who recognize and relate to the locations, mannerisms, and mascots. But, it is universal in its humanity and emotion.Ken joined Walter Edgar in our studio not long ago for what turned out to be our their last conversation. He talked about the book, his career, and sports.All Stations: Fri, Oct 23, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Oct 25, 4 pm

This week's special Pledge Edition of Walter Edgar's Journal features an encore of segments from Walter's January 16th conversation with South Carolina author Ron Rash.-- All Stations: Fri, Oct 2, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Oct 4, 4 pm --

(Alfred Stieglitz [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)  In 1915, Georgia O'Keeffe radically redefined herself as an artist. Rejecting all she had done before, she found her voice with a series of black and white charcoal drawings she collectively titled, Specials. Her great Charleston friend, Anita Pollitzer, took these drawings, unbeknownst to the artist, and showed them to Alfred Stieglitz (noted American photographer, gallery owner, and promoter of modern art) who proclaimed, "At last, a woman on paper." This was the beginning of one of the most important careers in all of American art.Will South, of the Columbia Museum of Art, and Dr. Erika Doss, of the University of Notre Dame, talk about O’Keeffe’s life and work, including the Specials, which she created while teaching at Columbia College in 1915 and 1916. They’ll also talk about the ongoing O’Keeffe exhibition at the Museum, Her Carolina Story.-- All Stations: Fri, Sep 25, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Sep 27, 4 pm --

Since the early 1960s the Confederate battle flag had been flying at the South Carolina State House--at first, on the Capitol dome; then, as the result of an NAACP boycott of businesses in the state, it was moved to the Confederate Soldiers monument. On July 10, 2015, as a result of growing public pressure following the shooting deaths of the pastor and eight parishioners of Emanuel A. M. E. Church in Charleston, the flag was removed to a museum.This week on Walter Edgar's Journal, Dr. Bobby Donaldson, a historian from the University of South Carolina, and Dr. James Cobb, Phinizy Spalding Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Georgia, join Dr. Edgar to look at the history of the battle flag and other Confederate symbols, and at how their meanings have changed over the years. All Stations: Fri, Sep 18, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Sep 20, 4 pm

South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal is retiring at the end of 2015. First elected to the court in 1988, Toal has served as its chief since 2000. This week on Walter Edgar's Journal, Toal joins Dr, Edgar to talk about her career and about the changes she has helped bring to South Carolina’s court systems. And she gives a preview of her upcoming James Otis Lecture, September 18th.All Stations: Fri, Sep 11, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Sep 13, 4 pm

(iStock)  Walter Edgar welcomes two old friends to Walter Edgar's Journal this week, Dorothea Benton Frank and Mary Alice Monroe. Monroe talks about her new novel, The Summer’s End (Gallery/Simon & Schuster, 2015), the final installment her Lowcountry Summer trilogy of books. In All the Single Ladies (Harper Collins, 2015), Dorothea Benton Frank again takes us deep into the Lowcountry of South Carolina, where three unsuspecting women are brought together by tragedy and mystery.--All Stations: Fri, Aug 14, 12 pm; News Stations: Sun, Aug 16, 4pm---

--- All Stations: Fri, Aug 7, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Aug 9, 4 pm --- (Originally Broadcast 02/06/15) - The topic on this week's Walter Edgar's Journal is Collecting--antiques, fine art, and decorative art. Southern art—and South Carolina art in particular—has become increasingly desirable to collectors as well as average art collectors in the last ten years. There is even a market for 20th century furniture and decorative items. But, with sea change in the auction business brought about by the World Wide Web, prices and desirability of certain objects can rise and fall drastically, in a short period of time.Dr. Edgar is joined by two guests who can offer perspective on collecting; Ronald Long, President of Columbia’s Charlton Hall Gallery, and Callie Belser, a South Carolinian who is currently Associate Vice President, Specialist, 20th Century Decorative Arts and Design at Christie’s, NY.

(Louise Fields)  Charleston native Margaret Bradham Thornton is the editor of the highly praised Tennessee Williams’ Notebooks (2006, Yale Press), for which she received the C. Hugh Holman Prize for the best volume of southern literary scholarship, given by the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. Her latest work is the novel, Charleston (2014, Harper Collins), which Walter Isaacson calls a "lyrical tale [which] explores the emotional terrain of love, loss, and memory." She talks with Walter Edgar this week about her life growing up in Charleston, her career, and the vital role of literature in her life.

--- All Stations: Fri, Jul 17, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jul 19, 4 pm ---(Originally broadcast 01/16/15) ---  Bestselling author Ron Rash returns to Walter Edgar’s Journal to talk about his life and work. He’ll also tell Dr. Edgar about The Ron Rash Reader (USC Press, 2014), the 20th anniversary edition of The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth (USC Press, 2014) as well as his collection entitled Something Rich and Strange (Harper Collins, 2014).  And he’ll talk about co-writing the screenplay for the film Serena, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, and based on Rash’s 2008 bestselling novel.

(Linda O'Bryon)--- All stations: Fri, Jul 10, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jul 12, 4 pm ---  The shooting deaths of nine members of Charleston’s Emanuel A.M.E. Church in June shocked the nation. However, the history of “Mother Emanuel,” and, indeed, the black church in South Carolina, is one of repression and resistance, spiritual succor and political action, as well as education and aspiration. Dr. Bobby Donaldson of the University of South Carolina and Dr. Jon N. Hale of the College of Charleston talk with Walter Edgar about this history.

(Facebook)---All stations: Fri, Jul 3, 12 pm | News stations: Sun, Jul 5, 4 pm--- (Originally broadcast 06/29/07) - -- For 24 years, Dan Huntley was a reporter/columnist for The Charlotte Observer. As a recipient of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, he had the opportunity to travel and cook in Buenos Aires, Istanbul, and the Greek Peloponnese. He soon realized that the Carolina pig pickings that he’s done since he was a teenager were part of a much larger food world. He then developed his own barbeque sauce, Carolina Pig Pucker, co-authored (with Lisa Grace Lednicer) a book, Extreme Barbecue, and started a catering business, Outdoor Feasts catering.In this encore from 2007, Dan talks "contraption cooking" with Walter Edgar.

(Courtesy National Park Service)  There's a long history to the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., — affectionately known as "Mother Emanuel" — where nine churchgoers were allegedly shot and killed by 21-year-old Dylann Roof on Wednesday night. Part of that history involves Denmark Vesey, a West Indian slave, and later a freedman, who planned what would have been one of the largest slave rebellions in the United States had word of the plans not been leaked.The revolt was to take place on Bastille Day, July 17, 1822, and was in reaction to the city of Charleston's suppression of the African Church, which boasted a membership of over three thousand in 1820. News of the plan leaked and Charleston authorities arrested the plot's leaders before the uprising could begin.Dr. Bernard E. Powers, Jr., Professor of History and Director of African-American Studies at the College of Charleston, joins Dr. Edgar to talk about Denmark Vesey and why his name still has resonance today. (Orig

(University of North Carolina Press)  --- All Stations: Fri, Jun 19, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jun 21, 4 pm ---This week on Walter Edgar's Journal, Dr. William Ferris, renowned folklorist and historian, tells the stories and history of The Storied South - Voices of Writers and Artists (UNC Press, 2013). The Storied South features the voices of twenty-six of the most luminous artists and thinkers in the American cultural firmament, from EudoraWelty, Pete Seeger, and Alice Walker to William Eggleston, Bobby Rush, and C. Vann Woodward. Masterfully drawn from one-on-one interviews conducted by renowned folklorist William Ferris over the past forty years, the book reveals how storytelling is viscerally tied to southern identity and how the work of these southern or southern-inspired creators has shaped the way Americans think and talk about the South.Dr. Ferris, the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History and senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the Universi

(University of Georgia Press)      (Originally broadcast 10/30/12) - In his book, The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera, Dr. Harvey H. Jackson III traces the development of the Florida-Alabama coast as a tourist destination from the late 1920s and early 1930s, when it was sparsely populated with "small fishing villages," through to the tragic and devastating BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.Jackson focuses on the stretch of coast from Mobile Bay and Gulf Shores, Alabama, east to Panama City, Florida—an area known as the "Redneck Riviera." Jackson explores the rise of this area as a vacation destination for the lower South's middle- and working-class families following World War II, the building boom of the 1950s and 1960s, the emergence of the Spring Break "season, and the severe hurricane destruction of the many small motels, cafes, bars, and early cottages that gave the small beach towns their essential character. Jackson traces the tensions surrounding the gentrification of th

(Greenville Chautauqua)  Greenville Chautauqua has been performing educational interactive historical theater continuously since 1999. The group's administrator, Caroline McIntyre is our guest, along with local historian Judy Bainbridge and presenter Leslie Goddard. They will talk about this year's program, America at the Movies. Presenters will portray Mary Pickford, Orson Welles, Gordon Parks, and Walt Disney.The first Chautauqua, the New York State Assembly, was organized in 1874 by Methodist minister John Heyl Vincent and businessman Lewis Miller at a campsite on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in New York State as an outdoor adult education program for Sunday School teachers. In the outdoor setting on a lake resort the education program merged with family entertainment and recreation.

---All Stations: Fri, May 22, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 24, 4 pm--- (Originally broadcast 01/10/14) - In the years following World War I, the New Orleans French Quarter attracted artists and writers with low rent, a faded charm, and colorful street life. By the 1920s Jackson Square became the center of a vibrant but short-lived bohemia. A young William Faulkner and his roommate William Spratling, an artist who taught at Tulane, were among the "artful and crafty ones of the French Quarter." In Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s (LSU Press, 2012) John Shelton Reed introduces Faulkner's circle of friends ranging from the distinguished Sherwood Anderson to a gender-bending Mardi Gras costume designer and brings to life the people and places of New Orleans in the jazz age.Dr. John Shelton Reed is the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was director of the Howard Odum Institute for Research in Social Science fo

(iStock)----All Stations: Fri, May 15, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 18, 4 pm----  Nowhere do Americans more intimately connect to sports than in their hometowns.  Six South Carolina communities, in cooperation with The Humanities Council SC, will celebrate this connection as they host Hometown Teams: How Sports Shape America, a traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street (MoMS) program.Hometown Teams will be on view through December 13, 2015 in South Carolina.  Upcoming locations, in order, are Gaffney; Belton; Georgetown; Slater; and Manning. Each community has been expressly chosen by The Humanities Council SC to host Hometown Teams as part of the MoMS program, which is a unique national/state/local partnership that brings exhibitions and programs to rural cultural organizations.Joining Dr. Edgar to talk about Hometown Teams are T. J. Wallace from the Humanities Council SC, Fritz Hamer from South Caroliniana Library, and Alison Darby from Belton Area Museum Association.

(Mississippi State University)--- All Stations: Fri, Apr 10, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Apr 12, 4 pm ---   In his book, Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order (Free Press, 1992) John F. Marszalek presents general William Tecumseh Sherman as a complicated man who, fearing anarchy, searched for the order that he hoped would make his life a success.Dr. Marszalek talks with Dr. Edgar about Sherman as a military commander who came to abhor what he saw as the senseless slaughter of the War, and who sought a different strategy to bring the South to surrender.

(Steve Exum)- All Stations: Fri, Apr 3, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Apr 5, 4 pm -  Dr. Heather Andrea Williams of Pennsylvania State University joins Dr. Walter Edgar for another "Conversation on the Civil War, 1865." The subject: emancipation and freedom. Williams is one of the world’s leading historians of the experience of slavery in the 19th century. Her award-winning first book, Self-Taught: African-American Education in Slavery and Freedom (University of North Carolina Press, 2005), argued that education was inseparable from the fight against slavery.

- All Stations: Fri, Mar 27, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Mar 29, 4 pm -  Charleston’s Middleton Place was established early in the life of the Carolina colony and served as a base of operations for a great Low Country planter family and was home to a dynamic African-American slave community. Charles Duell, President of the Middleton Place Foundation, and Tracey Todd, Vice President of Museums for the Foundation, talk with Dr. Edgar about the history and future of Middleton Place.

(Louisiana State University)  The University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Humanities and Institute for Southern Studies concludes its series Conversations on the Civil War with a look back to 1865, the end of the war, the beginning of freedom for thousands of slaves, and the period of Reconstruction in the South.The second guest in this series of conversations, recorded before an audience at USC’s Capstone Conference Center, is Dr. William Cooper the Boyd Professor of History Emeritus at Louisiana State University. He is the author of Jefferson Davis and the Civil War Era(2013, LSU Press) and Jefferson Davis, American (2000, Knopf) which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He talks with Dr. Edgar about Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy.- All Stations: Fri, Mar 6, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Mar 8, 4 pm -

(Note: this program was originally scheduled  for 02/20/15)  The University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Humanities and Institute for Southern Studies concludes its series Conversations on the Civil War with a look back to 1865, the end of the war, the beginning of freedom for thousands of slaves, and the period of Reconstruction in the South.The first guest in this series of conversations, recorded before an audience at USC’s Capstone Conference Center, is Dr. Robert H. Brinkmeyer, a professor of English and Southern Studies at the university. He talks with Dr. Edgar about fictional representation of the Civil War.- All Stations: Fri, Feb 27, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Mar 01, 4 pm -

Please Note: Conversations on the Civil War with guest Robert Brinkmeyer has been resheduled for next week.  (Originally broadcast 05/30/14) - South Carolina’s Lt. Governor shoots to death the Editor of the state’s largest newspaper, in broad daylight, in downtown Columbia. Sounds like a plot point in a novel? Well, it actually happened, in the early 20th century, and James Lowell Underwood tells the story in his book, Deadly Censorship: Murder, Honor, and Freedom of the Press (USC Press, 2013).- All Station: Fri, Feb 20, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Feb 22, 4 pm -

- All Stations: Fri, Feb 13, 12:00 pm | News Stations: Sun, Feb 15, 4:00 pm -Walter Edgar’s Journal  listeners have a front row seat for a public “Conversation about the South,” held in March of 2014 by the American History Book Club and Forum at the Upcountry History Museum – Furman University, in Greenville, SC. Long-time friends and colleagues, Professor James Cobb, who holds the B. Phinizy Spalding Professorship in History at the University of Georgia,  and Dr. Walter Edgar,  the Claude Henry Neuffer Professor of Southern Studies Emeritus at USC, have a wide-ranging conversation about the American South—past, present, and future.

(Courtesy of Good Catch)  Bryan Tayara and Dr. John Mark Dean share a passion for sustainable, locally caught seafood. Tayara is owner of Our Local Catch, and Dr. Dean is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Science and Ocean Policy with the University of South Carolina's Marine Science Program. They talk with Dr. Edgar about the state of South Carolina’s crabbers, fishermen, shrimpers, and other suppliers.Program note: The Sustainable Seafood Initiative is now Good Catch, a program of the South Carolina Aquarium.- All Stations: Fri, Jan 30, 12 pm | News Station: Sun, Feb 1, 4 pm -

(University of South Carolina)Dr. Mark M. Smith, of the University of South Carolina, returns to The Journal to talk about his book The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2014). No other book has looked at the Civil War through the prism of the five senses, or considered their impact on various groups of indviduals. Smith is widely considered America's leading practitioner of the new and burgeoning field of "sensory history." Using engaging accounts from diaries, letters, and journals Smith gives readers a first-hand glimpse of the experience of the Civil War.All Station: Fri, Jan 23, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jan 25, 4 pm -

Bestselling author Ron Rash returns to Walter Edgar’s Journal to talk about his life and work. He’ll also tell Dr. Edgar about The Ron Rash Reader (USC Press, 2014), the 20th anniversary edition of The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth (USC Press, 2014) as well as his collection entitled Something Rich and Strange (Harper Collins, 2014).  And he’ll talk about co-writing the screenplay for the upcoming movie Serena (March, 2015), starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, and based on Rash’s 2008 bestselling novel.All Stations: Fri, Jan 16, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jan 18, 4 pm -

(Washington Times)  With the passing of former South Carolina Governor James B. Edwards, on December 26, 2014, Walter Edgar's Journal offers an encore of a conversation between Dr. Edgar and the Governor, which first aired in October of 2004.Edwards was the first Republican Governor elected since Reconstruction.  Walter talks with him about his time in office…both on the state and federal levels. - All Stations: Fri, Jan 2, 12 pm | News Station: Sun, Jan 4, 4 pm -

-Walter Edgar's Journal-   Greenville's downtown is widely recognized as one of the best in America. In Reimagining Greenville: Building the Best Downtown in America (The History Press, 2013), authors John Boyanoski and Mayor Knox White tell the story of the careful, deliberate efforts by city and community leaders who banded together to build something special from a decaying city center. Mayor White joins Walter Edgar to share some of this story.- All Stations: Fri, Dec 26, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Dec 28, 4 pm -

Novelist Sharyn McCrumb talks with Dr. Edgar about her new book Nora Bonesteel’s Christmas Past (2014, Abingdon Press) When someone buys the old Honeycutt house, Nora Bonesteel is glad to see some life brought back to the old mansion, even if it is by summer people. But when the new owners decide to stay in their summer home through Christmas, they find more than old memories in the walls.  Nora agrees to help sort things out, and is drawn into a time and place she never expected to revisit.And we’ll encore an interview with South Carolina author Kirk Neely about his collection of holiday stories, Santa Almost Got Caught: Stories for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New Year.- All Stations: Fri, Dec 12, 19 pm | News Stations: Sun, Dec 21, 4 pm -

A product of the industrialized New South, Eugene Healan Thomason (1895–1972) made the obligatory pilgrimage to New York to advance his art education and launch his career. Like so many other aspiring American artists, he understood that the city offered unparalleled personal and professional opportunities for a promising young painter in the early 1920s. Thomason returned to the South in the early 1930s, living first in Charlotte, North Carolina, before settling in a small Appalachian crossroads called Nebo. For the next thirty-plus years, he mined the rural landscape's rolling terrain and area residents for inspiration. Eugene Thomason embraced and convincingly portrayed his own region, becoming the visual spokesman for that place and its people.In her book, From New York to Nebo: The Artistic Journey of Eugene Thomason (2014, USC Press), based on art from the Johnson Collection of Spartanburg, SC, Martha Severens carefully chronicles the life of Eugene Thomason and his embrace of North Carolina. S

In 1954, the U. S. Supreme Court made it's landmark ruling to end segregation in public schools in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. Fifty years on, Dr. Jon N. Hale, of the College of Charleston, and Dr. Millicent E. Brown, of Claflin University, join Dr. Edgar to talk about the road to school desegregation and civil rights in South Carolina.- All Stations: Friday, Nov 28, 12 pm | News stations: Sun, Nov 30, 4 pm -

Rep. James Clyburn drops by to talk with Walter Edgar about his life and career, and about writing his autobiography, Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black. - All Stations: Fri, Nov 21, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Nov 23, 4 pm -

A city that has nearly five million visitors a year definitely needs a tourism management plan. And Charleston, SC, has one, which has been revised several times since its creation in 1978. Now, it's time to craft a totally new plan, and Historic Charleston Foundation's Katharine Robinson has been tasked with leading the committee responsible. She talks with Walter Edgar about the challenges and opportunities the committee faces in its work.  - Walter Edgar's Journal - All Stations: Fri, Nov 7, 12 pm | New Stations: Sun, Nov 9, 4 pm -

(UNESCO UK)- All Stations: Fri, Oct 31, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Nov 2, 2014 -The Magna Carta is a charter of liberties to which the English barons forced King John to give his assent in June 1215 at Runnymede in June of 1215. It is also considered by many to be a cornerstone of human rights to which the U. S. Constitution's Bill of Rights can trace its ancestry. Join Dr. Edgar to talk about the upcoming celebration of the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta are Sir Robert Worcester, Chair of the Magna Carta 800th Committee and the 2014 James Otis Lecturer at the South Carolina General Assembly, and Joel Collins, member of the South Carolina Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates.

(Travis Dove)Deb Richardson-Moore, a middle-aged suburban mom and journalist was inspired to become a pastor after writing a story exploring God’s call in our lives. Seven years ago, a recent graduate of Erskine Theological Seminary, she took a position as pastor of the non-denominational Triune Mercy Center, an inner-city mission to the homeless in Greenville, S.C. “What I found there absolutely flattened me,” she says. It also inspired her. Today, she and a dedicated staff continue to build a worshiping community that focuses on drug rehab, jobs and housing for the homeless. (Originally broadcast 12/13/13) - Broadcast on all stations: Fri, Oct 24, 12 pm | Repeats on News Stations: Sun, Oct 26, 4 pm -

(Courtesy of the author)    In The Hurricane Sisters (2014, Harper Collins), Dorothea Benton Frank again takes us deep into the heart of her magical South Carolina Lowcountry on a tumultuous journey filled with longings, disappointments, and, finally, a road toward happiness that is hard earned. There we meet three generations of women buried in secrets. The determined matriarch, Maisie Pringle, at eighty, is a force to be reckoned with because she will have the final word on everything, especially when she's dead wrong. Her daughter, Liz, is caught up in the classic maelstrom of being middle-aged and in an emotionally demanding career that will eventually open all their eyes to a terrible truth. And Liz's beautiful twenty-something daughter, Ashley, whose dreamy ambitions of her unlikely future keeps them all at odds.  The stories of three women and the men they love come together in Roy Hoffman’s novel, Come Landfall (2014, University of Alabama Press), a novel of war and hurricanes, loss an

All Stations: Fri, Oct 3, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Oct 5, 4 pm Dr. Charles H. Lippy, the LeRoy A. Martin distinguished Professor of Religious Studies Emeritus at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and author of Religion in South Carolina will be giving a lecture in October at Ebenezer Lutheran Church, Columbia, on How the Civil War Transformed Religion in South Carolina . He stops by our studios to preview the topic with Dr. Edgar.

(Originally broadcast 04/18/14) - In his 2013 memoir, The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and his Son,  author Pat Conroy admits that his father, Don, is the basis of abusive fighter pilot he created for the title role of his novel, The Great Santini, and that his mother, Peg, and his brothers and sisters have all served as models for characters in The Prince of Tides and his other novels. Now, for the first time, Pat gathers with four of his surviving siblings, Kathy, Tim, Mike, and Jim, to talk about the intersection of “real life” and Pat’s fiction, and what it was like to grow up with “the Great Santini” as a father.

(Originally broadcast 04/04/14) - Pat Conroy, author of The Water is Wide, The Great Santini, The Prince of Tides, The Death of Santini, joins Dr. Walter Edgar for an event celebrating the author’s life;  his work; and One Book, One Columbia’s 2014 selection, My Reading Life (Nan A. Talese, 2010). The conversation was recorded before an audience of over 2000, at Columbia’s Township Auditorium, on the evening of February 27, 2014.

(USC McKissick Musuem)All Stations: Fri, 09/12/14, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, 09/14/14, 4 pmWalter Edgar's Journal:   Showcasing objects drawn from Native American Indian tribal museums, state museums, artist collections, private collections, as well as McKissick Museum’s own permanent collection, Traditions, Change, and Celebration: Native Artists of the Southeast considers Native American traditional arts as an expression of identity and heritage.Joining Dr. Edgar to talk about this exhibition and related events are Saddler Taylor, Folk Life Curator at USC’s McKissick Museum; Will Goins, co-curator; and SC Folk Life Program Coordinator, Doug Peach.

(Originally Broadcast 02/28/14) - Begun as an open letter to strangers and fellow misfits, The Minus Times grew to become a hand-typed literary magazine that showcased the next generation of American fiction. Contributors include Sam Lipsyte, David Berman, Patrick DeWitt, and Wells Tower, with illustrations by David Eggers and Brad Neely as well as interviews with Dan Clowes, Barry Hannah, and a yet-to-be-famous Stephen Colbert. With sly humor and striking illustrations, The Minus Times has earned a fervent following as much for its lack of literary pretension as its sporadic appearances on the newsstand. All thirty of the nearly-impossible-to-find issues of this improvised literary almanac are now assembled for the first time, typos and all, in The Minus Times Collected, by Hunter Kennedy (Featherproof Books, 2012).

Dr. Melissa Walker is the author of numerous books on the Civil War and is co-editor of Upcountry South Carolina Goes to War (USC Press, 2011). She talks with Dr. Walter Edgar about the role of “plain folk”—especially women—during the war.This presentation was recorded at the University of South Carolina’s Capstone Conference Center, in Columbia, on January 28, and was part of the series “Conversations on the Civil War, 1864,” presented in January and February, 2014. The series is sponsored by the USC College of Arts and Sciences.

In May of 2013, a one-story, rectangular, weatherboard-clad, 19th-century slave cabin was dismantled at the Point of Pines Plantation on Edisto Island, SC, and transferred to the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, DC. The reconstructed cabin will be on view in the “Slavery and Freedom” exhibition when the museum opens in 2015.Nancy Bercaw, NMAAHC curator; Gretchen Smith, director of the Edisto Island Historical Preservation Society; and Mary N. Elliott, project historian for the NMAAHC, will join Dr. Edgar to talk about the cabin, which Bercaw calls “one of the jewels of the museum.”

(Coal Powered Filmworks)(Broadcast August 23, 2013) - In April of 2013, an Army veteran from South Carolina returned to Okinawa, Japan, for the first time since he fought there in World War II. Retired Col. Ted Bell, 93, went back to the island after more than 67 years, this time with a film crew for South Carolina ETV, shooting part of the upcoming documentary, Man and Moment: Ted Bell and the Ridge.Ted Bell joins Walter Edgar, filmmaker Wade Sellers, and The State newspaper journalist and documentary producer Jeff Wilkinson to talk about his visit to Okinawa, and about the brutal three-day battle on Ishimmi Ridge. Man and Moment: Ted Bell and the Ridge will air on South Carolina ETV on Thursday, August 29, 2013.

(Matt Walsh Matt Walsh ([email protected]))(Broadcast November 02, 2012) - The Emmy-nominated documentary television series (produced in partnership by ETV and The State newspaper), South Carolinians in World War II, returns to ETV November 8th with its latest episode, A World War.  Joining Dr. Edgar to talk about this episode, and the war, are John Rainey, co-creator of the series; Wade Sellers, series director; and The State's Jeff Wilkinson, series producer.Related links:South Carolinians in World War II

(Matt Walsh Matt Walsh ([email protected]))(Broadcast November 04, 2011) - About 184,000 South Carolinians served in World War II, and thousands more, who moved here after the war. ETV and The State newspaper partnered together to tell the stories of these veterans in their own words. The result is a new Emmy-nominated documentary series, South Carolinians in World War II.The series returns in November with its final episode, A Path to Victory. Executive Producer John Rainey, Co-Producer Jeff Wilkinson, and two veterans featured in the series--Dr. Jack Keith and Chris Carawan--talk with Dr. Edgar about the program and share stories of their experiences in the war.

(Broadcast May 20, 2011) - 184,000 South Carolinians served in World War II. South Carolinians in WWII is ETV's 3-part series that tells the story of some of these veterans. Series co-executive producer John Rainey and producer/director Jeff Wilkinson will join Dr. Edgar to talk tell some of the extraordinary stories of South Carolinians in World War II and talk about the series' second episode. A New Front covers the period from Italy's Monte Cassino to D-Day as well as the buildup in Britain, doctors and nurses, and the Charleston Navy Yard.South Carolinians in WWII: a New Front will be broadcast on ETV Thursday May 26 at 9pm and Monday May 30 at 10pm. It also airs on the South Carolina Channel Monday, May 30 at 9pm.

(Originally broadcast 03/06/2009) - On November 16th, 2008, a dream came true for Columbia restaurateur Bill Dukes as he and about 90 World War II veterans began a flight to Washington, DC, to see the WWII Memorial. For many of the veterans, a visit to the Memorial, dedicated in 2004, was something they would probably never have dreamed of, much less done. Honor Flight South Carolina is a non-profit organization dedicated to flying South Carolina WWII vets to see “their monument,” free of charge.Honor Flight chairman Bill Dukes talks with Dr. Edgar about Honor Flight, about that first trip, and about the importance of honoring our veterans for there service in “the good war” while we still have them with us. And, we will also hear an encore of an interview with Columbian T. Moffatt Burriss, WWII veteran and author of "Strike and Hold."