Walter Edgar's Journal - TopPodcast.com

**"Somewhere toward freedom" - Sherman's March and the story of America's largest Emancipation** Feb 21, 2025
"Contrabands accompanying the line of Sherman's march through Georgia from a sketch by our special artist." - An illustation in: Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, 1865 March 18, p. 405.(Library of Congress)
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.

Cumming Street School — **North of Main: Spartanburg's historic Black neighborhoods** Feb 07, 2025
( Spartanburg County Library)
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.

**Settler violence, native resistance, and the coalescence of the Old South** Jan 24, 2025
Massacre at Ft. Mims(<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/tags/bookpublisherBoston__L__P__Crown___Co_">Boston, L. P. Crown & Co.</a> <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/tags/bookpublisher_Philadelphia__J__W__Bradley">Philadelphia, J. W. Bradley</a> / <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/tags/bookcontributorWellesley_College_Library">Wellesley College Library</a>)
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 joins 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.

**Remembering Nathalie Dupree** Jan 17, 2025
Nathalie Dupree walks the red carpet during the 2015 James Beard Awards at Lyric Opera of Chicago on Monday, May 4, 2015 in Chicago. (Photo by Barry Brecheisen/Invision/AP)(Barry Brecheisen/Barry Brecheisen/Invision/AP / Invision)
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.

**Raptors in the riceland** Jan 03, 2025
Rice field, South Carolina(The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs / Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views, Photography Collection, The New York Public Library)
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.

**Charleston's Nathaniel Russell House: Kitchen house archaeology sheds new light on the life of the enslaved** Dec 20, 2024
Cleaning and cataloging Nathaniel Russell kitchen house artifacts.( Courtesy of the Historic Charleston Foundation, Nathaniel Russell House)
This time out 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, women, and children who lived and worked there.

**Marjory Wentworth: One River, One Boat** Dec 06, 2024
Bridging divides? The Arthur Ravenel Jr., Bridge in Charleston connects the peninsula with Mt. Pleasant. While the Charleston area Republican electorate varies ideologically, in general, from other parts of the state, it nevertheless is part of what makes the state party so representative of the national party.(David Martin<br/> / Unsplash)
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.

**Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess** Nov 15, 2024
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 the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess will satisfy the book lover and the scholar.

**Lincoln's unfinished work: The new birth of freedom from generation to generation** Nov 01, 2024
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 three topics – as does our conversation.

**Southern/Modern: Modernism in Southern art from the first half of the twentieth century** Oct 18, 2024
"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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: Reconstruction beyond 150** Oct 04, 2024
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.

Downtown Greenville, SC — **Walter Edgar's Journal: A short history of Greenville** Sep 20, 2024
(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 cities
In 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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: The miraculous art of jazz** Sep 06, 2024
Dizzy Gillespie, New York, N.Y., ca. May 1947(Ky / <b>Flickr</b>)
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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: Joy is the justice we give ourselves** Aug 16, 2024
J. Drew Lanham, Ornithologist, Naturalist, and Writer, 2022 MacArthur Fellow, Clemson, SC( <i>John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation</i>)
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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: 'This fierce people' - the untold story of America's Revolutionary War in the South** Aug 02, 2024
"Death of Major Ferguson at King's Mountain." (The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library / The New York Public Library Digital Collections)
This week on the Journal we will be talking with Alan Pell Crawford about his book, This Fierce People: The Untold Story of America's Revolutionary War in the South (2024, Alfred A. Knopf). In his book Alan tells the story of three-plus years in the Revolutionary war, and of the fierce battles fought in the South that made up the central theater of military operations in the latter years of the War.
And it was in these bloody battles that the British were, in essence, vanquished.

**Lowcountry at High Tide** Jul 19, 2024
"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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: How Jewish entrepreneurs built economy and community in Upcountry South Carolina** Jul 05, 2024
One of the Davis brothers who operated the Davis Battery Electric company in Greenville, 1930. <br/><br/><br/>(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 Spartanburg-Greenville corridor.

Cover illustration from Payne-ful Business: Charleston’s Journey to Truth (2024, Evening Post Books) — **Walter Edgar's Journal: Payne-ful Business - Charleston’s Journey to Truth** Jun 21, 2024
Cover illustration from <i>Payne-ful Business: Charleston’s Journey to Truth </i>(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 reconcile those truths. And the enslaved individuals whom she found advertised for sale in ante bellum newspapers are brought to vivid life by artist John W. Jones. He truly uncovers the humanity hidden beneath those detached advertisements.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: The story of the Mighty Moo, the USS Cowpens** Jun 07, 2024
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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: Sleeping with the ancestors - The Slave Dwelling Project** May 17, 2024
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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: The story of Fort Sumter** May 03, 2024
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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: Finding the 1768 Charleston lighthouse in the fog of history** Apr 19, 2024
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.

**The Garretts of Columbia: A Black South Carolina family, from slavery to the dawn of integration** Apr 05, 2024
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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: Tea and the American Revolution, 1773–1776** Mar 15, 2024
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.

Walter Edgar's Journal: Injustice in focus - The Civil Rights photography of Cecil Williams Mar 01, 2024

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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: La Florida - Catholics, Conquistadores, and Other American Origin Stories** Feb 16, 2024
A statue of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the founder of St. Augustine, stands outside the Lightner Museum.<br/>(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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: George Singleton - Asides: Occasional Essays** Feb 02, 2024
George Singleton
This 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.

**Walter Edgar’s Journal: Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim - 275 years as a community of faith** Jan 19, 2024
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.

**Methodists & moonshiners: Another Prohibition expedition through the South** Jan 05, 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.

**“Our Country First, Then Greenville" - A New South City during the Progressive Era and World War I** Dec 29, 2023
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 in the city and the region. It was this moment that catalyzed Greenville's development into a modern city, setting the stage for the continued growth that persists into the present-day.

**Charleston Horse Power: Equine Culture in the Palmetto City** Dec 15, 2023
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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: Kugels & Collards - Stories of Food, Family, and Tradition in Jewish South Carolina** Dec 01, 2023
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: Honoring the untold stories of the African American journey** Nov 17, 2023
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.

Captured Freeedom — **'Captured Freedom': A compelling photo tells a harrowing story of survival** Nov 03, 2023
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 Procko to search for their stories.

Mark Catesby: Nature's Messenger Oct 20, 2023

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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: The Spingarn brothers - White privilege, Jewish heritage, and the struggle for racial equality** Oct 06, 2023
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.
Katherine Reynolds Chaddock joins us to tell the Springans’ story.

**Gullah culture in America** Sep 29, 2023
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 May Be the Last Time," sung by Lucia Vasquez Valdez, was recorded by Windy Goodloe, and is used with her permission.

**Journalist Adam Parker’s look at the culture, conflict, and creativity of the South** Sep 15, 2023
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.

**Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the epic war for the American South** Sep 01, 2023
"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.

**Film critic Ben Beard continues his journey through the South on screen** Aug 18, 2023
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!

**Charleston to Phnom Penh - A Cook's Journal** Aug 04, 2023
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.

Marions men crossing the Pee Dee — **Walter Edgar’s Journal: Legend - Francis Marion in the Pee Dee** Jul 21, 2023
"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.

**Walter Edgar’s Journal: A photographic history of the Civil Rights era** Jul 07, 2023
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.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: Revolutionary roads** Jun 30, 2023
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 how the outcome a major South Carolina battle may have hinged on a tiny, fraught tipping point – a misunderstood order that could have altered the course of the war.

**An innovative strategy revives the economy of a small town and helps create a major industry** Jun 16, 2023
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.
Their recruitment strategies will sound familiar to a 21st-century American, but they were truly innovative in 1920.
Dr. Elfenbein is the chair of the Department of History at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.

**Where have all the shrimp boats gone?** Jun 02, 2023
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's Journal, past and future** May 26, 2023
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 producer Alfred Turner and by director of SC Public Radio, Sean Birch. They will listen to clips of past Journal episodes, talk about the growth of the Journal over the past 23 years, explain it's evolution into a podcast, and listen to clips of upcoming podcasts.

**Carolina's lost colony: Stuarts Town and the struggle for survival in early South Carolina** May 15, 2023
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 reinvigorate the Indian slave trade—setting in motion a series of events that transformed the region into a powder keg of colonial ambitions, unleashing a chain of hostilities, realignments, displacement, and destruction that forever altered the region.
- Originally broadcast 01/06/23 -
News and Music Stations: Fri, May 19, at 12 pm; Sat, May 20, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, May 19, at 12 pm; Sun, May 21, at 4 pm

**Clemson professor Drew Lanham: the "genius" in his MacArthur Foundation grant is freedom to "do me"** May 08, 2023
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: America's historian** May 01, 2023
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 pm; Sat, May 06, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, May 05, at 12 pm; Sun, May 07, at 4 pm

**Citadel professor redefines key battle that changed the course of the Hundred Years War** Apr 24, 2023
( 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 unlocking of what was arguably the battle’s greatest secret: the location of the now-quiet fields where so many thousands died.
- Originally released 10/28/22 -

Cameras on display at Movie World in Oberhausen, Germany — **The South Never Plays Itself - a history of the Deep South on screen** Apr 17, 2023
(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.

**Revolutionary revelations: remains of soldiers from the Battle of Camden to be re-interred with honors** Apr 10, 2023
"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 Foundation, contracted with the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, to excavate a number of bodies of Revolutionary War soldiers killed in the August 16, 1780 Battle of Camden.
Walter Edgar talks with Dr. Steve Smith of the SC Institute for Archeology and Anthropology at USC; Bill Stevens, forensic anthropologist with the Richland County Coroner’s Office; and Doug Bostick, CEO of the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust about the excavations, the significance of the discoveries, and about plans for reinterment ceremonies April 20-22, 2023, in Camden.
- Originally released 12/16/22 -

**Saving a legacy, one fish fry at a time** Apr 04, 2023
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 bought acre-by-acre homesteads to support their families. The first “church” was nothing more than a brush arbor atop a rise looking toward iconic Table Rock Mountain to the north. There the families put down spiritual roots that have sustained what became Soapstone Baptist Church and its more than a century and a half legacy.
News and Music Stations: Fri, Apr 07, at 12 pm; Sat, Apr 08, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Apr 07, at 12 pm; Sun, Apr 09, at 4 pm

**The Liberty Trail: The trail to independence** Mar 27, 2023
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 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Mar 31, at 12 pm; Sun, Apr 02, at 4 pm

**Drayton Hall stories: A place and its people** Mar 20, 2023
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 -

**History and horticulture at Historic Columbia's Hampton-Preston Mansion site** Mar 13, 2023
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 serves as a space to interpret the role that an extensive workforce of gardeners and horticulturists – Black, white, enslaved, and free – have played in shaping this site for over 200 years.
John Sherrer, Director of Cultural Resources for Historic Columbia, and Keith Mearns, Director of Grounds, talk with Walter Edgar about planning and building the Horticultural Center and about the ways it enriches the mansion’s grounds.
- Originally broadcast 05/05/22 -
News and Music Stations: Fri, Mar 17, at 12 pm; Sat, Mar 18, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Mar 17, at 12 pm; Sun, Mar 19, at 4 pm

'Black Snow': SC author chronicles desperate measures taken to end WWII fighting in the Pacific Mar 06, 2023

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 targeted civilians which helped pave the way for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later.

- Originally released 08/26/22 -

"Return of a Foraging Party to Philippi, Virginia" — **War stuff: the struggle between armies and civilians during the American Civil War** Feb 20, 2023
(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 Walter Edgar, and about the efforts of historians to establish a precedent for the study of material objects as a way to shed new light on the social, economic, and cultural history of the conflict.
- Originally broadcast 06/14/19 -
News and Music Stations: Fri, Feb 24, 12 pm; Sat, Feb 25, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Feb 24, 12 pm; Sun, Feb 26, 4 pm

**Origins of "The Wheel of Time"** Feb 13, 2023
(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 unpublished notes.
Livingston tells the behind-the-scenes story of who Jordan was, how he worked, and why he holds such an important place in modern literature. The second part of the book is a glossary to the “real world” in The Wheel of Time. (King Arthur is in The Wheel of Time. Merlin, too. But so are Alexander the Great and the Apollo Space Program, the Norse gods and Napoleon’s greatest victory—and so much more.
Michael Livingston joins Walter Edgar to talk about The Wheel of Time universe and Robert Jordan’s life.
News and Music Stations: Fri, Feb 17, 12 pm; Sat, Feb 18, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Feb 17, 12 pm; Sun, Feb 19, 4 pm

**Origins of "The Wheel of Time"** Feb 13, 2023
(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 unpublished notes.
Livingston tells the behind-the-scenes story of who Jordan was, how he worked, and why he holds such an important place in modern literature. The second part of the book is a glossary to the “real world” in The Wheel of Time. (King Arthur is in The Wheel of Time. Merlin, too. But so are Alexander the Great and the Apollo Space Program, the Norse gods and Napoleon’s greatest victory—and so much more.
Michael Livingston joins Walter Edgar to talk about The Wheel of Time universe and Robert Jordan’s life.
News and Music Stations: Fri, Feb 17, 12 pm; Sat, Feb 18, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Feb 17, 12 pm; Sun, Feb 19, 4 pm

**Stolen dreams: the 1955 Cannon Street YMCA All-Stars** Feb 06, 2023
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 killing of 14-year-old Emmett Till.
Chris Lamb, author of The 1955 Cannon Street YMCA All-Stars and Little League Baseball’s Civil War (2022, University of Nebraska Press), and John Rivers, who played shortstop on the All-Stars, join Walter Edgar to tell the story of the Cannon Street all-stars.

The Detroit tribune, November 23, 1946: a notice that Isaac Woodard would be speaking at an NAACP event. — **How the Blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard Changed the Course of America’s Civil Rights History** Jan 23, 2023
(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 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 he soon began issuing major civil rights decisions from his Charleston courtroom, including his 1951 dissent in Briggs v. Elliott, declaring public school segregation per se unconstitutional. Three years later, the Supreme Court adopted Waring’s language and reasoning in Brown v. Board of Education.
News and Music Stations: Fri, Jan 27, 12 pm; Sat, Jan 28, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Jan 27, 12 pm; Sun, Jan 28, 4 pm

"The attack on Fort Moultrie, Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, on June 28, 1776." Charleston eventually fell to the British, oin May of 1780. — **Charleston Patriots in Exile During the Revolution** Jan 16, 2023
(N.Y. Public Library (public domain); Artist: Chapin, John Reuben (1823-1894))
In the months following the May 1780 capture of Charleston, South Carolina, by combined British and loyalist forces, British soldiers arrested sixty-three paroled American prisoners and transported them to the borderland town of St. Augustine, East Florida—territory under British control since the French and Indian War.
In their new book, Patriots in Exile: Charleston Rebels in St. Augustine during The American Revolution (2020, USC Press), James Waring McCrady and C. L. Bragg chronicle the banishment of these elite southerners, the hardships endured by their families, and the plight of the enslaved men and women who accompanied them, as well as the motives of their British captors. Bragg joins Walter Edgar to talk about this little known chapter of the Revolution.
- Originally broadcast 11/20/20 -
News and Music Stations: Fri, Jan 20, 12 pm; Sat, Jan 21, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Jan 20, 12 pm; Sun, Jan 22, 4 pm

Porch, rocking chairs, coffee cups — **The South of the Mind** Dec 26, 2022
(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 07/19/19) -

**A History of the Southern Conference** Dec 19, 2022
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 University Press), tells the story of the notable athletes, coaches, and athletic programs that have built such a rich tradition over so many decades. Legendary sports figures such as Jerry West, Arnold Palmer, Bear Bryant, Sam Huff, and Steph Curry are all part of the Southern Conference's past.
- Originally released 04/23/21 -

**Open Space Institute works in concert with others to protect South Carolina's scenic, natural, and historic landscapes** Nov 28, 2022
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 in the state.
News and Music Stations: Fri, Dec 02, at 12 pm; Sat, Dec 03, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Dec 02, at 12 pm; Sun, Dec 04, at 4 pm

**Lowcountry at high tide** Nov 21, 2022
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 drainage, and thus buildable land and to facilitate sanitation. Author 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.
Butler talks with Walter Edgar about talk about Charleston’s topographic history and the challenges it faces in the 21st century.
- Originally released 10/23/20 -

Light tanks with a crew of only two, these were mass-produced during World War I. — **Roots and consequences of 'The Great War'** Nov 07, 2022
(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 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Nov 11, 12 pm; Sun, Nov 13, 4 pm

**Roots and consequences of 'The Great War'** Nov 07, 2022
(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 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Nov 11, 12 pm; Sun, Nov 13, 4 pm

frontis.hootie-and-the-blowfish.hi-res.jpg — **The inside story of Hootie and the Blowfish** Oct 31, 2022
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 sensation, and the band inspired a plotline on the TV show Friends; the lean years from the late 1990s through the early 2000s; Darius Rucker's history-making rise in country music; and one of the most remarkable comeback stories of the century.
Tim Sommer shares the Hootie story with Walter Edgar.
- Originally broadcast 06/17/22 -
News and Music Stations: Fri, Nov 04, 12 pm; Sat, Nov 05, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Nov 17, 04pm; Sun, Nov 06, 4 pm

**Citadel professor redefines key battle that changed the course of the Hundred Years War** Oct 24, 2022
( 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 unlocking of what was arguably the battle’s greatest secret: the location of the now-quiet fields where so many thousands died.
News and Music Stations: Fri, Oct 28, 12 pm; Sat, Oct 29, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Oct 28, 12 pm; Sun, Oct 30, 4 pm

**Celebrating okra, seed to stem** Oct 17, 2022
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 okra flower vodka. Some of the South’s best-known chefs shared okra recipes with Smith: Okra Soup by culinary historian Michael Twitty, Limpin’ Susan by chef BJ Dennis, Bhindi Masala by chef Meherwan Irani, and Okra Fries by chef Vivian Howard.
Chris joins Walter Edgar for a conversation about all things okra.
News and Music Stations: Fri, Oct 21, 12 pm; Sat, Oct 22, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Oct 21, 12 pm; Sun, Oct 22, 4 pm

Jackson Station: Music, Community, and Tragedy in Southern Blues Bar Oct 10, 2022

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 Music Stations: Fri, Oct 14, 12 pm; Sat, Oct 15, 7 am|
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Oct 14, 12 pm; Sun, Oct 16, 4 pm

Rediscovering some of South Carolina's signature foods and the stories behind them Oct 03, 2022

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 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Oct 07, at 12 pm; Sun, Oct 09, 2022, at 4 pm

**Into the light: the electrification of rural South Carolina** Sep 26, 2022
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 economic development, of how the cooperatives helped bring fundamental and transformational change to the lives of rural people in South Carolina, from light to broadband.
- Originally released 05/13/22 -

**Brookgreen Gardens - its history and its expanding mission** Sep 19, 2022
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 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Sep 09, 12 pm; Sun, Sep 11, 4 pm

**The growth and value of "public history"** Sep 12, 2022
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 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Sept 16, 12 pm; Sun, Sept 18, 4 pm

**Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Charleston Renaissance Artist** Sep 05, 2022
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 -

**Shrimp Tales** Aug 29, 2022
(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 -

**U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – 150 years** Aug 22, 2022
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 150^th 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 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Dec 17, at 12 pm; Sun, Dec 19, at 4 pm

'Black Snow': SC author chronicles desperate measures taken to end WWII fighting in the Pacific Aug 15, 2022

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 targeted civilians which helped pave the way for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later.

News and Music Stations: Fri, Aug 19, at 12 pm; Sat, Aug 20, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Aug 19, at 12 pm; Sun, Aug 21, at 4 pm

**Stephen A. Swails - a forgotten Black freedom fighter in the Civil War & Reconstruction** Aug 08, 2022
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 indomitable human being who confronted deep-seated racial prejudice in various institutions but nevertheless reached significant milestones in the fight for racial equality.
- Originally released 03/14/22 -

**Justice deferred - race and the Supreme Court** Jul 11, 2022
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 published 12/03/21 -

**The Promise of the Pelican** Jul 04, 2022
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 control
Roy Hoffman joins Walter Edgar to talk about the novel, its resonance with the South of the past as well as the South of today, and about his career.

**Enabling Veterans in South Carolina to live their best lives** Jun 27, 2022
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 -

Middleton-place — **American Landmark: Charles Duell and the Rebirth of Middleton Place** Jun 20, 2022
(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 about Duel’s decision to preserve the family seat of his ancestors, and the journey toward its sustainability.
- Originally published 03/11/22 -

**Baptists and Bootleggers** Jun 06, 2022
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 -

**Timmonsville native Johnny D. Boggs writes about the historic frontier - whether it's in South Carolina or in Texas** May 23, 2022
( 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 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, May 27, at 12 pm; Sun, May 29, at 4 pm

**Shrimp Tales** May 16, 2022
(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.

Nathaniel Greene and his troops crossing the Dan River. — **To the End of the World: Nathanael Greene, Charles Cornwallis, and the Race to the Dan** May 02, 2022
(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 Virginia and safety.
- Originally released 03/12/21 -

**The Grim Years: Settling South Carolina, 1670 - 1720** Apr 25, 2022
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 pursuit of wealth set the colony on a path toward prosperity but also toward a fatal dependency on slave labor. Rice would produce immense fortunes in South Carolina, but not during the colony's first fifty years. Religious and political turmoil instigated by settlers from Barbados eventually led to a total rejection of proprietary authority.
Threatened by the Native Americans they exploited, by the Africans they enslaved, and by their French and Spanish rivals, white South Carolinians lived in continual fear. For some it was the price they paid for financial success. But for most there were no riches, and the possibility of a sudden, violent death was overshadowed by the misery of their day-to-day existence.
- Originally broadcast 05/14/21 -

**The myths and hard facts of the Atlantic slave trade** Apr 04, 2022
( 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 American Revolution.
This week Walter Edgar talks with Donald Wright about the myths about and some of the hard facts of the Atlantic slave trade.

**Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution** Mar 31, 2022
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 “hidden history.”
- (Originally broadcast 11/21/21) -
News and Music Stations: Fri, Apr 01, at 12 pm; Sat, Apr 02, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Apr 01, at 12 pm; Sun, Apr 03, at 4 pm

Supporters and petitioners of Briggs v. Elliott sit outside Liberty Hill AME Church in Clarendon County, SC. The lawsuit led to Brown v. Board of Education, the US Supreme Court decisions in 1954 and 1955 that ended legal segregation in public schools. — **The Federal Courts and the Long Struggle for Civil Rights in South Carolina** Mar 21, 2022
(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 University of South Carolina Union and director of the liberal studies and organizational leadership programs for the University of South Carolina's Palmetto College.

**The River Alliance: Creating Vibrant Riverfront in the Midlands** Feb 28, 2022
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.
River Alliance CEO Mike Dawson talks with Walter Edgar about how the Alliance has worked together with riverside communities, city and county governments, and many other organizations to create community resources along the Saluda, Broad, and Congaree rivers in the Midlands of South Carolina.
From SCETV's Making It Grow.

**Timmonsville native Johnny D. Boggs writes about the historic frontier - whether it's in South Carolina or in Texas** Feb 21, 2022
( 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).

**Coastal South Carolina Fish and Game: History, Culture and Conservation** Feb 07, 2022
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 -

**Francis Marion: Rediscovering the Revolutionary War Battle at Parker's Ferry** Jan 31, 2022
This statue of General Francis Marion at Venters Landing commemorates the spot where Marion took control of the Williamsburg Militia in 1780 on the site formerly known as Witherspoon's Ferry. Marion also used nearby Snow's Island as a camp site during the revolution, earning him the nickname "The Swampfox."(JobyD2000 / Wikimedia Commons)
(Originally released 09/24/21) - In March of 2021, the South Carolina Battlefield Preservation Trust purchased 31 acres in Colleton County to preserve the site of a Revolutionary War victory by Francis Marion and his men over the British in what became known as the battle of Parker’s Ferry. The site will soon become part of the Liberty Trail, which will be a unified path of preservation and interpretation across South Carolina. The Trail will tell the story of the events of 1779-1782 in the Carolinas, which directly led to an American victory in the war.
Charles Baxley of the SC Battlefield Trust and archaeologist Steve Smith join Walter Edgar to talk about efforts to find the historical boundaries of the site, purchase the land, and establish the Liberty Trail.

**"Never greater slaughter" - the battle of Brunanburh and the birth of England** Jan 10, 2022
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, tells the story of the battle and of an extraordinary effort, uniting enthusiasts, historians, archaeologists, linguists, and other researchers – amateurs and professionals, experienced and inexperienced alike – which may well have found the site of the long-lost battle of Brunanburh, over a thousand years after its bloodied fields witnessed history
Michael Livingston holds degrees in History, Medieval Studies, and English, and teaches the military and cultural history of the Middle Ages at The Citadel.

**100 years of the Poetry Society of South Carolina** Jan 05, 2022
(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, into the darkness of the Great Depression, World War II, a resurgence during the Atomic Age, the turbulent Sixties, the decline of Charleston, its rebound into a tourist mecca, and into the present day.

**Walter Edgar's Journal: A history professor on the radio?** Dec 20, 2021
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 interview guests and take calls from listeners about topics of the day. The program, unnamed for its first few months, became Walter Edgar's Journal, and would evolve into weekly conversation with guests - authors, artists, politicians, and everyday folks - talking about everything from politics to barbeque, topics centered in the American South with a focus on our state's history and culture.
- Originally posted 11/05/21 -

**WEJ at 21: What was the most influential Southern novel of the 20th century?** Dec 09, 2021
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 Music Stations: Fri, Dec 10, at 12 pm; Sat, Dec 11, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Dec 10, at 12 pm; Sun, Dec 12, at 4 pm

**WEJ at 21: The weight of mercy - a novice pastor on the city streets** Nov 22, 2021
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 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Nov 26, at 12 pm; Sun, Nov 28, at 4 pm

**WEJ at 21: Death and the Civil War** Nov 15, 2021
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 19^th 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-Prize-winning book, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) forms the basis for Burn’s documentary.
- Originally broadcast 09/14/12 -

**WEJ at 21: Growing up with The Great Santini** Oct 25, 2021
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 -

Southern food — **WEJ at 21: What is real southern cooking?** Oct 19, 2021
(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 -

**Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands** Oct 14, 2021
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 unlikely circumstances. Most notably, the island's songs were used at the turn of the century to help rally support for the United States' involvement in World War I and to calm racial tensions between black and white soldiers. In the 1960s, civil rights activists adopted spirituals as freedom songs, though many were unaware of their connection to the island.
Please note: musical excerpts of Gullah spirituals used in the broadcast version of this episode are not included in this on-demand version, due to copyright restrictions.

**WEJ at 21: World War II battlefield hero - T. Moffatt Burriss and the crossing** Oct 04, 2021
(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 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Oct 8, at 12 pm; Sun, Oct 10, at 4 pm

**WEJ at 21: Dixie Bohemia - A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s** Sep 13, 2021
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 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 for twelve years and helped found the university's Center for the Study of the American South and the quarterly Southern Cultures.
- Originally broadcast 01/10/14 -

**WEJ at 21: A Rising Sea, a Vanishing Coast, and a 19th-Century Disaster that Warns of a Warmer World** Sep 13, 2021
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. Edgar to tell the story of Isle Derniere and about the need to re-examine our ideas about living on the coast.
Sallenger received his Ph.D. in Marine Science from the University of Virginia and is the former Chief Scientist of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Center for Coastal Geology. He presently leads the USGS Extreme Storms research group.

**WEJ at 21: A Rising Sea, a Vanishing Coast, and a 19th-Century Disaster that Warns of a Warmer World** Sep 13, 2021
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. Edgar to tell the story of Isle Derniere and about the need to re-examine our ideas about living on the coast.
Sallenger received his Ph.D. in Marine Science from the University of Virginia and is the former Chief Scientist of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Center for Coastal Geology. He presently leads the USGS Extreme Storms research group.

FILE - Lyndon Harris — **September 11: Tragedy, Ministry, Forgiveness** Sep 08, 2021
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 Gardens of Forgiveness, where he is currently Executive Director. Harris is also minister at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Carolina Foothills.

FILE - Harvey Gantt, outside the Registrar's office at Clemson university. — **WEJ at 21: The Life and Times of Judge Matthew J. Perry** Aug 23, 2021
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 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Aug 27, at 12 pm; Sun, Aug 29, at 4 pm

**WEJ at 21: The Life and Times of Judge Matthew J. Perry** Aug 23, 2021
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 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Aug 27, at 12 pm; Sun, Aug 29, at 4 pm

"Slave Dance and Music" — **WEJ at 21: Charles Joyner on "Down by the Riverside - A South Carolina Slave Community"** Aug 09, 2021
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 and its way of life. His careful reconstruction of daily life in All Saints Parish is an inspiring testimony to the ingenuity and solidarity of a people who endured in the face of adversity.
The 25th anniversary edition of Joyner's landmark study includes a new introduction in which the author recounts his process of writing the book, reflects on its critical and popular reception, and surveys the prior three decades of scholarship in slave history. He joined Dr. Edgar in 2010, during the 10th anniversary celebration of Walter Edgar's Journal, to talk about this edition.
- Originally broadcast 03/26/10 -

Dr. Charles Joyner — **WEJ at 21: Charles Joyner on "Down by the Riverside - A South Carolina Slave Community"** Aug 09, 2021
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 and its way of life. His careful reconstruction of daily life in All Saints Parish is an inspiring testimony to the ingenuity and solidarity of a people who endured in the face of adversity.
The 25th anniversary edition of Joyner's landmark study includes a new introduction in which the author recounts his process of writing the book, reflects on its critical and popular reception, and surveys the prior three decades of scholarship in slave history. He joined Dr. Edgar in 2010, during the 10th anniversary celebration of Walter Edgar's Journal, to talk about this edition.
- Originally broadcast 03/26/10 -

**WEJ at 21: Cokie Roberts - "Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation"** Jul 26, 2021
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 broadcast 07/30/04 -

**Baptized in Sweet Tea** Jul 19, 2021
( 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) -

The scene outside Emanuel A.M.E. Church, Charleston, SC, on Sunday morning, July 21, 2015. — **WEJ at 21: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness** Jul 12, 2021
(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)-

"Death of Major Ferguson at King's Mountain," Virtue & Yorston, 1863 — **WEJ at 21: How Partisans Fighting in South Carolina Helped Win the American Revolution** Jun 28, 2021
(Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library)
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. 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 - especially in South Carolina. In essence, according to Dr. Jack Warren and Dr. Walter Edgar, the war was won in the South.
This encore broadcast from 2016 is part of our Celebration of Walter Edgar's Journal at 21.
- Originally broadcast 03/04/16 -
News and Music Stations: Fri, Jul 02, 12 pm; Sat, Jul 03, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Jul 02, 12 pm; Sun, Jul 04, 4 pm

A view of the cooker around which the 1991 Imperial Foods chicken processing plant fire was centered. Taken from this report by the United States Fire Administration. — **The Tragic Story of the Hamlet Fire** Jun 21, 2021
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 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 accidents ever in the history of the modern American food industry.
Bryant Simon, professor of history at Temple University, and author of The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives (2021, UNC Press) talks with Walter Edgar about the market pressures, the governmental neglect, and the greed that lead to the tragedy.
- Originally broadcast 04/09/21 -
News and Music Stations: Fri, Jun 25, 12 pm; Sat, Jun 26, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Jun 25, 12 pm; Sun, Jun 27, 4 pm

Detail from photo montage of the some members of the first S.C. legislature after the American Civil War, with Lawrence Cain, center — **Rediscovered Ancestry: a Family Learns the Story of Their Remarkable Ancestor, Senator Lawrence Cain** Jun 14, 2021
"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 senator
The 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 conversation with Walter Edgar and Dr. Vernon Burton, professor emeritus of history at Clemson University, recounting Lawrence Cain’s remarkable life and the social and political upheaval of Reconstruction in South Carolina.
News and Music Stations: Friday, Apr 16, at 12 pm; Sat, Apr 17, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Apr 16, at 12 pm; Sun, Apr 18, 4 pm

**The Fabulous Life of Gertrude Sanford Legendre** Jun 11, 2021
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 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.
- Originally broadcast 04/02/21 -
News and Music Stations: Sat, Jun 12, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Jun 11, at 12 pm; Sun, Jun 13, 4 pm

**A Year Like No Other and "The Summer of Lost and Found" - A Conversation with Mary Alice Monroe** May 24, 2021
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 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, May 28, 12 pm; Sun, May 30, 4 pm

**The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History** May 17, 2021
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 treasure-filled galleons; New Orleans, the Big Easy, famous for its beautiful French Quarter, Mardi Gras, and relaxed morals; and oft-besieged Veracruz, Mexico's oldest city, founded in 1519 by Hernán Cortés. Throughout history the residents of these cities and their neighbors along the littoral have struggled with challenges both natural and human-induced—devastating hurricanes, frightening epidemics, catastrophic oil spills, and conflicts ranging from dockside brawls to pirate raids, foreign invasion, civil war, and revolution.
In the modern era the Gulf has become critical to energy production, fisheries, tourism, and international trade, even as it is threatened by pollution and climate change. The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History is a work of verve and sweep that illuminates both the risks of life on the water and the riches that come from its bounty.

**Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery: Race, Status, and Identity in the Urban Americas** May 03, 2021
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.

Jackson Station: Music, Community, and Tragedy in Southern Blues Bar Apr 26, 2021

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 pm; Sat, May 01, 7 am|
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Apr 30, 12 pm; Sun, May 02, 4 pm

**In Her Shoes: A History of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina** Mar 01, 2021
(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 Stations: Fri, Mar 05, 12 pm; Sat, Mar 06, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Mar 05, 12 pm; Sun, Mar 07, 4 pm

The 369th Infantry Regiment served on the front lines for 191 days during World War I, longer than any other American unit. In that time, the Soldiers of the regiment, known as the "Harlem Hellfighters," never gave up any ground it captured. — **The Beginnings of Black Activism in South Carolina** Feb 22, 2021
(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 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Feb 26, 12 pm; Sun, Feb 28, 4 pm

A portrait of Judge J. Waities Waring hangs in the courthouse that bears his name. — **Judge J. Waties Waring and the Secret Plan that Sparked a Civil Rights Movement** Feb 15, 2021
(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 Courier Books).
- Originally broadcast 01/25/19 -
News and Music Stations: Fri, Feb 19, 12 pm; Sat, Feb 20, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Feb 19, 12 pm; Sun, Feb 21, 4 pm

Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina Feb 08, 2021

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 and women.

- Originally broadcast 11/13/20 -

News and Music Stations: Fri, Feb 12, 12 pm; Sat, Feb 13, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Feb 12, 12 pm; Sun, Feb 14, 4 pm

Dr. J. Drew Lanham — **The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature** Jan 25, 2021
(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, as well as an exploration of the contradictions of black identity in the rural South—and in America today. Drew Lanham joins Walter Edgar to tell about his journey and his love affair with nature.
- Originally broadcast 04/28/17 -
News and Music Stations: Fri, Jan 29, 12 pm; Sat, Jan 30, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Jan 29, 12 pm; Sun, Jan 31, 4 pm

Front page of an issue of the Lighthouse and Informer — **Newspaper Wars: Civil Rights and White Resistance in South Carolina, 1935-1965** Jan 18, 2021
(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 determined to preserve segregation through massive resistance.
Bedingfield joins Dr. Edgar for a discussion of this history, along with USC’s Dr. Patricia Sullivan, author of Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (The New Press, 2010).
- Originally broadcast 12/08/17 -
News and Music Stations: Fri, Jan 22, 12 pm; Sat, Jan 23, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Jan 22, 12 pm; Sun, Jan 24, 4 pm

Richard T. Greener, circa 1900; by J. H. Cunningham. In The Colored American, February 24, 1900. — **Uncompromising Activist: Richard Greener, First Black Professor at USC** Jan 13, 2021
(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 professor emerita of education at the University of South Carolina, has written a long overdue narrative biography about a man, fascinating in his own right, who also exemplified America’s discomfiting perspectives on race and skin color.
- Originally broadcast 06/01/18 -
All Stations: Fri, Jan 15 , 12 pm; News & Music Stations: Sat, Jan 16, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Jan 15 , 12 pm; Sun, Nov 17, 4 pm

Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina Nov 09, 2020

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 and women.

News and Music Stations: Fri, Nov 13, 12 pm; Sat, Nov 14, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Nov 13, 12 pm; Sun, Nov 15, 4 pm

Lowcountry at High Tide Oct 19, 2020

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.

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.

News and Music Stations: Fri, Oct 23, 12 pm; Sat, Oct 24, 7 am | News & Talk Stations: Fri, Oct 23, 12 pm; Sun, Oct 25, 4 pm

St Nicholas Abbey, Saint Peter, Barbados — **The Carolina-Barbados Connection That Shaped South Carolina** Oct 12, 2020
(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 on both places.
News and Music Stations: Fri, Oct 16, 12 pm; Sat, Oct 17, 7 am | News & Talk Stations: Fri, Oct 16, 12 pm; Sun, Oct 18, 4 pm
Watch the SCETV special Beyond Barbados: The Carolina Connection

Dwight Yoakam plays a Martin D-28 guitar. Yoakam is among the 76 of the 101 country music artists interviewed for the series who signed two Martin D-28 guitars. — **Country Music** Oct 05, 2020
(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, Oct 09, 12 pm; Sun, Oct 11, 4 pm

Detail from Art Studio, by Thereas Pollak. — **Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection** Sep 28, 2020
(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 Lynne Blackman, Director of Communications for the Johnson Collection, curatorial advisor Susanna Johnson Shannon, and curator and essayist Martha Severens.
Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection is currently on display at Wofford College in Spartanburg, its last South Carolina stop on a three-year tour, through December 18^th at. The tour ends with a residency at Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia, February 6–June 13, 2021.
- Originally broadcast 11/09/18 -
News & Music Stations: Fri, Oct 02, 12 pm; Sat, Oct 03, 7 am | News & Talk Stations: Fri, Oct 02, 12 pm; Sun, Oct 04, 4 pm

Spinners and doffers in Lancaster Cotton Mills. Lancaster, S.C., circa 1912. — **Ups and Downs: South Carolina’s Economy During World War I** Aug 07, 2020
(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

Written on print: "Spartanburg, S.C. Saxon Mills; 'Girl workers in the half-time mill school.'" — **South Carolina Progressives During World War I** Jul 27, 2020
(Library of Congress/Goldsberry Collection of open-air school photographs.)
(Originally broadcast 03/02/18) - There were progressives in South Carolina in 1918. And the progressive movement in this state was different from the movement in the Northeast. However, the United States’ entrance into World War I provided an extra momentum to the movement that led to some fundamental changes the interaction between state and federal authority that lasted through the 20th century.
Dr. William Link, from the University of Florida, has a public conversation with Walter Edgar about Progressives in South Carolina in World War I. The conversation was recorded at the University of South Carolina’s Capstone Conference Center, in Columbia, on February 06, 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 02/02/18 -
All Stations: Fri, Jul 31, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Aug 02, 4 pm

Unidentified African American soldier in uniform with marksmanship qualification badge and campaign hat, with cigarette holder in front of painted backdrop. — **Fighting on Two Fronts: Black South Carolinians in World War I** Jul 20, 2020
(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

Camp Jackson — **South Carolina in WWI: The Military** Jul 13, 2020
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

The first black U.S. senator and first black House members were elected by Southern states during Reconstruction. — **Reconstruction and the African American Struggle for Equality in the South** Jun 22, 2020
(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

Emancipation Day Celebration, June 19, 1900, Texas — **What Does Freedom Mean? The Agency of Black People Before and After Emancipation** Jun 17, 2020
(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, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Jun 21, 4 pm
- Originally broadcast 04/03/15 -

**What Does Freedom Mean? The Agency of Black People Before and After Emancipation** Jun 17, 2020
(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, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Jun 21, 4 pm
- Originally broadcast 04/03/15 -

Engraving depicting the death of British Major Patrick Ferguson at the Battle of Kings Mountain during the American Revolutionary War, October 7, 1780. — **The Winning of the American Revolution - in the South** Jun 08, 2020
(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 Carolina: The Revolution in South Carolina. Dr. Warren is Executive Director at The Society of the Cincinnati.
- Originally broadcast 03/04/16 -
All Stations: Fri, Jun 12, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jun 14, 4 pm

Jack D. Warren, Jr, Executive Director of the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati — **The Winning of the American Revolution - in the South** Jun 08, 2020
(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 Carolina: The Revolution in South Carolina. Dr. Warren is Executive Director at The Society of the Cincinnati.
- Originally broadcast 03/04/16 -
All Stations: Fri, Jun 12, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jun 14, 4 pm

Early map of Virginia and the Carolinas — **The Colonial Carolina Frontier: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves** Jun 01, 2020
(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

Walter Edgar's Journal — **"They Stole Him Out of Jail" - Willie Earle, South Carolina's Last Lynching Victim** May 11, 2020
(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. The police and FBI obtained twenty-six confessions, but, after a nine-day trial in May that attracted national press attention, the defendants were acquitted by an all-white jury.
All Stations: Fri, May 15, 2020, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 17, 4 pm
- Originally broadcast 02/07/20 -

Ted Lee and Matt Lee — **Go Inside Catering, the Food World’s Riskiest Business with Matt and Ted Lee** Apr 27, 2020
(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

Currier & Ives & Cameron, J. (ca. 1884) An exciting finish — **Horse Racing and Horse Culture in South Carolina and Beyond** Mar 02, 2020
(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 20^th 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

ballot box — **First in the South: Why South Carolina's Presidential Primary Matters** Feb 17, 2020
(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.
All Stations: Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Feb 23, 4 pm

"The Reserve in Summer" from the series A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties, ca. 1935, By Alice Ravenel Huger Smith (American, 1876 - 1958); Watercolor on paper; — **South Carolina Between World Wars: The Charleston Renaissance** Jan 20, 2020
(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

James F. Byrnes. During his ten years in the Senate, Byrnes championed President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. — **South Carolina Between World Wars: Politics** Jan 13, 2020
( 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, remained the same.
All Stations: Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jan 19, 4 pm

Cassandra King Conroy on SCETV's "By The River" — **My Life With Pat Conroy** Oct 28, 2019
(SCETV)
In her new book, Tell Me A Story: My Life With Pat Conroy (2019, William Morrow), bestselling author Cassandra King Conroy considers her life and the man she shared it with, paying tribute to her husband, Pat Conroy, the legendary figure of modern Southern literature.
Cassandra King was leading a quiet life as a professor, divorced “Sunday wife” of a preacher, and debut novelist when she met Pat Conroy. Their friendship bloomed into a tentative, long-distance relationship. Pat and Cassandra ultimately married, partly because Pat hated the commute from coastal South Carolina to her native Alabama. It was a union that would last eighteen years, until the beloved literary icon’s death from pancreatic cancer in 2016.
All Stations: Fri, Nov 01, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Nov 03, 4 pm

John Slaughter, Superintendent of US Park Service's Southern Campaign of the American Revolution Parks group. — **The Battle of Kings Mountain and the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution** Sep 30, 2019
(Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library)
(SCETV/Original SC)
The Battle of Kings Mountain was a military engagement between Patriot and Loyalist militias during the Southern Campaign of the American Revolutionary War, resulting in a decisive victory for the Patriots. The battle took place on October 7, 1780, in what is now rural Cherokee County, SC. The Patriot victory was one of several key battles in Carolina that turned the tide of the war against Great Britain.
John Slaughter, Group Superintendent, Southern Campaign of the American Revolution Parks, joins Walter Edgar to talk about Kings Mountain and about the importance of the Southern Campaign to the success of the American Revolution.
All Stations: Fri, Oct 04, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Oct 06, 4 pm

**Remembering Cokie Roberts** Sep 17, 2019
(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 satellite infrared image of Hurrricane Hugo, 12:01 a.m., Sept. 22, 1989. — **Remembering Hurricane Hugo** Sep 09, 2019
(NOAA)
Thirty years ago this month, the strongest and most costly hurricane to strike South Carolina in the 20^th 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

**Remembering Dorothea Benton Frank** Sep 04, 2019
(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

North Inlet - Winyah Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. Aerial view of meandering tidal creeks and extensive pristine marshes in North Inlet Estuary. Vicinity of Georgetown, South Carolina. — **Community and Conservation - the History of South Caroliona's Coastal Conservation League** Jul 22, 2019
(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

Former President Lyndon B. Johnson (left center) and Vice President Spiro Agnew (right center) view the liftoff of Apollo 11. — **Chasing the Moon** Jul 01, 2019
(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 theoretical physicist; Sergei Khrushchev, the son of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev; Poppy Northcutt, the 25-year-old “mathematics whiz” who gained worldwide attention as the first woman to serve in the all-male bastion of NASA’s Mission Control; and Ed Dwight, the Air Force pilot selected by the Kennedy administration to train as America’s first black astronaut.
All Stations: Fri, July 05, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, July 07, 4 pm

The Apollo 11 crewmen, still under a 21-day quarantine, are greeted by their wives. — **Chasing the Moon** Jul 01, 2019
(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 theoretical physicist; Sergei Khrushchev, the son of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev; Poppy Northcutt, the 25-year-old “mathematics whiz” who gained worldwide attention as the first woman to serve in the all-male bastion of NASA’s Mission Control; and Ed Dwight, the Air Force pilot selected by the Kennedy administration to train as America’s first black astronaut.
All Stations: Fri, July 05, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, July 07, 4 pm

Dr. J. Brent Morris — **Conversations on S.C. History: The State & the New Nation - The Unification of the Slave State** May 27, 2019
(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

**Conversations on S.C. History: The State & the New Nation - Slavery in South Carolina** May 13, 2019
(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

The late Senator Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings — **Senator Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings on Walter Edgar's Journal** Apr 09, 2019
(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 Stations: Fri, Apr 12, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Apr 14, 4 pm

Standardizing South Carolina’s State Flag Feb 25, 2019

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.

Shrimp and grits, 21st century style. — **The State of Southern Cuisine** Feb 11, 2019
(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

Tariffs... 'It's Complicated' Jan 28, 2019

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 19^th 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

Post and Courier columnist and author Brian Hicks — **In Darkest South Carolina: J. Waties Waring and the Secret Plan that Sparked a Civil Rights Movement** Jan 21, 2019
(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 Movement (2017, Post and Courier Books).
All Stations: Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Jan 27, 4 pm

Julian Adams, Travis Aaron Wade, and Zach Roerig in The Last Full Measure (2019). — **Columbia Native Brings Stories to the Big Screen** Jan 14, 2019
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

Actor Jeremy Irvine portrays William Pitsenbarger in The Last Full Measure. — **Columbia Native Brings Stories to the Big Screen** Jan 14, 2019
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

**Remembering T. Moffatt Burriss, World War II Battlefield Hero** Jan 09, 2019
(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 Crossing
All Stations: Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Jan 13, 4 pm

T. Moffatt Burris, who died Jan. 4 at age 99, participated in numerous battles during World War II to help save the world. He recalled some of those experiences in a 2016 interview with South Carolina Public Radio. — **Remembering T. Moffatt Burriss, World War II Battlefield Hero** Jan 09, 2019
(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 Crossing
All Stations: Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Jan 13, 4 pm

Loray Mill workers,Gastonia, N.C. 11/7/1908 — **The Last Ballad: Ella Mae Wiggins' Life in the Mill and Death on the Picket Line** Jan 08, 2019
(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

Detail of the White House copy of the lost 1868 painting. Sherman, Grant, Lincoln, and Porter aboard the River Queen on March 27th & March 28th, 1865. — **Lincoln's Unfinished Work** Nov 12, 2018
(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 Unfinished Work.
All Stations: Fri, Nov 16, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Nov 18, 4 pm

**Free Speech and the Responsibilities of Citizenship** Sep 10, 2018
(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

**Crossroads: Change in Rural America** Sep 05, 2018
(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 a focus on the cultural facets that make small towns unique, comfortable, and desirable have helped many communities create their own renaissance.
Walter Edgar explores the history, present challenges, and possible futures of rural South Carolina with guests T.J. Wallace, Assistant Director of SC Humanities; Crossroads’ statewide scholar Dr. Ken Robinson and a professor of Sociology at Clemson University; and Marie Adams, Co-Director of the Harriet Barber Historic House in Hopkins, SC.
All Stations: Fri, Sep 07, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Sep 09, 4 pm

Sissiertta Jones — **New York Times: Groundbreaking African American Diva 'Overlooked No More'** Sep 04, 2018
(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 the famous white, European opera star Adelina Patti. Jones sang before four U.S. presidents and for several prominent European leaders. She performed in famous venues such as Carnegie Hall, London's Covent Garden, and Madison Square Garden, as well as in hundreds of theaters and opera houses throughout the United States and Canada. Yet, this remarkable singer's accomplishments have been largely overlooked.
South Carolina author Maureen Lee explores the obstacles and limitations Jones faced because of her race, as well as the opportunities she seized, and chronicles the development of black entertainment during the late nineteenth, and early twentieth, centuries.
Maureen Jones' web site: www.sissierettajones.com.

Detail from a poster showing a Red Cross nurse with an American flag and the Red Cross symbol. (Artist: Howard Chandler Christie) — **South Carolina Women and World War I** Jul 30, 2018
(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

Greenville Chautauqua History Alive: Courage May 07, 2018

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 Voices** Apr 16, 2018
(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

**Peace Voices** Apr 16, 2018
(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

Celebrating graduation at a recent Morgan State University commencement. — **Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities** Feb 12, 2018
(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

"An accurate map of North and South Carolina with their Indian frontiers, shewing in a distinct manner all the mountains, rivers, swamps, marshes, bays, creeks, harbours, sandbanks and soundings on the coasts." Henry Mouzon, 1775 — **Good Boundaries Make Good Neighbors: the History of South Carolina's Northern Border** Dec 11, 2017
(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

Chief Justice Ernest A. Finney, Jr. — **Remembering Chief Justice Ernest Finney** Dec 05, 2017
(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:

Soldier's comrades watching him as he sleeps, Thievpal, France, during World War I. — **Over Here, Over There: the Upstate in the Great War** Nov 10, 2017
(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 region..
All Stations: Fri, Nov 17, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Nov 19, 4 pm

Image of Gen. Andrew Pickens, 1739 - 1817. A photo of an oil painting hung in Fort Hill in Clemson, South Carolina. — **Andrew Pickens: Revolutionary War Hero, American Founder** Oct 30, 2017
(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 moral shortcomings--all of which still influence Americans’ understanding of themselves.
All Stations: Fri, Nov 03, 12 pm | News & Talk Stations: Sun, Nov 05, 4 pm

Sep 6, 2014: The 750-ton Wilkins house was moved a few blocks from Augusta Street to Mills Avenue in Greenville, SC. — **Preservation South Carolina** Oct 02, 2017
(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

**The Peach Bush Book Club: Flying Helicopters in Vietnam** Sep 18, 2017
(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.

**A Story of Two Soldiers** Sep 18, 2017
(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.

**Conversations on S.C. History: The State and the New Nation -Slavery in South Carolina** Aug 07, 2017
(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

**Growing Economies in Small Town South Carolina** Jun 19, 2017
(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

"Testament. My last wish..." — **Working to Preserve "Heirs' Property" in the Lowcountry** Jun 12, 2017
(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

Mary Alice Monroe and Rudy Mancke: The Treasure of South Carolina's Coastal Plain Jun 05, 2017

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 illustration: Rachel Carson, Cesar Chavez, Maya Angelou, Abraham Lincoln — **Greenville Chautauqua: The Power of Words** May 22, 2017
(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

**Family and Place in the Writings of Ron Rash** May 08, 2017
(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

Requiem for Mother Emanuel: No. 9 — **Artist Leo Twiggs: Requiem for Mother Emanuel** Apr 17, 2017
(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

**Artist Leo Twiggs: Requiem for Mother Emanuel** Apr 17, 2017
(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

Making coco mats. — **The Way We Worked** Apr 03, 2017
(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, Apr 7 , 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Apr 9, 4 pm

Archaeology trowel — **Archaeology in South Carolina: Exploring the Hidden Heritage of the Palmetto State** Mar 27, 2017
(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

Charleston, South Carolina, 1865. Broad street, looking east with the ruins of Cathedral of St. John and St. Finbar. — **South Carolina in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras: Essays from The SC Historical Assoc.** Mar 20, 2017
(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

**Conversations on South Carolina: The State & the New Nation - Ideology and Public Policy of Slavery** Feb 28, 2017
(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 Institute
All Stations: Fri, Mar 03, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Mar 05, 4 pm

**Creating a Better Way to Learn** Jan 23, 2017
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" Naturalist Explores New Worlds, as well as material from Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands.
Talking with Dr. Edgar about Mark Catesby’s legacy, the Trust, and Creating a Better Way to Learn, are Frances Welch, Dean of the College of Charleston’s School of Education; CEO of the Catesby Commemorative Trust, David Elliot; and Dean Byrd of SCETV.
All Stations: Fri, Jan 27, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jan 29, 4 pm

**Speaking Down Barriers** Jan 09, 2017
(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

**Flowers for the Living** Jan 03, 2017
(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

Marian McPartland and and Dizzy Gillespie during a recording session for "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz." — **An Encyclopedia of South Carolina Jazz and Blues Musicians** Oct 31, 2016
(SC Public Radio)
In An Encyclopedia of South Carolina Jazz and Blues Musicians, Benjamin Franklin V documents the careers of South Carolina jazz and blues musicians from the nineteenth century to the present. The musicians range from the renowned (James Brown, Dizzy Gillespie), to the notable (Freddie Green, Josh White), to the largely forgotten (Fud Livingston, Josie Miles), to the obscure (Lottie Frost Hightower, Horace "Spoons" Williams), to the unknown (Vince Arnold, Johnny Wilson).
Though the term "jazz" is commonly understood, if difficult to define, "blues" has evolved over time to include rhythm and blues, doo-wop, and soul music. Performers in these genres are represented, as are members of the Jenkins Orphanage bands of Charleston. The volume also treats nineteenth-century musicians who performed what might be called proto-jazz or proto-blues in string bands, medicine shows, vaudeville, and the like.
All Stations: Fri, Nov 4, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Nov 6, 4 pm

**Henry William Ravenel and the Convergence of Science and Agriculture in the 19th Century** Oct 24, 2016
(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

Still Life: books and desk — **All History is “Local History" to Somebody** Oct 17, 2016
(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: Between the Waters Oct 05, 2016

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.

All Stations: Fri, Oct 7, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Oct 9, 4 pm

Molly Pitcher firing cannon at Battle of Monmouth — **Revolutionary Mothers: Women and the Struggle for American Independence** Sep 12, 2016
(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

Detail from "The Reserve in Summer." (Alice Ravenel Huger Smith) — **Sharing the Legacy of Alice Ravenel Huger Smith** Sep 05, 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

**Jefferson Davis: American** Aug 01, 2016
(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

Dr. Mark M. Smith — **Gettysburg** Jun 27, 2016
(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

**Outgoing Converse College President is Proud of Her School’s Growth, Record Enrollment** Jun 20, 2016
(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

Colonial style window — **Striving to Make Charleston Lowcountry a World Heritage Site** Jun 06, 2016
(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

**The Mayor: Joe Riley and the Rise of Charleston** May 30, 2016
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

“Join or Die,” by Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia, PA), May 9, 1754. — **Carolina in Crisis: the Frontier, 1756 - 1763** May 16, 2016
(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

Palmetto Tree — **South Carolina: the Colonial Melting Pot** May 09, 2016
(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

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking in Kingstree, SC, May 8, 1966. — **March on the Ballot Boxes** May 01, 2016
(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 pm
Related Links: WIS-TV News coverage and outtakes

Journalist Jim Hoagland — **A Life in Journalism: Pulitzer Winner Jim Hoagland** Apr 25, 2016
(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 Stations: Sun, May 01, 4 pm

Path with Mossy Trees by Hattie Saussy. — **Scenic Impressions** Mar 28, 2016
(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 The Johnson Collection.
All Stations: Fri, Apr 01, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Apr 03, 4 pm

**Remembering Pat Conroy: a Conversation with his Family** Mar 14, 2016
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 Great Santini” as a father.
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 18, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Mar 20, 4 pm

Harper Lee being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, November 5, 2007. — **Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" -- Most Influential Southern Novel?** Feb 19, 2016
(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" inform "Mockingbird"? Dr. Robert Brinkmeyer, Director of the Institute of Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina, talks with Walter Edgar about the 2015 release of Lee’s Go Set a Watchmen (Harper Collins, 2015), as well as To Kill a Mockingbird and its place in Southern literature.

Debris from homes damaged in the October 2015 floods in South Carolina. — **The Flood: Surviving & Rebuilding--Preparing for the Next One** Jan 25, 2016
(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 to talk about the October floods, smart rebuilding and about how humans respond to disasters.
All Stations: Fri, Jan 29, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jan 31, 4 pm

Anita Singleton-Prather in a scene from "Circle Unbroken." — **Circle Unbroken: Anita Singleton-Prather's Gullah Journey** Jan 04, 2016
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

**Salley McInerney: Journey Proud** Dec 14, 2015
(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

Fifty Years On: the Voting Rights Act of 1965 Dec 07, 2015

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

American Surrealist Nov 30, 2015

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

Domestic Violence in South Carolina Nov 09, 2015

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.

Early American Flag — **Preserving South Carolina's Revolutionary War Battlefields** Nov 03, 2015
(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

**Georgia O'Keeffe: Her Carolina Story** Sep 21, 2015
(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 --

Dr. Bobby Donaldson, University of South Carolina — **The Shifting Meaning of the Confederate Battle Flag** Sep 14, 2015
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

**Making a Difference: Jean Toal** Sep 07, 2015
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

**Lowcountry Fiction** Aug 10, 2015
(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---

Antique chair on beach — **Collecting Antiques and Art** Aug 06, 2015
--- 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.

**Charleston: Margaret Bradham Thornton** Jul 20, 2015
(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.

The scene outside Emanuel A.M.E. Church on Sunday, June 21, 2015 — **A History of "Mother Emanuel" and the Black Church in South Carolina** Jul 01, 2015
(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.

**Extreme Barbecue** Jun 29, 2015
(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.

**Denmark Vesey Only Part of a Complex Story of 19th Century Black Charlestonians** Jun 18, 2015
(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. (Originally broadcast 03/14/08)

**The Storied South** Jun 15, 2015
(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 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, joins Dr. Edgar to talk about the book. (Originally broadcast 11/15/13)

Cover detail from "The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera." — **The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera** Jun 08, 2015
(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 the late 1980s and 1990s and the collapse of the housing market in 2008. While his major focus is on the social, cultural, and economic development, he also documents the environmental and financial impacts of natural disasters and the politics of beach access and dune and sea turtle protection.

Walt and Mickey — **America at the Movies: Greenville Chatauqua** Jun 01, 2015
(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.

**Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s** May 18, 2015
---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 for twelve years and helped to found the university's Center for the Study of the American South and the quarterly Southern Cultures.

Home plate — **On Walter Edgar's Journal: Hometown Teams** May 08, 2015
(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.

Dr. John Marzsalek — **Conversations on the Civil War, 1865: Wm Tecumseh Sherman** Apr 06, 2015
(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.

Civil War cannon — **Conversations on the Civil War, 1865: the War in Fiction** Feb 23, 2015
(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 -

**Deadly Censorship - James Lowell Underwood** Feb 19, 2015
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 20^th 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 -

**The New South - Dr. James C. Cobb** Feb 09, 2015
- 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.

**Sustainable Seafood in South Carolina** Jan 26, 2015
(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 -

**Remembering Gov. James B. Edwards** Dec 27, 2014
(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: Building the Best Downtown in America** Dec 22, 2014
-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 -

**Holiday Books: Walter Edgar's Journal** Dec 15, 2014
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 -

**The Artistic Journey of Eugene Thomason** Dec 09, 2014
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. Severens is joined by the Johnson Collection’s director, David Henderson, talking about Thomason, Southern art, and the Johnson Collection on this week's edition Walter Edgar's Journal.
- All Stations: Fri, Dec 12, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Dec 14, 4 pm -

Walter Edgar — **Brown v. Board of Education - Landmark Court Ruling to End Public School Segregation** Nov 26, 2014
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: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black** Nov 17, 2014
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 -

**Developing a Tourism Management Plan for Charleston** Nov 03, 2014
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 -

**800th Year of the Magna Carta** Oct 31, 2014
(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.

**Deb Richardson-Moore: The Weight of Mercy** Oct 20, 2014
(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 -

**Walter Edgar's Journal: Novelists Dorothea Benton Frank and Roy Hoffman** Oct 13, 2014
(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 and renewal, set along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Christiane, or Nana, reliving the past in her eighties, her granddaughter Angela, working at a Biloxi casino in her twenties, and their teenage friend Cam, the daughter of a Vietnamese shrimper, form a deep connection. As they face heartbreak, their bonds nurture and sustain them. Ordinary people impacted by the shifts of history—Come Landfall is a southern story with a global sensibility.

**How the Civil War Transformed Religion in South Carolina** Sep 29, 2014
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.

Traditions and Change — **Traditions, Change, and Celebration: Native Artists of the Southeast** Sep 12, 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.

**Hunter Kennedy** Aug 29, 2014
(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).

**Conversations on the Civil War, 1864: Plain Folk on the Home Front** Aug 22, 2014
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.

Moving History: The Pines Plantation Slave Cabin Sep 13, 2013

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.”

Retired Col. Ted Bell, his son, Ted Bell, Jr. and a film crew visited Okinawa, Japan, to revisit the site of a battle Bell lead during World War II. Here, filmmaker Wade Sellers films Bell at a memorial for Ernie Pyle at Peace Memorial. — **South Carolinians in World War II: Ted Bell and The Ridge** Aug 03, 2013
(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.

**South Carolinians in World War II: A World War** Nov 12, 2012
(Matt Walsh Matt Walsh (mwalsh@thestate.com))
(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

**South Carolinians in WWII: A Path to Victory** Nov 01, 2011
(Matt Walsh Matt Walsh (mwalsh@thestate.com))
(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.

South Carolinians in WWII: A New Front May 20, 2011

(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.

Honoring South Carolina's WWII Veterans Mar 09, 2006

(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."

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