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**Walter Edgar’s Journal**

From books to barbecue, and current events to Colonial history, historian and author Walter Edgar delves into the arts, culture, and history of South Carolina and the American South. Produced by South Carolina Public Radio.

Latest Episodes:

**Mother Emanuel: Two centuries of race, resistance, and forgiveness** Jun 06, 2025
Show notes

FILE - The men of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc., lead a crowd of people in prayer outside the Emanuel AME Church on June 19, 2015, after a memorial in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton, File)(Stephen B. Morton/AP / FR56856 AP)
Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight worshippers.
In his book Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church (2025, Crown) Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kevin Sack explores the inspiring history that brought the church to that moment, and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall.
In this expanded episode of Walter Edgar's Journal, Sack joins us to explore the story of Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston.

old school, plantation house — **The Zombie memes of Dixie** May 16, 2025
Show notes

(GrimDreamArt / DeviantArt )
This week we will be talking Scott Romine, author of The Zombie Memes of Dixie (2024, UGA Press). The book traces the origin and development of several propositions, tropes, types, clichés, and ideas commonly associated with the U.S. South.
Approaching these propositions as memes Scott argues that many of them developed in defense of slavery and evolved in its aftermath to continue to form a southern group whose “way of life” naturalized an emergent regime of segregation.

**Exploring "South Carolina from A to Z" - Ep. 2** May 02, 2025
Show notes

Mary Chesnut and her husband James( Granger)
This week we're going to explore South Carolina from A to Z. Walter and Alfred will take five topics from past episodes of our companion podcast, South Carolina from A to Z, and discuss each at length, giving these people and events from our state's history some room to "breathe."
We'll tell you about the man who founded the earliest European settlement - 1562 - in what is now South Carolina. We'll look at this history of a very important ingredient in South Carolina foodways. And, we'll learn about a singular, perceptive observer of the Confederate elite and whose writings add to our understanding of a tumultuous time in our history.

On the trail: Johnny D. Boggs' journey from the swamps of the Pee Dee to the Old West Apr 18, 2025

Show notes

Author Johnny D. Boggs(Courtesy of the author)

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

**Exploring "South Carolina from A to Z"** Apr 04, 2025
Show notes

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

Black voters in front of the Sunshine Laundry and Cleaners wait to cast ballots for the first time in a statewide Democratic primary, Aug. 10, 1948. — **The cost of the vote - George Elmore and the battle for the ballot** Mar 21, 2025
Show notes

<i>Black voters in front of the Sunshine Laundry and Cleaners wait to cast</i> <i>ballots for the first time in a statewide Democratic primary, Aug. 10, 1948.</i>(<i>From the John Henry McCray Papers</i> / <i>Courtesy South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.</i>)
This week author and journalist Carolyn Click joins us to talk about her new book, The Cost of the Vote: George Elmore and the Battle for the Ballot (2025, USC Press). Elmore's story is that of a man who believed, with uncommon boldness, that he and other Black Americans were guaranteed the right to vote. He volunteered to become the plaintiff in the NAACP lawsuit that successfully challenged the all-white Democratic primary in South Carolina in 1946.
Carolyn centers her story on Elmore, his family, his neighbors, and the activists and lawyers who filed the suit. Although Elmore's court challenge would prove successful, he and his family paid a steep personal price.

Backcountry war: The rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton, and Thomas Sumter in the American Revolution Mar 07, 2025

Show notes

This week we'll be talking with Andrew Waters about his latest book, Backcountry War: The Rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton, and Thomas Sumter (2024, Westholme Publishing). In it Andrew weaves the history of three key leaders in the American Revolution into in a single narrative, focusing on the events of 1780 in South Carolina that witnessed their collective ascendance from common soldiers to American legends.

It was a time when British victories at Charleston and Camden left the Continental Army in tatters and the entire American South vulnerable to British conquest. Yet in those dark hours, Sumter, Marion, and others like them rose in the swamps and hills of the South Carolina wilderness. Their collective efforts led to the stunning American victory at Cowpens and a stalemate at Guilford’s Courthouse the following year that finally convinced British general Charles Cornwallis to abandon the Carolinas for Virginia and eventually to Yorktown where his beleaguered army surrendered.

**"Somewhere toward freedom" - Sherman's March and the story of America's largest Emancipation** Feb 21, 2025
Show notes

"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
Show notes

( 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
Show notes

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.

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