Walter Edgar's Journal

(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 a...

(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...

(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 wo...

(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 co...

(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) Mi...

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

(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 Sou...

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 th...

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...

(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 1...

(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...

New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash demonstrates his superb narrative skills in this suspenseful and evocative tale of two brothers whose lives are altered irrevocably by the events of one long-ago summer—and one bewitching young woman—and the secrets that could destroy their lives. While swimming in a secluded creek on a hot Sunday in 1969, sixteen-year-old Eugene and his older brother, Bi...

(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 (Lot...

(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 Agric...

(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 Car...

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 res...

(Courtesy of Coastal Carolina University) Becoming Southern Writers: Essays in Honor of Charles Joyner (2016, USC Press) is a collection of essays that pay tribute to the late South Carolinian Charles Joyner’s more than fifty years as a writer of Southern history, folklore, music and literature. (Dr. Joyner died on Tuesday, September 13, 2016.) The contributors, exceptional writers of fact, fictio...

(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 creati...

(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...

(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. Coop...

(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 bu...

(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 an...

(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 ar...

  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...

(Library of Congress)   (Originally broadcast 02/19/16) - ​In his book, C arolina 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 discu...