Walter Edgar's Journal

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 wit...

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'...

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...

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...

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 resear...

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...

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 ultimatel...

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 Willia...

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 fin...

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...

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 Jew...

"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 Washingt...

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...

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, v...

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 gathe...

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 Sla...

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...

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 illus...

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...

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 peo...

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 cour...

"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...

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 nar...

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...

"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 M...