Walter Edgar's Journal

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 Ser...

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, form...

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 197...

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 C...

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 t...

Troops wearing the Revolutionary War uniforms of the 9th Virginia Regiment, Corps of the Continental Line, participate in a drill and firing demonstration during the Cessation of Hostilities Bicentennial Celebration at the Pentagon River Plaza. The flag of the ceremonial 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment, Corps of the Continental Line, is carried in the background. (Sanborn / U. S. National Archive) In hi...

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-t...

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...

(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 aire...

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 ce...

(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 Sicil...

(Photo by E.C. Jones and Cecil J. Williams. Courtesy of Cecil J. Williams) In his book, The Slow Undoing: The Federal Courts and the Long Struggle for Civil Rights in South Carolina, Dr. Stephen H. Lowe argues for a reconsideration of the role of the federal courts in the civil rights movement. It places the courts as a central battleground at the intersections of struggles over race, law, and civ...

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) In March of 2021, the South Carolina Battlefield Preservati...

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...

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...

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...

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. Thro...

FILE - Pat Conroy (Robert C. Clark / Wikimedia Commons) As part of our continuing series of encore episodes celebrating The Journal at 21 , we encore a 2014 episode with the late novelist Pat Conroy, author of The Water is Wide , The Great Santini , The Prince of Tides , and The Death of Santini . Conroy joins Walter Edgar for an event celebrating the author’s life; his work; and One Book, One Col...

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 celeb...

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...

Night at the Saluda Riverfront Park (Eric P. Harkins / Courtesy of The River Alliance) For decades, Columbia’s rivers were seen as dividing lines between cities and counties. In 1994, the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce along with the Cities of Columbia, Cayce and West Columbia as well as Richland and Lexington Counties began to look at what the Midland’s over 90 miles of river could be. They...

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 co...

( 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 collec...

(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 a...

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-aut...