This fall we are celebrating 25 years of Walter Edgar’s Journal!We thought that a good way to start that celebration would be to look back on the launch of our podcast. So, this week we bring you an encore of our final *broadcast* episode of May 2023.Our guest was the Director of SC Public Radio, Sean Birch. We reminisced about the Journal’s beginnings and present highlights from our years on the air. And we talked about how morphing Walter Edgar’s Journal from a weekly broadcast into a semi-monthly podcast would allow us to focus more intently on our mission to explore South Carolina’s history and its culture.
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Witness to change: George Anson and colonial Charleston
This week we’ll be talking with Nic Butler, the historian at the Charleston County Public Library. He has been digging into archives both here and in Britain, researching the life of George Anson. Anson, was an officer in the British Navy who, by the time of his death in 1762, had risen to its highest rank, First Lord of the Admiralty. He had also spent 9 years in South Carolina during its time of transition from a colony governed by the Lords Proprietors to a colony of the British Crown.That change wasn’t instant and some of the history the colony's governance during the transition - as well as that of day-to-day life – are sometimes unclear. However, in researching George Anson, Nic Butler has both found a valuable through-line to this history and shone a light on Anson’s own fascinating story.
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Beyond the western wall: Henry Tisdale and the transformation of Claflin University
This week we’ll be talking with Dr. Henry N. Tisdale, former president of Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. This Kingstree native has had a long and distinguished academic career, earning his undergraduate degree at Claflin in 1965 and, eventually, becoming the first African American to earn a doctorate in mathematics from Dartmouth. His career path led him into college administration, and he became Claflin University’s president in 1994.Claflin, like many historically black colleges and universities at the time, was struggling – facing declining enrollment and possible loss of accreditation. Henry Tisdale established the goal that Claflin would “enter the 21st century with an eye to become a premier liberal arts institution.” Thanks in large part to his leadership, Claflin was named the number one HBCU by Forbes magazine and was ranked in the top 4% of U.S. colleges and universities. Tisdale tells the story of Claflin’s renaissance in his book, Beyond the Western Wall: Audacious Transformation of a Small Liberal Arts College (2025, Cecil Williams Photography/Publishing).
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SC A-Z - Back stories
This week we are going to be exploring South Carolina from A to Z. That’s the title of our sister podcast from which we will select topics that deserve a longer look that just 60 seconds.This time out we'll discuss the ambitious man whose name adorns a Christmas decoration; the aristocratic Royal Governor who just didn't "get" South Carolina; the once powerful leadership body in the colony that lost it's standing almost overnight; and the young, talented South Carolina legislature who had a real impact on our young republic as well as our state.
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The South never plays itself: The South on screen
This time out we are bringing you an encore from our broadcast archive featuring a conversation with Ben Beard, author of The South Never Plays Itself: A Film Buff’s Journey Through the South on Screen (2020, UGA Press).Beard’s idiosyncratic narrative—part cultural history, part film criticism, part memoir—journeys through genres and eras, issues and regions, smash blockbusters and microbudget indies to explore America’s past and troubled present, seen through Hollywood’s distorting lens. In The South Never Plays Itself, Ben attempts to answer the question: what do movies know about the South that we don’t?
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.
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