Today we’ll be switching things up a bit. Instead of Walter and Alfred interviewing a guest we will have a guest interviewing Walter.The conversation is part of the Spring 2025 program put on by the University South Caroliniana Society: “E is for Edgar – Conversation and Barbeque with Walter.” Talking with Walter today is Beryl Dakers, president of the Society and long-time producer with SCETV.
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Grant’s Enforcer: Taking down the Klan
In his book Grant’s Enforcer: Taking Down the Klan Guy Gugliota offers a gripping story of the early years after the Civil War and the campaign led by President Ulysses S. Grant’s attorney general Amos T. Akerman to destroy the Ku Klux Klan. Akerman, a former Georgia slaveholder and the only Southerner to serve in a Reconstruction cabinet, was the first federal lawman to propose using the Fourteenth Amendment to prosecute civil rights violations.Gugliotta uses newspapers, documents, and first-person stories, including thousands of pages of testimony under oath taken by a Congressional joint committee tasked in 1871 to study the Ku Klux Klan, a breathtaking compilation of accounts by Ku Klux targets, their attackers, local and national politicians, public officials and private citizens. The result is a vivid portrait of the Reconstruction South through the career of this surprising man.Guy joins us in conversation this week to talk about how Grant and Akerman took down the Klan.
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Native nations in colonial South Carolina
This week we’ll be talking with Dr. Kathleen DuVal about native Americans in Colonial South Carolina.Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as Kathleen will tell us, North American civilization did not come to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well-armed. Much of our discussion today is based on Kathleen DuVal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Native Nations: A Millennium in North America.
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25 years of Walter Edgar’s Journal
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.
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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