Walter Edgar's Journal
Summary: 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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75 years ago, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur prepared to liberate the capital city of the Phillipines in 1945, he believed that the occupying Japanese forces would retreat. Instead, determined to fight to the death, Japanese marines barricaded intersections, converted buildings into fortresses, and booby-trapped stores, graveyards, and even dead bodies. The twenty-nine-day battle to liberate Manila resulted in the catastrophic destruction of the city and a rampage by Japanese forces that brutalized
In his thoroughly researched and meticulously foot-noted publication, An Edgefield Planter and His World: The 1840s Journals of Whitfield Brooks (2019, Mercer University Press) Dr. James O. Farmer, Jr., opens a window on the life of an elite family and its circle in a now iconic place, during a crystalizing decade of the Antebellum era. By the time he began a new diary volume in 1840, Brooks (1790-1851) was among the richest men in a South Carolina district known for its cotton-and-slave
For almost 30 years, Preservation South Carolina has been dedicated to preserving and protecting the historic and irreplaceable architectural heritage of South Carolina. Executive Director Michael Bedenbaugh and board member join Walter Edgar to talk about some of their projects, including efforts to preserve Endangered Sacred Spaces, which includes the restoration of Abbeville’s Trinity Episcopal Church. - Originally broadcast 10/18/19 - All Stations: Fri, Apr 10, 12 pm | News & Talk
In his new novel, The Last At-Bat of Shoeless Joe (2019, Chickadee Prince), Granville Wyche Burgess imagines Shoeless Joe Jackson, the outfielder disgraced in the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, living in Greenville, South Carolina, and finding that sports history has one more twist in store for him. New York Post baseball columnist Ken Davidoff writes, “ The Last At-Bat of Shoeless Joe brilliantly bakes wish fulfillment into a period piece. A gripping story that is both illuminating and emotional, it
The Southern woman has long been synonymous with the Southern belle, a “moonlight and magnolias” myth that gets nowhere close to describing the strong, richly diverse women who have thrived because of—and in some cases, despite—the South. Garden & Gun magazine’s latest book, Southern Women: More than 100 Stories of Trail Blazers, Visionaries, and Icons , obliterates that stereotype by sharing the stories of more than 100 of the region’s brilliant women, groundbreakers who have by turns
Andrew Waters, author of The Quaker and the Gamecock: Nathanael Greene, Thomas Sumter, and the Revolutionary War for the Soul of the South (2018, Casemate), joins Walter Edgar to tells the story of two wildly divergent leaders against the backdrop of the American Revolution's last gasp, the effort to extricate a British occupation force from the wild and lawless South Carolina frontier.
Grits. If you grew up in the South, you have likely eaten them. If you buy yours from the grocery store, though, you may never have really tasted the goodness of stone ground grits.
According to the South Carolina Encyclopedia, “’The Sport of Kings’ emerged in South Carolina as soon as colonists gained firm footing and began amassing property and wealth enough to emulate the lifestyles of England and the Caribbean.” Horse racing and horse culture became an important part of South Carolina’s economic life in the 20 th century and continue to thrive. Dr. E. Gabrielle Kuenzli of the University of South Carolina joins Dr. Edgar to talk about horses in the Palmetto State, as
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 at Roof’s hearing and said, “I forgive you.” That grace offered the country a hopeful ending to an awful story. But for the
Every four years presidential hopefuls and the national media travel the primary election circuit through Iowa and New Hampshire. Once the dust settles in these states, the nation's focus turns to South Carolina, the first primary in the delegate-rich South. Historically Iowa and New Hampshire have dominated the news because they are first, not because of their predictive ability or representativeness. In First in the South: Why South Carolina's Presidential Primary Matters (2020, USC Press), H.
This week on Walter Edgar's Journal , Mat Lee and Ted Lee drop in to talk about their new book, Hotbox: Inside Catering, the Food World’s Riskiest Business (2019, Henry Holt). In Hotbox , the Lee brothers take on the competitive, wild world of high-end catering, exposing the secrets of a food business few home cooks or restaurant chefs ever experience. Known for their modern take on Southern cooking, the Lee brothers steeped themselves in the catering business for four years, learning the
From battlefields, boxcars, and forgotten warehouses to notorious prison camps like Andersonville and Elmira, prisoners seemed to be everywhere during the American Civil War. Yet there is much we do not know about the soldiers and civilians whose very lives were in the hands of their enemies. On this week’s Journal , Dr. Edgar talks with Dr. Evan Kutzler about Living by Inches (2019. UNC Press) , the first book to examine how imprisoned men in the Civil War perceived captivity through the basic
Black South Carolinians, despite poverty and discrimination, began to organize and lay the basis for the civil rights movement that would occur after World War II. Dr. Bobby Donaldson of the University of South Carolina talks about the efforts by black South Carolinians to obtain justice and civil rights during a time of economic collapse and political change. All Stations: Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Feb 02, 4 pm
In the years after WWI, art, poetry, historic preservation, and literature flourished in Charleston, SC, and the Lowcountry during what has been called the Charleston Renaissance. Angela Mack, Executive Director & Chief Curator of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, talks with Walter Edgar about the people and circumstances that came together to create this flowering of the beaux arts in the Holy City. Mack and Edgar will also examine the obligations of museums to seek out the artistic
This week on Walter Edgar's Journal , our third program on South Carolina Between the World Wars , features Dr. Vernon Burton of Clemson University, in conversation with Walter Edgar about the politics of the period. During this time, State politics remained a politics very much based on friends and neighbors – white friends and neighbors, at least. Coming out of the relative progressivism of the First World War, politics took a swing back to conservativism which ran headlong into the federal