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).

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.

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?

After two decades of research and investigation, the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust, in collaboration with the South Carolina American Revolution Sestercentennial Commission (SC250), has unveiled the first volume of the Francis Marion Papers, a project that holds the potential to reshape our understanding of one of the American Revolution’s most heroic figures.

The papers, consisting of more than 600 historical documents, include letters written both to and from General Francis Marion, famously known as the Swamp Fox for his elusive guerrilla warfare tactics against British forces. These materials, discovered in archives across the country have been carefully compiled and annotated by leading historians. The first volume, complete with illustrations and battle maps, was released on February 27 – the anniversary of Marion’s death.

For this episode we sat down with Molly Fortune, CEO of SC250); co-editor Ben Rubin, and co-editor Rick Wise, Director of the SC Battlefield Preservation Trust, to talk about the work behind the publication of the papers and about Marion and his compatriots in the Revoultionary War.

Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight worshippers.

In his book Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church (2025, Crown) Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kevin Sack explores the inspiring history that brought the church to that moment, and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall.

In this expanded episode of Walter Edgar's Journal Kevin joins us to explore the story of Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston.

This week we will be talking Scott Romine, author of The Zombie Memes of Dixie (2024, UGA Press). The book traces the origin and development of several propositions, tropes, types, clichés, and ideas commonly associated with the U.S. South.

Approaching these propositions as memes Scott  argues that many of them developed in defense of slavery and evolved in its aftermath to continue to form a southern group whose “way of life” naturalized an emergent regime of segregation.

This week we're going to explore South Carolina from A to Z. Walter and Alfred will take five topics from past episodes of our companion podcast, South Carolina from A to Z, and discuss each at length, giving these people and events from our state's history some room to "breathe."

We'll tell you about the man who founded the earliest European settlement - 1562 - in what is now South Carolina. We'll look at this history of a very important ingredient in South Carolina foodways. And, we'll learn about a singular, perceptive observer of the Confederate elite and whose writings add to our understanding of a tumultuous time in our history.

This week we'll be talking with Timmonsville native Johnny D. Boggs about his latest novel, Bloody Newton: The Town from Hell (2024, Psicom Publishing), his journey from a childhood in the Pee Dee, his life in Santa Fe, New Mexico,and his career as a celebrated author of Western fiction. Bloody Newton has just won for Johnny his tenth Spur Award from The Western Writers of America.

This week we going to explore South Carolina from A to Z. That’s the title of our sister podcast and the title tells you all you need to know about what that podcast does: Letter by letter Walter goes through the South Carolina Encyclopedia, giving you bite-sized takes on the history of the Palmetto State. The challenge he faces for each episode is that it is only one minute long - 145 to 149 words of text to cover the topic.

On today's Journal Walter and Alfred are taking five topics from past editions of South Carolina from A to Z and are discussing each at lenght,  giving some of these people and events from our state's history room to "breathe."

This week author and journalist Carolyn Click joins us to talk about her new book, The Cost of the Vote: George Elmore and the Battle for the Ballot (2025, USC Press). Elmore's story is that of a man who believed, with uncommon boldness, that he and other Black Americans were guaranteed the right to vote. He volunteered to become the plaintiff in the NAACP lawsuit that successfully challenged the all-white Democratic primary in South Carolina in 1946.

Carolyn centers her story on Elmore, his family, his neighbors, and the activists and lawyers who filed the suit. Although Elmore's court challenge would prove successful, he and his family paid a steep personal price.