The American South has experienced remarkable change over the past half century. Black voter registration has increased, the region’s politics have shifted, and in-migration has increased its population many fold. At the same time, many outward signs of regional distinctiveness have faded. But two professors of political science write that these changes have allowed for new types of Southern identity to emerge.

In their new book, The Resilience of Southern Identity: Why the South Still Matters in the Minds of Its People (2017, UNC Press), Western Carolina University's Chris Cooper and the College of Charleston's Gibbs Knotts  argue that, for some, identification with the South has become more about a connection to the region’s folkways or to place than about policy or ideology. For others, the contemporary South is all of those things at once—a place where many modern-day southerners navigate the region’s confusing and omnipresent history.

- Originally broadcast 11/23/19 -

News and Music Stations: Fri, Dec 31, at 12 pm; Sat, Jan 01, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Dec 31, at 12 pm; Sun, Jan 02, at 4 pm

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-time Journal producer Alfred Turner as guests, and with SC Public Radio reporter Victoria Hansen guiding a discussion of the history of the program.

In 2000 a special program aired on South Carolina Public Radio (then South Carolina Educational Radio). It featured a veteran broadcaster and a university professor as hosts and doing live news coverage of the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state house dome. The program featured called-in comments from listeners.

From that one-time broadcast came an idea for a live, weekly talk program with broadcaster Tom Fowler and historian Dr. Walter Edgar who would interview guests and take calls from listeners about topics of the day. The program, unnamed for its first few months, became Walter Edgar's Journal, and would evolve into weekly conversation with guests - authors, artists, politicians, and everyday folks - talking about everything from politics to barbeque, topics centered in the American South with a focus on our state's history and culture.

- Originally posted 11/05/21 -

In 2021, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers celebrates the 150th 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 Services programs serve a diverse group of customers that span not only South Carolina, but also globally, which keeps the staff of more than 240 quite busy.

Lt Colonel Andrew Johannes, Charleston District Commander; and Brian Williams, the District’s Civil Works Chief, join Walter Edgar for a conversation on the Corps’ history, its missions, and the many ways its work impacts South Carolina, including the deepening of Charleston Harbor.

News and Music Stations: Fri, Dec 17, at 12 pm; Sat, Dec 18, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Dec 17, at 12 pm; Sun, Dec 19, at 4 pm

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, formerly of Mississippi State University join Dr. Edgar to debate the question “What was the most influential Southern novel of the 20th century?” This episode is a companion of the SCETV’s Take on the South: What was the most influential Southern novel of the 20th century? That was originally broadcast on Wednesday, May 13, 2009. Take on the South is a series of eight, one-hour, live-to-tape debates produced by SCETV for the University of South Carolina's Institute for Southern Studies (ISS) under a grant provided by Watson-Brown Foundation, Inc. You can watch this program, on demand, at knowitall.org.

News and Music Stations: Fri, Dec 10, at 12 pm; Sat, Dec 11, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Dec 10, at 12 pm; Sun, Dec 12, at 4 pm

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 1970 have witnessed a mostly accelerating retreat from racial justice.

In their book, Justice Deferred - Race and the Supreme Court (2021, Belknap Press), historian Orville Vernon Burton and civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the Court’s race record—a legacy at times uplifting, but more often distressing and sometimes disgraceful. Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the Court’s race jurisprudence.

In this episode of Walter Edgar’s Journal, Burton and Derfner tell us many of the sometimes-surprising stories behind the Supreme Court’s rulings.

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 Center, an inner-city mission to the homeless in Greenville, S.C.

“What I found there absolutely flattened me,” she says. It also inspired her. Today, she and a dedicated staff continue to build a worshiping community that focuses on drug rehab, jobs, and housing for the homeless.

Walter Edgar visits Pastor Richardson-Moore in her study at the Center to talk about the growth of its ministry and her journey, as well as her recent memoir, The Weight of Mercy: A Novice Pastor on the City Streets (Monarch Books, 2012)

- Originally broadcast 12/13/13 -

News and Music Stations: Fri, Nov 26, at 12 pm; Sat, Nov 27, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Nov 26, at 12 pm; Sun, Nov 28, at 4 pm

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 19th 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 the experience of the American people as it never had before -- permanently altering the character of the republic and the psyche of the American people.

Burns joins Dr. Edgar to talk about the film, and the ways in which the Civil War forever changed the way Americans deal with death. Also taking part in the discussion are David W. Blight, Professor of American History at Yale University, and the Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale; and Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, the Lincoln Professor of History in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) forms the basis for Burn’s documentary.

- Originally broadcast 09/14/12 -

In his new book, Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (2021, Simon and Schuster), Dr. Woody Holton gives a sweeping reassessment of the American Revolution, showing how the Founders were influenced by overlooked Americans—women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters.

Using more than a thousand eyewitness accounts, Holton explores countless connections between the Patriots of 1776 and other Americans whose passion for freedom often brought them into conflict with the Founding Fathers.

Woody Holton joins Walter Edgar to talk about this “hidden history.”

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-time Journal producer Alfred Turner as guests, and with SC Public Radio reporter Victoria Hansen guiding a discussion of the history of the program.

In 2000 a special program aired on South Carolina Public Radio (then South Carolina Educational Radio). It featured a veteran broadcaster and a university professor as hosts and doing live news coverage of the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state house dome. The program featured called-in comments from listeners.

From that one-time broadcast came an idea for a live, weekly talk program with broadcaster Tom Fowler and historian Dr. Walter Edgar who would interview guests and take calls from listeners about topics of the day. The program, unnamed for its first few months, became Walter Edgar's Journal, and would evolve into weekly conversation with guests - authors, artists, politicians, and everyday folks - talking about everything from politics to barbeque, topics centered in the American South with a focus on our state's history and culture.

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 for the title role of his novel, The Great Santini, and that his mother, Peg, and his brothers and sisters have all served as models for characters in The Prince of Tides and his other novels. Now, for the first time, Pat gathers with four of his surviving siblings, Kathy, Tim, Mike, and Jim, to talk about the intersection of “real life” and Pat’s fiction, and what it was like to grow up with “The Great Santini” as a father.

- Originally broadcast 04/18/14 -