FILE - The view from Lady's Island looking out at the Beaufort River(Victoria Hansen / SC Public Radio)

Few people are familiar with the full history that shaped and preserved the fish and wildlife of coastal South Carolina. From Native Americans to the early colonists to plantation owners and their slaves to market hunters and commercial fishermen, all viewed fish and wildlife as limitless. Through time, however, overharvesting led to population declines, and the public demanded conservation.

The process that produced fish and game laws, wardens and wildlife refuges was complex and often involved conflict, but synergy and cooperation ultimately produced one of the most extensive conservation systems on the East Coast. Author James O. Luken presents this fascinating story in his new book, Coastal South Carolina Fish and Game: History, Culture and Conservation.

- Originally released 09/10/21 -

This statue of General Francis Marion at Venters Landing commemorates the spot where Marion took control of the Williamsburg Militia in 1780 on the site formerly known as Witherspoon's Ferry. Marion also used nearby Snow's Island as a camp site during the revolution, earning him the nickname "The Swampfox."(JobyD2000 / Wikimedia Commons)

(Originally released 09/24/21) - In March of 2021, the South Carolina Battlefield Preservation Trust purchased 31 acres in Colleton County to preserve the site of a Revolutionary War victory by Francis Marion and his men over the British in what became known as the battle of Parker’s Ferry. The site will soon become part of the Liberty Trail, which will be a unified path of preservation and interpretation across South Carolina. The Trail will tell the story of the events of 1779-1782 in the Carolinas, which directly led to an American victory in the war.

Charles Baxley of the SC Battlefield Trust and archaeologist Steve Smith join Walter Edgar to talk about efforts to find the historical boundaries of the site, purchase the land, and establish the Liberty Trail.

Troops wearing the Revolutionary War uniforms of the 9th Virginia Regiment, Corps of the Continental Line, participate in a drill and firing demonstration during the Cessation of Hostilities Bicentennial Celebration at the Pentagon River Plaza. The flag of the ceremonial 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment, Corps of the Continental Line, is carried in the background.(Sanborn / U. S. National Archive)

This week on Walter Edgar’s Journal we offer a conversation recorded before an audience, live as well as virtual, at the Charleston Literary Festival in November of 2021. Walter Edgar talks with Stuart Bennett about his novel, The Charleston Gambit (2021, Evening Post Books) - a rousing tale of Revolutionary War South Carolina. Along with the battles, it gives glimpses of Charleston fashion and society, faces head-on issues of slavery and plantation life, and tells an engaging love story.

Dr. Edgar and the author talk about Bennett's love of history, the novel's main characters, and the attitudes and personalities on both sides of the conflict that helped turn the American Revolution into a brutal civil war.

A scan of John Speed's 1611 map of the Wirral Peninsula, showing 'Brunburgh' on the eastern shore. ( Courtesy of Michael Livingston)

Late in AD 937, four armies met in a place called Brunanburh. On one side stood the shield-wall of the expanding kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons. On the other side stood a remarkable alliance of rival kings - at least two from across the sea - who'd come together to destroy them once and for all. The stakes were no less than the survival of the dream that would become England. The armies were massive. The violence, when it began, was enough to shock a violent age. Brunanburh may not today have the fame of Hastings, Crécy or Agincourt, but those later battles, were fought for an England that would not exist were it not for the blood spilled this day. Generations later it was still called, quite simply, the ‘great battle'. But for centuries, its location has been lost.

In his book, Never Greater Slaughter: Brunanburh and the Birth of England (Osprey, 2021) Dr. Michael Livingston, tells the story of the battle and of an extraordinary effort, uniting enthusiasts, historians, archaeologists, linguists, and other researchers – amateurs and professionals, experienced and inexperienced alike – which may well have found the site of the long-lost battle of Brunanburh, over a thousand years after its bloodied fields witnessed history

Michael Livingston holds degrees in History, Medieval Studies, and English, and teaches the military and cultural history of the Middle Ages at The Citadel.

(Sponchia / Pixabay)

James Lundy's book, The History of the Poetry Society of South Carolina: 1920 to 2021, is a chronicle of the first 100 years of the oldest state poetry society in America, the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Founded in Charleston in 1920 by DuBose Heyward, John Bennett, Josephine Pinckney, Hervey Allen, and Laura Bragg, the Society's first 101 seasons run from the Jazz Age to the COVID era, where everyone from Carl Sandburg, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Ogden Nash, Billy Collins, Sherwood Anderson, Jericho Brown, Thornton Wilder, Robert Pinsky, and hundreds of others appeared before the membership.

Talking with Walter Edgar, Lundy, also currently the Society's president, gives us an insider's view, with insights into the inner workings and disfunctions of the organization and its slow progress from a Whites-only organization of the segregated South founded in the aftermath of World War I and the Spanish Flu Pandemic, through the Roaring Twenties, into the darkness of the Great Depression, World War II, a resurgence during the Atomic Age, the turbulent Sixties, the decline of Charleston, its rebound into a tourist mecca, and into the present day.

Okra for sale at the North Charleston Farmers' Market.(Ryan Johnson / Flickr)

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

Tom Fowler and Walter Edgar broadcasting a live episode of Walter Edgar's Journal in 2002 from Columbia's Woodhill Mall at part of the observance of SC Public Radio's 30th anniversary.( SC Public Radio)

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 -

Aerial photo of a portion of Charleston Harbor and the Port of Charleston.(Dennis Franklin) / US Army)

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

The late Noel Polk and Tudier Harris, with Walter Edgar, taping "Take on the South."(SCETV/SC Public Radio)

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

FILE(TexasGOPVote.com / Flickr)

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.