In the months following the May 1780 capture of Charleston, South Carolina, by combined British and loyalist forces, British soldiers arrested sixty-three paroled American prisoners and transported them to the borderland town of St. Augustine, East Florida—territory under British control since the French and Indian War.

In their new book, Patriots in Exile: Charleston Rebels in St. Augustine during The American Revolution (2020, USC Press), James Waring McCrady and C. L. Bragg chronicle the banishment of these elite southerners, the hardships endured by their families, and the plight of the enslaved men and women who accompanied them, as well as the motives of their British captors.

News and Music Stations: Fri, Nov 20, 12 pm; Sat, Nov 21, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Nov 20, 12 pm; Sun, Nov 22, 4 pm

In her new book, Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina (2020, USC Press), journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, cross burnings, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured—as well as the astonishing courage, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for equality.

Through extensive research and interviews with more than 150 civil rights activists, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins.

These intimate stories of courage, both heartbreaking and inspiring, shine a light on the progress achieved by nonviolent civil rights activists while also revealing white South Carolinians’ often violent resistance to change. Although significant racial disparities remain, the sacrifices of  everyday folk that produced real progress—and hope for the future.

Brinson joins Walter Edgar and Dr. Valinda Littlefield to talk about the stories of these brave and tenacious men and women.

News and Music Stations: Fri, Nov 13, 12 pm; Sat, Nov 14, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Nov 13, 12 pm; Sun, Nov 15, 4 pm

For centuries residents of Charleston, SC, have made many attempts, both public and private, to manipulate the landscape of the low-lying peninsula on which Charleston sits, surrounded by wetlands, to maximize drainage, and thus buildable land and to facilitate sanitation. In her book, Lowcountry at High Tide: A History of Flooding, Drainage, and Reclamation in Charleston, South Carolina (2020, USC Press), Christina Rae Butler uses three hundred years of archival records to show not only the alterations to the landscape past and present, but also the impact those efforts have had on the residents at various socio-economic levels throughout its history.

Butler explores the ways in which Charleston has created land with Dr. Edgar, and they talk about challenges facing the city in the face of rising sea levels.

News and Music Stations: Fri, Oct 23, 12 pm; Sat, Oct 24, 7 am | News & Talk Stations: Fri, Oct 23, 12 pm; Sun, Oct 25, 4 pm

It is hard to imagine what South Carolina would be today if not for the then-British colony of Barbados. From the settlement of this West Indian island in 1627 to the time of Carolina's settlement in 1670, Barbados changed from an uninhabited island to a Colony where land owners created small plantations using indentured laborers in the quest to find the most profitable cash crop and then to a mostly-clear-cut land that was planted with sugar cane, almost to the ocean's edge.

Sugar, with the introduction of enslaved African laborers, made landowners wealthy, wrecked the island's ecology, and created an economic system that would be copied in Carolina. Another thing shared by émigrés to both colonies: the desire to get rich.

Walter Edgar talks with Dr. Russell Fielding, Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies in the HTC Honors College at Coastal Carolina University, about the history of the Carolina-Barbados connection, and it's lasting influences on both places.

News and Music Stations: Fri, Oct 16, 12 pm; Sat, Oct 17, 7 am | News & Talk Stations: Fri, Oct 16, 12 pm; Sun, Oct 18, 4 pm

• Watch the SCETV special Beyond Barbados: The Carolina Connection