In his new novel, Raptors in the Ricelands, Ron Daise unfolds a story in a twenty-first century fictional community near Georgetown, SC - a story which reveals family secrets and conflicts that challenge cultural beliefs. Conveyed in four acts and with chapter names that follow the production stages of Carolina Gold Rice, the novel spans the future, the present, and the past, and fosters a message of connection with African diasporic communities around the globe.

Ron joins us to talk about how he created a story that manages to connect the reader with historical accounts of the Orangeburg Massacre; Black church life, particularly in Oconee County, SC as begun during slavery; the launch of White supremacy in Fort Mill, SC; the Reconstruction Era; and the Universal Negro Improvement Association - all within a compelling narative.

On this episode of Walter Edgar's Journal, we’ll be talking with Tracey Todd, the Director of Museums for the Historic Charleston Foundation, and Andrew Agha, an archaeologist working on the site of the Nathaniel Russell house, a National Historic Landmark on Meeting Street. We’ll be talking about the Foundation’s most recent preservation initiative which involves the kitchen house, an ancillary structure that included a kitchen, laundry, and living quarters for the enslaved.

Nathaniel Russell arrived in Charleston from Bristol, Rhode Island in 1765 and, thanks to extensive contacts in his home colony, established himself as a successful merchant and trader of captive Africans. In 1808 the Russell family moved to their new townhome at 51 Meeting Street. Accompanying them were as many as eighteen enslaved people who toiled in the work yard, gardens, stable, kitchen and laundry.

By uncovering the material history contained in the kitchen house, the Foundation hopes to further illuminate the lives of the men, women, and children who lived and worked there.

This week we’ll be talking with former poet laureate of South Carolina, Marjory Wentworth about her new collection of poems entitled One River, One Boat (Evening Post Books, 2024). This collection of occasional poems and essays includes those written about heartbreaking and joyous times in South Carolina’s history and Wentworth’s own life including the deaths of relatives, gubernatorial inaugurations, the Mother Emmanuel AME massacre, Hurricane Hugo, and more.

Marjory no longer lives in South Carolina, but it will be obvious in our conversation, as it is in her poetry, that she has deep roots here. And her love of the Lowcountry, as well as her deep understanding of humanity, shines through in One River, One Boat.

Dr. Kendra Hamilton’s book, Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess, is a literary and cultural history of a place: the Gullah Geechee Coast, a four-state area that’s one of only a handful of places that can truly be said to be the “cradle of Black culture” in the United States.

While there is a veritable industry of books on literary Charleston and on “the lowcountry,” there has never been a comprehensive study of the region’s literary influence, particularly in the years of the Great Migration and the Harlem (and Charleston) Renaissance. With Romancing the Gullah, Kendra Hamilton sheds new light on an only partially told tale. 

By giving voice to artists and culture makers on both sides of the color line, uncovering buried histories, and revealing secret connections between races amid official practices of Jim Crow, Kendra Hamilton sheds new light on an only partially told tale. Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess that will satisfy the book lover and the scholar.

Abraham Lincoln, February 9, 1864(Anthony Berger / Library of Congress)

This week, we offer you an encore of an episode from our broadcast archive: A fascinating conversation with Dr. Vernon Burton, the Judge Matthe w J. Perry Jr. Distinguished Professor of History at Clemson University, and Dr. Peter Eisenstadt, affiliate scholar in the Department of History at Clemson University.

Walter will be talking with Peter and Vernon about their book, Lincoln’s Unfinished Work: The New Birth of Freedom from Generation to Generation, a collection of essays from a conference that they directed at Clemson University which discussed many of the dimensions of Lincoln’s “unfinished work” as a springboard to explore the task of political and social reconstruction in the United States from 1865 to the present day.

The conference was not solely about Lincoln, or the immediate unfinished work of Reconstruction, or the broader unfinished work of America coming to terms with its tangled history of race; it investigated all three topics – as does our conversation.

"Where the Shrimp Pickers Live," 1940, oil on canvas.(Dusti Bongé (1903-93) / Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS. Gift of Dusti Bongé Art; Foundation, Inc. 1999.012 )

This week we will be talking with Jonathan Stuhlman and Martha Severens about their book, Southern/Modern: Rediscovering Southern Art from the First Half of the Twentieth Century (2024, UNC Press). Jonathan Stuhlman is the Senior Curator of American Art at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, and Martha Severens is in independent scholar based in the upstate of South Carolina. Together they have created a book that springs from an exhibition at the Mint but is so much more than just a catalog for the exhibit.

Featuring twelve essays, this lavishly illustrated volume includes all the works from the exhibition and assesses a broader body of contextual pieces to offer a fascinating, multipronged look at modernism's thriving presence in the South—until now, something largely overlooked in histories of American art.

Photomontage of members of the first South Carolina legislature following the Civil War.( Library of Congress)

In their book, Reconstruction beyond 150: Reassessing the New Birth of Freedom, Vernon Burton and Brent Morris have brought together the best new scholarship, synthesizing social, political, economic, and cultural approaches to understanding a crucial period in our country’s history. They talk with us about how the their project came about, and about how many "reconstructions" our country has seen since the Civil War.

(Timothy J / Flickr )

This week, we will be talking with Dr. Judith Bainbridge about her book, A Short History of Greenville (2024, USC Press). The book is a concise and engaging history that traces Greenville, SC's development from backcountry settlement to one of America's best small cities

In our conversation with Judith we will concentrate the growth Greenville's textile industry and its demise, the economic decline of the city, and its rebirth as a haven for business and tourism in the twenty-first century.

In his new book, The Miraculous Art of Jazz, Benjamin Franklin V, Distinguished Professor of English, Emeritus, at the University of South Carolina, has gathered reviews of hundreds of recordings written over his 40-year career as a jazz writer.

In our conversation his love for jazz and blues shines through. And the reviews he has collected in his book are as vital and important as ever – for listeners new to Jazz as well as long-time listeners who want to take a deeper dive into the music.

J. Drew Lanham, Ornithologist, Naturalist, and Writer, 2022 MacArthur Fellow, Clemson, SC( John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

This week, we will be talking with J. Drew Lanham, about his new book, Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves (2024, Hub City Press). The book is a sensuous collection of Drew's signature mix of poetry and prose, a lush journey into wildness and Black being. Drew Lanham notices nature through seasonal shifts, societal unrest, and deeply personal reflection and traces a path from bitter history to present predicaments, mining along the way the deep connection to ancestors through the living world.