This episode we'll be talking with Christina Rae Butler about Charleston, SC: an equine-powered city - from colonial times to the 20th century - in which horses and mules pervaded all aspects of urban life. And we’ll learn about the people who made their living with these animals—from drivers, grooms, and carriage makers, to farriers, veterinarians, and trainers.

Christine is the author of Charleston Horse Power - Equine Culture in the Palmetto City (2023, USC Press). She spoke with us before an audience at All Good Books, in Five Points, Columbia, SC.

As well as being a professor of Historic Preservation at the American College of Building Arts in Charleston, Christina is an adjunct faculty member at the College of Charleston in the Historic Preservation and Community Planning Program. She is also the owner/operator of Butler Preservation LLC, and she works as a barn shift manager for Palmetto Carriage Works in Charleston.

On this edition of The Journal, Rachel Gordin Barnett and Lyssa Kligman Harvey tell some of the stories and recipes from their book, Kugels & Collards: Stories of Food, Family, and Tradition in Jewish South Carolina (2023, USC Press). In the book, Lyssa and Rachel celebrate the unique and diverse food history of Jewish South Carolina. They have gathered stories and recipes from diverse Jewish sources – including Sephardic and Ashkenazi families who have been in the state for hundreds of years as well as more recent immigrants from Russia and Israel.

In our conversation today, we’ll explore how these cherished dishes were influenced by available ingredients and complemented by African American and regional culinary traditions.

This week we will talk with Dr. Bernard Powers about the establishment of the International African American Museum in Charleston, SC.

Bernie powers is professor emeritus of history at the College of Charleston and is director of the college’s Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston. He is also on the Board of Directors of the International African American Museum.

Bernie is in a unique position to tell the story of the Museum, as he has been involved in the efforts to create the institution from the start - 23 years ago. He will talk with us about those efforts, the evolution of the concept behind the museum, and about some of the stories that the museum strives to tell.

In Captured Freedom (2023, Steve Procko), author Steve Procko tells the true story of nine Union prisoners-of-war who escaped from a Confederate prison in Columbia, South Carolina, in November 1864, and traveled north in brutal winter conditions more than 300 miles with search parties and bloodhounds hot on their trail. On the difficult journey they relied on the help of enslaved men and women, as well as Southerners who sympathized with the North, before finally reaching Union lines in Knoxville, Tennessee, on New Years Day 1865.

On that day, hoping to commemorate what they had accomplished, the nine officers and their three mountain guides found a local photographer and posed together for a photograph. The instant, frozen in time, showed twelve ragged men with determination strong on their faces – a compelling image that moved Steve Procko to search for their stories.

In 1722, Mark Catesby stepped ashore in Charles Town in the Carolina colony. Over the next four years, this young naturalist made history as he explored America’s natural wonders, collecting and drawing plants and animals which had never been seen back in the Old World. Nine years later Catesby produced his magnificent and groundbreaking book, The Natural History of Carolina, the first-ever illustrated account of American flora and fauna.

In this episode of the Journal we talk with Patrick Dean, author of Nature's Messenger: Mark Catesby and His Adventures in a New World (2023, Simon & Schuster). As Dean will tell us, Catesby was a pioneer in many ways, with his careful attention to the knowledge of non-Europeans in America—the enslaved Africans and Native Americans who had their own sources of food and medicine from nature— which set him apart from other Europeans of his time.

In her book, The Spingarn Brothers: White Privilege, Jewish Heritage, and the Struggle for Racial Equality (2023, Johns Hopkins University), Katherine Reynolds Chaddock tells a story that many today might see as unlikely: two Jewish brothers in New York, privileged in some ways but considered “the other” by many in society, find common cause with African Americans suffering from racial discrimination. And, Joel and Arthur Spingarn become leaders in the struggle for racial equality and equality – even serving as presidents of the NAACP.

Joel and Arthur had very different personalities, interests, and professional goals. Yet together they would become essential leaders in the struggle for racial justice and equality, serving as presidents of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, exposing inequities, overseeing key court cases, and lobbying presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy.

Katherine Reynolds Chaddock joins us to tell the Springans’ story.

This week, Dr. Eric Crawford, a Gullah/Geechee scholar and Associate Professor of Musicology at Claflin University in Orangeburg, joins us to talk about Gullah culture and about editing a second edition of the late Dr. Wilbur Cross’ book, Gullah Culture in America (Blair, 2022).

The book chronicles the history and culture of the Gullah people, African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of the American South, telling the story of the arrival of enslaved West Africans to the sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia; the melding of their African cultures, which created distinct creole language, cuisine, traditions, and arts; and the establishment of the Penn School, dedicated to education and support of the Gullah freedmen following the Civil War.

Musical recordings included in this episode: Claflin University Concert Choir directed by Dr. Charlie Toomer performing "Cum Ba Yuh;" arrangement by Dr. Eric Crawford and used with his permission.
"This May Be the Last Time," sung by Lucia Vasquez Valdez, was recorded by Windy Goodloe, and is used with her permission.

Veteran journalist Adam Parker has covered just about everything for The Charleston Post and Courier, though he has spent most of his time writing about race, religion, and the arts. Us: A Journalist's Look at the Culture, Conflict and Creativity of the South (2022, Evening Post Books) is a collection of in-depth articles published over the course of nearly 20 years, and it reveals the breadth and scope of Parker's uncanny ability to pull back the scrim and take a hard look at ourselves and our community.

Adam joins us to talk about his life and work, and to share some of the stories that he has written.

The Creek War is one of the most tragic episodes in American history, leading to the greatest loss of Native American life on what is now U.S. soil.

Peter Cozzens, author of A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South, tells us the story of the war that shaped the American South, and which would likely not have been won by the fledgling republic without Andrew Jackson’s unbridled ambition, cruelty, and fraught sense of honor and duty.

In his book, The South Never Plays Itself, author, and film critic Ben Beard explores the history of the Deep South on screen, beginning with silent cinema and ending in the streaming era, from President Wilson to President Trump, from musical to comedy to horror to crime to melodrama. Opinionated, obsessive, sweeping, often combative, sometimes funny―a wild narrative tumble into culture both high and low―Beard attempts to answer the haunting question: what do movies know about the South that we don’t?

This is a return visit for Ben – we had so much fun talking about movies last time, we asked him back!