(Originally broadcast 02/09/18) - With the United States’ entrance into World War I, three Army training bases were set up in South Carolina. The social and economic impact on a state still suffering from the devastation of the Civil War was dramatic. Three infantry divisions, including support personnel, swelled the Upstate and Midlands population by 90,000. On the coast, recruits flocked to Charleston’s Navy base. And some of those trainees were African Americans, which caused political

(Originally broadcast 02/09/18) - With the United States’ entrance into World War I, three Army training bases were set up in South Carolina. The social and economic impact on a state still suffering from the devastation of the Civil War was dramatic. Three infantry divisions, including support personnel, swelled the Upstate and Midlands population by 90,000. On the coast, recruits flocked to Charleston’s Navy base. And some of those trainees were African Americans, which caused political

(Originally broadcast 02/02/18) - When the United States entered the First World War in 1918 they women of South Carolina figuratively rolled up their sleeves, and went to work to support their state and their country. At this time, the average woman in the state was black, lived in a rural setting, worked in agriculture or as a domestic worker. White women, while more likely to be in the middle class, were still largely living in rural areas or small towns, and working in agriculture or in

(Originally broadcast 03/23/18) - The South Carolina Historical Society’s headquarters in downtown Charleston, SC, the historic "Fireproof Building," is undergoing a multi-million dollar renovation, with plans to re-open in summer 2018. While continuing to be the headquarters for the SC Historical Society, the building will also house a museum of South Carolina history. The Society intends to use the new exhibit space to “tell the story of the entire state, reveal the important role South

(Originally broadcast 01/19/18) - The Buenos Aires Herald ceased publication in July of 2017, almost 141 years after its founding. The paper became famous, however, only in the latter part of the 20th century, for exposing the forced disappearances of Argentinians during the 1976-83 military dictatorship. Other newspapers in the country whitewashed this chapter of Argentina’s history. The English-language paper’s editor during this dangerous, violent period was British journalist Robert Cox. The

(Originally broacast 01/12/17) - Ed Madden, editor of Theologies of Terrain (Muddy Ford Press, 2017), writes that poet Tim Conroy “is a theologian of the best kind, a theologian of the ordinary.” “He knows… [we] face crushing loss and daily difficulties. We have to learn to live the best we can here, now. … [Conroy] points us to a ‘cathedral’ of trees where we are encouraged to find not truth or healing but perspective—to measure ourselves ‘by how a towering / moment passes.’" Tim Conroy and Ed

(Originally broadcast 10/13/17) - The Southern Campaign was critical in determining the outcome of the American Revolutionary War, yet the South’s importance has been downplayed in most historical accounts to date. The National Park Service has recognized the importance of the Southern Campaign with the creation of its Southern Campaign of the American Revolution Parks group. The group includes Cowpens National Battlefield, Kings Mountain National Military Park, Ninety Six National Historic Site

(Originally broadcast 11/10/17) - How did the American South contribute to the development of cinema? And how did film shape the modern South? In Fade In, Crossroads: A History of the Southern Cinema (2017, Oxford University Press), Robert Jackson tells the story of the relationships between southerners and motion pictures from the silent era through the golden age of Hollywood. Jackson talks with Walter Edgar about the profound consequences of the coincidence of the rise and fall of the

(Originally broadcast 10/20/17) - Millions of historic documents in the U.S., from presidential papers to personal slave journals, are facing an issue apart from age: a preservation method that has backfired. The process of laminating documents between sheets of cellulose acetate film, widely practiced from the 1950s through the 1970s, has now been determined to actually contribute to the deterioration of acid-containing paper. Among the documents at the South Carolina Department of Archives and

The American South has experienced remarkable change over the past half century. Black voter registration has increased, the region’s politics have shifted from one-party Democratic to the near-domination of the Republican Party, and in-migration has increased its population many fold. At the same time, many outward signs of regional distinctiveness have faded. Chain restaurants have replaced mom-and-pop diners, and the interstate highway system connects the region to the rest of the country.