SC History

Veteran journalist Cokie Roberts has died at age 75. Roberts joined NPR in 1978, the start of a remarkable career that led her to ABC News in 1988, though she remained on NPR as a commentator until her death. Roberts died Tuesday due to complications from breast cancer,...

In his new novel, The Last At-Bat of Shoeless Joe (2019, Chickadee Prince), Granville Wyche Burgess imagines Shoeless Joe Jackson, the outfielder disgraced in the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, living in Greenville, South Carolina, and finding that sports history has one more...

Thirty years ago this month, the strongest and most costly hurricane to strike South Carolina in the 20th century made landfall. Hurricane Hugo was a Category 4 storm when it came ashore just slightly north of Charleston, on Isle of Palms on September 22. The hurricane had...

Since its first publication in 1968, Bill C. Malone’s Country Music USA has won universal acclaim as the definitive history of American country music. Starting with the music’s folk roots in the rural South, it traces country music from the early days of radio into the...

At the Catawba Cultural Center visitors can learn about many important aspects of the traditions of the Catawba people. The museum includes various displays on the tribe's important chiefs, the unique practice of hand made pottery, and the evolution of Catawba life since...

The Upcountry History Museum - Furman University connects people, history and culture in a variety of different ways. You can learn about local history, or check out some of the museum's traveling exhibits. The museum covers 300 years of the region's history starting with...

(Originally broadcast 04/19/18) - Hemp was once one of the crops grown in South Carolina and exported to the world. That changed, however, when enforcement of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 effectively made possession or transfer of hemp illegal throughout the United States...

William Hiott is the Executive Director & Chief Curator for Fort Hill Plantation. He guides us through the history of Fort Hill and its famous residents, John C. Calhoun and Thomas Green Clemson. Hiott also shares the unique history of the Calhoun and Clemson women who...

“We’re a little small in numbers, but have the largest welcome mat,” says Edgefield’s Town Clerk and Treasurer Charlotte Cheatham. Edgefield can easily be seen as one of South Carolina’s most unique and historic towns. From its rich political history of being home to ten...

"S" is for South Carolina Equal Suffrage League. The South Carolina Equal Suffrage League (SCESL) was formed by the Spartanburg New Era Club and other members of the white South Carolina Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1914. Hannah Hemphill Coleman was elected the first...

In Dawson’s Fall (2019, MacMillan) novelist Roxana Robinson tells a story of America at its most fragile, fraught, and malleable. Set in 1889, in Charleston, South Carolina, Robinson’s tale weaves her family’s journal entries and letters with a novelist’s narrative grace,...

Dressed in a brightly colored, patterned dress and wearing stylishly large, black rimmed glasses, 51 year-old Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr flashes the most fantastic smile. The mayor of Freetown, Seirra Leone in West Africa has travelled more than 4,000 miles to visit Charleston and...

In his book, The South of the Mind: American Imaginings of White Southernness, 1960–1980 (2018, UGA Press), Zachary J. Lechner bridges the fields of southern studies and southern history in an effort to discern how conceptions of a tradition-bound, "timeless" South shaped...

Credit SC Public Radio "M" is for Myrtle Beach Pavilion. Located at 812 North Ocean Boulevard in the heart of Myrtle beach, the Myrtle Beach Pavilion Amusement Park’s eleven acres of roller coaster, thrill rides, go-kart tracks, arcades, shops, and games were part of a...

Credit SC Public Radio "P" is for Potter’s Raid (April 5-21, 1865). General Edward E. Potter’s raid into the lowcountry and central South Carolina was neither massive nor particularly crucial to Union victory. In March 1865, while the rest of Sherman’s army marched into...