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Walter Edgar's Journal at 21

In 2000 a special program aired on South Carolina Public Radio (then South Carolina Educational Radio). It featured a veteran broadcaster and a university professor as hosts and doing live news coverage of the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state house dome. The program featured called-in comments from listeners.

From that one-time broadcast came an idea for a live, weekly talk program with broadcaster Tom Fowler and historian Dr. Walter Edgar who would interview guests and take calls from listeners about topics of the day. The program, unnamed for its first few months, became Walter Edgar's Journal, and would evolve into weekly conversation with guests - authors, artists, politicians, and everyday folks - talking about everything from politics to barbeque, topics centered in the American South with a focus on our state's history and culture.

  • The late Noel Polk and Tudier Harris, with Walter Edgar, taping "Take on the South."
    SCETV/SC Public Radio
    As part of our continuing celebration of Walter Edgar’s Journal at 21 we present an encore broadcast from May of 2009.Internationally renowned Southern literature scholars Trudier Harris, University Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Alabama, and the late Noel Polk, formerly of Mississippi State University, join Dr. Edgar to debate the question “What was the most influential Southern novel of the 20th century?” This episode is a companion of the SCETV’s Take on the South: What was the most influential Southern novel of the 20th century? That was originally broadcast on Wednesday, May 13, 2009. Take on the South is a series of eight, one-hour, live-to-tape debates produced by SCETV for the University of South Carolina's Institute for Southern Studies (ISS) under a grant provided by Watson-Brown Foundation, Inc. You can watch this program, on demand, at knowitall.org.
  • Deb Richardson-Moore, former pastor of Triune Mercy Center, Greenville, SC
    Courtesy of Deb Richardson-Moore
    In celebration of Walter Edgar’s Journal at 21, this week's episode is an encore from 2013.Deb Richardson-Moore, a middle-aged suburban mom and journalist was inspired to become a pastor after writing a story exploring God’s call in our lives. Then, in 1996, a recent graduate of Erskine Theological Seminary, she took a position as pastor of the non-denominational Triune Mercy Center, an inner-city mission to the homeless in Greenville, S.C.“What I found there absolutely flattened me,” she says. It also inspired her. She and a dedicated staff built a worshiping community that focuses on drug rehab, jobs, and housing for the homeless.Walter Edgar visited Pastor Richardson-Moore in her study at the Center to talk about the growth of its ministry and her journey, as well as her recent memoir, The Weight of Mercy: A Novice Pastor on the City Streets (Monarch Books, 2012).- Originally broadcast 12/13/13 -News and Music Stations: Fri, Nov 26, at 12 pm; Sat, Nov 27, at 7 amNews & Talk Stations: Friday, Nov 26, at 12 pm; Sun, Nov 28, at 4 pm
  • From a sketch by Edwin Forbes.
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    Library of Congress/ Illustration from: Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, 1863 Nov. 14, p. 120
    In celebration of Walter Edgar’s Journal at 21, this week's episode is an encore from 2012. In Ric Burns’ American Experience documentary, Death and the Civil War, he explores the 19th century idealization of a “good death,” and how that concept was brutally changed by battles like that at Gettysburg.With the coming of the Civil War, and the staggering casualties it ushered in, death entered the experience of the American people as it never had before -- permanently altering the character of the republic and the psyche of the American people.Burns joins Dr. Edgar to talk about the film, and the ways in which the Civil War forever changed the way Americans deal with death. Also taking part in the discussion are David W. Blight, Professor of American History at Yale University, and the Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale; and Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, the Lincoln Professor of History in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) forms the basis for Burn’s documentary.
  • Tom Fowler and Walter Edgar broadcasting a live episode of Walter Edgar's Journal in 2002 from Columbia's Woodhill Mall at part of the observance of SC Public Radio's 30th anniversary.
    SC Public Radio
    This fall Walter Edgar's Journal has been celebrating 21 years on the air by offering encore episodes from our vault. This week we bring you a special episode of The Journal with Walter and long-time Journal producer Alfred Turner as guests, and with SC Public Radio reporter Victoria Hansen guiding a discussion of the history of the program.
  • FILE - Pat Conroy
    Robert C. Clark
    /
    Wikimedia Commons
    In celebration of Walter Edgar’s Journal at 21, this week's episode is an encore from 2014 with world-renowned author, the late Pat Conroy in conversation with 4 of his 6 siblings.In his 2013 memoir, The Death of Santini (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) author Pat Conroy admits that his father, Don, is the basis of abusive fighter pilot he created for the title role of his novel, The Great Santini, and that his mother, Peg, and his brothers and sisters have all served as models for characters in The Prince of Tides and his other novels. Now, for the first time, Pat gathers with four of his surviving siblings, Kathy, Tim, Mike, and Jim, to talk about the intersection of “real life” and Pat’s fiction, and what it was like to grow up with “The Great Santini” as a father.
  • Southern food
    Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
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    Wikimedia Commons
    In celebration of Walter Edgar’s Journal at 21, this week's episode is an encore from 2010 featuring John T. Edge, author and Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, University of Mississippi; and Matt and Ted Lee, award winning cookbook authors. The conversation was a preview of a debate on the topic, "What is Real Southern Cooking?" which aired on SCETV’s Take on the South.
  • SCETV
    In celebration of Walter Edgar’s Journal at 21, this week's episode is an encore from 2012, featuring the late T. Moffatt Burriss. Burriss was a former Columbia area contractor, Republican state lawmaker and American World War II battlefield hero.An Anderson native, Burris was a concentration camp liberator who also participated in the invasions of Sicily and Italy. During Operation Market Garden in Holland, he led the amphibious assault across the Waal River made famous in the movie, A Bridge Too Far. Burriss is the subject of an ETV special Man and Moment: T. Moffatt Burriss and the Crossing. He joined Walter Edgar, former State newspaper reporter Jeff Wilkinson, and documentary producer Lee Ann Kornegay, to talk about the war and about making the film.
  • A view toward Jackson Square in New Orleans in the 1920s.
    Arnold Genthe, 1869-1942
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    Library of Congress
    A part of our celebration of Walter Edgar's Journal at 21 we present an encore from 2014, with guest John Shelton Reed, talking about his book, Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s.In the years following World War I, the New Orleans French Quarter attracted artists and writers with low rent, a faded charm, and colorful street life. By the 1920s Jackson Square became the center of a vibrant but short-lived bohemia. A young William Faulkner and his roommate William Spratling, an artist who taught at Tulane, were among the "artful and crafty ones of the French Quarter." In Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s (LSU Press, 2012) John Shelton Reed introduces Faulkner's circle of friends ranging from the distinguished Sherwood Anderson to a gender-bending Mardi Gras costume designer and brings to life the people and places of New Orleans in the jazz age.
  • FILE - Pat Conroy
    Robert C. Clark
    /
    Wikimedia Commons
    As part of our continuing series of encore episodes celebrating The Journal at 21, we encore a 2014 episode with the late novelist Pat Conroy, author of The Water is Wide, The Great Santini, The Prince of Tides, and The Death of Santini. Conroy joins Walter Edgar for an event celebrating the author’s life; his work; and One Book, One Columbia’s 2014 selection, My Reading Life (Nan A. Talese, 2010). The conversation was recorded before an audience of over 2000, at Columbia’s Township Auditorium, on the evening of February 27.
  • FILE - Harvey Gantt, outside the Registrar's office at Clemson university.
    Clemson University Library
    This week on Walter Edgar's Journal, we offer another in our series of encore broadcasts celebrating The Journal at 21, with a 2004 conversation with the late U. S. District Judge Matthew Perry. Perry takes us on a journey from his humble beginnings in a segregated South Carolina to his part in helping to break down the color barrier. In between he spins some delightful stories about the people who helped shape South Carolina throughout the turbulent 60’s and 70’s.