A native of Laurens, Ball received undergraduate and law degrees from the South Carolina College. Ball served as the first editor of the Laurens Advertiser. He also was editor of the State in Columbia, the Charleston Evening Post, the Greenville News, and the News and Courier in Charleston. At the State (1913-1923) he championed the aging ideals of the Bourbon followers of Wade Hampton. In 1924 Ball became the first dean of the University of South Carolina’s school of journalism. In 1927 he became editor of the News and Courier where he earned national recognition for his campaign to repeal prohibition. During the 1930s he was a relentless critic of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. In 1932 William Watts Ball published The State That Forgot.
Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.