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“U” is for the University of South Carolina

The University of South Carolina was originally chartered as South Carolina College in 1801 and opened in 1805. During Reconstruction, the college became a university and was the only Southern university to be integrated. During the political turmoil of the 1890s, the school teetered on the brink of closing, but slowly recovered in the early twentieth century. Women were admitted in 1895 and Black students in1963. With increasing levels of state funding and the arrival of the baby boomers during the 1960s and 1970s, Carolina grew from a student body of 5,000 to nearly 25,000. The physical campus expanded and so did the number of degree programs. In 2021, there were some 35,000 students enrolled on the flagship campus and a total of more than 51,000 on the eight campus system.

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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.