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Our recently retired, due to illness, Clemson colleague Tony Melton has many constants in his life. For one, he has never stopped being the humble fellow from McBee, South Carolina, who started picking cotton when he was three years old.

“M” is for Mabry, George Lawrence, Jr. (1917-1990). Soldier, Medal of Honor Recipient. After graduating from Presbyterian College, Mabry entered the US…

In his book, The Grim Years: Settling South Carolina, 1670-1720 (2020, University of SC Press), Dr. John Navin explains how eight English aristocrats, the Lords Proprietors, came to possess the vast Carolina land grant and then enacted elaborate plans to recruit and control colonists as part of a grand moneymaking scheme. In his conversation with Walter Edgar, Navin tells of a cadre of men who rose to political and economic prominence, while ordinary colonists, enslaved Africans, and indigenous groups became trapped in a web of violence and oppression.Threatened by the Native Americans they exploited, by the Africans they enslaved, and by their French and Spanish rivals, white South Carolinians lived in continual fear. For some it was the price they paid for financial success. But for most there were no riches, and the possibility of a sudden, violent death was overshadowed by the misery of their day-to-day existence.

This edition of the South Carolina Lede for May 8, 2021, features: a look at the ramifications of Gov. Henry McMaster's decision to end federal unemployment benefits next month; updates from the final days of the state legislative session; a visit to Boone Fox Farm in Columbia, SC, for Mother's Day flower suggestions and spring gardening tips from horticulturalist Brinton Fox; and more.

"S" is for South Carolina Plan (1944). On April 3, 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Smith v. Allwright, that the white primary in Texas was unconstitutional.

Galileo, whose full name was Galileo Galilei, was one of the great figures in the history of science. What may surprise you is that Galileo’s father,…

“D” is for Davenport, Guy (1927-2005). Writer, educator, illustrator.

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.

In their book, Justice Deferred - Race and the Supreme Court (2021, Belknap Press), historian Orville Vernon Burton and civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the Court’s race record—a legacy at times uplifting, but more often distressing and sometimes disgraceful. Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the Court’s race jurisprudence. The Supreme Court is usually seen as protector of our liberties: it ended segregation, was a guarantor of fair trials, and safeguarded free speech and the vote. But this narrative derives mostly from a short period, from the 1930s to the early 1970s. Before then, the Court spent a century largely ignoring or suppressing basic rights, while the fifty years since 1970 have witnessed a mostly accelerating retreat from racial justice.

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 -