“R” is for Robinson, Bernice Violanthe [1914-1994]. Educator, civil rights activist. A Charleston native, Robinson moved to New York in the 1940s where she worked as a beautician and a civil servant. She returned home in 1947 to help care for her parents. She joined the NAACP and became involved with voter registration drives. In 1957 when Esau Jenkins established first Citizenship School on Johns Island, Robinson became its first teacher. She based her curriculum on the practical needs of the people she taught.The Johns Island success led to the opening of addition schools and Robinson recruited the teachers. In 1961 she was recruited by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to set up voter registration workshops across the South. Bernice Violanthe Robinson left the SCLC in 1970 and went to work for the South Carolina Commission of Farm Workers and also supervised Volunteers in Service to America in the Charleston area.
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.