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.

Walter Edgar's Journal

WEJ at 21: What is real southern cooking?

In Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands (USC Press, 2021) musicologist Eric Crawford traces Gullah/Geechee songs from their beginnings in West Africa to their height as songs for social change and Black identity in the twentieth century American South. While much has been done to study, preserve, and interpret Gullah culture in the lowcountry and sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia, some traditions like the shouting and rowing songs have been all but forgotten. Crawford talks with Walter Edgar about his work, which focuses primarily on South Carolina's St. Helena Island, illuminates the remarkable history, survival, and influence of spirituals since the earliest recordings in the 1860s.

Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands

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.

WEJ at 21: World War II battlefield hero - T. Moffatt Burriss and the crossing

In his book, The Slow Undoing: The Federal Courts and the Long Struggle for Civil Rights in South Carolina, Dr. Stephen H. Lowe argues for a reconsideration of the role of the federal courts in the civil rights movement. It places the courts as a central battleground at the intersections of struggles over race, law, and civil rights. During the long civil rights movement, Black and White South Carolinians used the courts as a venue to contest the meanings of the constitution, justice, equality, and citizenship.Lowe joins Walter Edgar to discuss how African Americans used courts and direct action in tandem to bring down legal segregation throughout the long civil rights era.

The Federal Courts and the Long Struggle for Civil Rights in South Carolina

In March of 2021, the South Carolina Battlefield Preservation Trust purchased 31 acres in Colleton County to preserve the site of a Revolutionary War victory by Francis Marion and his men over the British in what became known as the battle of Parker’s Ferry. The site will soon become part of the Liberty Trail, which will be a unified path of preservation and interpretation across South Carolina. The Trail will tell the story of the events of 1779-1782 in the Carolinas, which directly led to an American victory in the war.Charles Baxley of the SC Battlefield Trust and archaeologist Steve Smith join Walter Edgar to talk about efforts to find the historical boundaries of the site, purchase the land, and establish the Liberty Trail.

Francis Marion: Rediscovering the Revolutionary War Battle at Parker's Ferry

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.Dr. John Shelton Reed is the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was director of the Howard Odum Institute for Research in Social Science for twelve years and helped found the university's Center for the Study of the American South and the quarterly Southern Cultures.

WEJ at 21: Dixie Bohemia - A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s

As part of our on-going series, Walter Edgar's Journal at 21, we revisit a conversation with the late Dr. Abby Sallenger, who tells the cautionary tale of Isle Derniere.In the summer of 1853, many of New Orleans’s citizens traveled to Isle Derniere, an emerging island retreat on the Gulf of Mexico, presuming it a safe haven from yellow fever. On August 10, 1856, a hurricane swept across the island, killing most of its 400 inhabitants. What remained of the island was a forest stranded in the sea, a sign of a land that would eventually vanish.

WEJ at 21: A Rising Sea, a Vanishing Coast, and a 19th-Century Disaster that Warns of a Warmer World

On the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, Walter Edgar's Journal offers this special encore of a conversation with Lyndon Harris, who was on Wall Street the day the World Trade Center towers fell. At that time, Gaffney, SC, native Lyndon Harris was the Priest in Charge of St. Paul's Episcopal Chapel, which was across from the World Trade Center. In September of 2011, Harris returned to his home state to take part in an exhibition at the Cherokee County History and Arts Museum, Eyewitnesses to 9/11: From Tragedy to Transformation. He joined Walter Edgar in our studio to tell the story of the extraordinary ministry begun at St. Paul’s on 9/12 and about his work with Gardens of Forgiveness, where he is currently Executive Director. Harris is also minister at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Carolina Foothills.

September 11: Tragedy, Ministry, Forgiveness

Few people are familiar with the full history that shaped and preserved the fish and wildlife of coastal South Carolina. From Native Americans to the early colonists to plantation owners and their slaves to market hunters and commercial fishermen, all viewed fish and wildlife as limitless. Through time, however, overharvesting led to population declines, and the public demanded conservation. The process that produced fish and game laws, wardens and wildlife refuges was complex and often involved conflict, but synergy and cooperation ultimately produced one of the most extensive conservation systems on the East Coast. Author James O. Luken presents this fascinating story in his new book, Coastal South Carolina Fish and Game: History, Culture and Conservation.

Coastal South Carolina Fish and Game: History, Culture and Conservation

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.

WEJ at 21: A Public Conversation with Pat Conroy

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.

The Life and Times of Judge Matthew J. Perry

In Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community, Charles Joyner takes readers on a journey back in time, up the Waccamaw River through the Lowcountry of South Carolina, past rice fields made productive by the labor of enslaved Africans, past rice mills and forest clearings into the antebellum world of All Saints Parish. In this community, and many others like it, the enslaved people created a new language, a new religion - indeed, a new culture - from African traditions and American circumstances.He joined Dr. Edgar in 2010, during the 10th anniversary celebration of Walter Edgar's Journal, to talk about this edition.

WEJ at 21: Charles Joyner on "Down by the Riverside - A South Carolina Slave Community"

River Alliance CEO Mike Dawson talks with Walter Edgar about how the Alliance has worked together with riverside communities, city and county governments, and many other organizations to create community resources along the Saluda, Broad, and Congaree rivers in the Midlands of South Carolina.

The River Alliance: Creating Vibrant Riverfront in the Midlands

For this episode celebrating Walter Edgar's Journal at 21, we’ve dusted off a 2004, on-the-road program, recorded at Litchfield Books on Pawleys Island. Walter's guest is the late Cokie Roberts, longtime NPR correspondent and commentator. Roberts talks politics, personal history, and about her book, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation.

WEJ at 21: Cokie Roberts - "Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation"

From books to barbecue, and current events to Colonial history, historian and author Walter Edgar delves into the arts, culture, and history of South Carolina and the American South. Produced by South Carolina Public Radio.

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Walter Edgar's Journal

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