SC Humanities Awards More Than $50,000 in Major Grants in February

The South Carolina Humanities Board of Directors awarded more than $50,000 in Major Grants to 8 cultural organizations after a February 21, 2020 Board Meeting in Columbia.

The awards were selected through a competitive application and review process and are made possible by SC Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Matching community support for the 8 awarded projects totaled: $227,372.

A list of awarded grants is provided below:

Sponsoring Organization: Fountain Inn History Museum
Project Title: The Making of a Small Town
Project Director: Kenzie Galloway
Awarded: $3,325; Cost-share: $4,636
The Fountain Inn History Museum will refurbish an available, unused space and use it as a new exhibit gallery for a series of rotating photographic exhibits drawn from their historic archives. They have a cache of more than 500 photographs taken between 1860 and 2000 in their archives. The initial exhibit will include 36 images that share about the history of the community and will open in June 2020.

Sponsoring Organization: Orangeburg County Historical Society
Project Title: Dixie’s Last Stand – Documentary
Project Director: Emily Harrold
Awarded: $8,000; Cost-share: $38,650
The Orangeburg County Historical Society is serving as the Fiscal Agent for a documentary project with the working title “Dixie’s Last Stand” about the recent conflict over the flying of a Confederate flag outside of an ice cream parlor in Orangeburg. The proposed one-hour broadcast-length documentary film will explore the two-year long battle through a variety of perspectives, digging into the flag’s historical legacy as well as current perspectives about it. The film is expected to be completed in Fall 2020, after which it will premiere at a nationally-recognized film festival, be broadcast on public television, streamed on Topic.com, and screened at locations across South Carolina.

Sponsoring Organization: Ginetta V. Hamilton Literacy Foundation
Project Title:
Gullah: A Historic Introduction to a new Generation in Alvin, SC
Project Director: Ginetta Hamilton
Awarded: $2,500; Cost-share: $4,500
This is a two-part project that includes a public presentation by noted Gullah scholar Ron Daise during the annual Alvin Festival on June 28, 2020 in Berkeley County as well as an oral history collection project to record and document “I Remember When” stories from 18 seniors in the Alvin/St. Stephen community about former African American businesses and life there.

Sponsoring Organization: Richland School District 2
Project Title: Defining South Carolina Deliciousness
Project Director: Dr. Wendy Campbell
Awarded: $7,281; Cost-share: $37,836
Richland School District 2 is planning a series of programs for students about South Carolina food that will take place from April – December 2020 and reach more than 1,000 children in grades 3,4,5 and 9.

Sponsoring Organization: Nickelodeon Theatre Society – Columbia Film Society
Project Title: Colors of Film
Project Director: Omme-Salma Rahemtullah
Awarded: $6,971; Cost-share: $12,760
The Nickelodeon will present the “Colors of Film” series that will include the screening of two diasporic films in Orangeburg and again in Columbia, as well as media literacy workshops for 80 people in each community. The programs will take place in Fall 2020 in Orangeburg and in Winter 2020/2021 in Columbia. The two selected films are The Day Shall Come (2019, Christopher Morris) and Burning Cane (2019 Philip Youmans), neither of which has received much attention in South Carolina. Each film screening will be bookended by media literacy workshops that are designed to accompany screenings of African-American films and address issues of identity, place, migration, religion, and family.

Sponsoring Organization: Historic Columbia
Project Title: Women, Voting, and Politics: Reflections on a Century of Women’s Suffrage
Project Director: Robin Waites
Awarded: $8,000; Cost-share: $15,500
Historic Columbia in partnership with the University of South Carolina History Center will present a symposium on “Women, Voting, and Politics: Reflections on a Century of Women’s Suffrage” on April 23 – 24, 2020 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment. The symposium will include an evening keynote on Thursday, followed by two panel discussions on Friday, each featuring leading scholars on women in history. The panel themes are “In Politics to Stay: African American Women and the Vote” and “Women, Equality, and American Politics.” The keynote and symposium sessions are free and open to the public; a lunch fee of $30 per person will be charged for the Friday luncheon.

Sponsoring Organization: The ETV Endowment of South Carolina
Project Title: Sisterhood: South Carolina Suffragists
Project Director: Beryl Dakers
Awarded: $8,000; Cost-share: $103,638
SCETV will create a series of three half-hour television documentaries entitled Sisterhood: South Carolina Suffragists that will air in Fall 2020 to commemorate the centennial of the 19th amendment. Each program will focus on a different set of South Carolina sisters and their contemporaries who worked to gain equal rights for women. The first episode will feature Sarah and Angelina Grimke, abolitionists in the early 1800s. The second program will feature the Rollin sisters (Frances, Lottie, Louise, Kate, and Florence), politically-engaged black women who were active in women’s suffrage during Reconstruction. The final program will concentrate on Carrie, Mable, and Anita Pollitzer, Jewish women from Charleston who lived to see the 19th amendment ratified. In addition to the three half-hour programs intended to air on Carolina Stories, there will be a comprehensive website and a series of 4-minute radio shorts that will complement the themes of the documentaries. Educational materials will be created and disseminated to schools.

Sponsoring Organization: Brookgreen Gardens
Project Title: Seen, Heard, Esteemed: Living History Narratives of Georgetown County, SC
Project Director: Ron Daise
Awarded: $6,000; Cost-share: $9,852
Brookgreen Gardens will collect living history narratives about six Gullah Geechee community members of Sandy Island, Plantersville, and Murrells Inlet that will be dramatized and complemented with digital elements. The completed narratives will be made available to the public through performances to guests as well as through audio and video excerpts online. The public aspects of the program will be launched at Brookgreen Gardens’ annual Harvest Home Weekend fall festival on October 3-4, 2020, and the pilot phase presentation schedule will continue through December.

For more information about any of these grant-supported projects, please contact T.J. Wallace at 803-771-2477.