The South Carolina Humanities Board of Directors awarded more than $60,000 in Major Grants to 12 cultural organizations after a September 22, 2017 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 12 awarded projects totaled: $238,256.
A list of awarded grants is provided below:
Sponsoring Organization: Francis Marion University
Project Title: Beyond Mother Emanuel & The Confederate Flag: A Symposium on Race, Culture, and Understanding
Project Director: Jon W. Tuttle
Awarded: $6,375; Cost-share: $6,409
Francis Marion University will present a three-day symposium on February 26 – 27, 2018 on the topic “Beyond Mother Emanuel & The Confederate Flag: A Symposium on Race, Culture, and Understanding.” Each day will consist of a lecture and panel discussion, followed by a call to action to consider “what’s next” and a reception. Featured speakers include Kevin Alexander Grey, author of The Decline of Black Politics; Dr. Leo Twiggs; and Dr. Cleveland Sellers.
Sponsoring Organization: Dorchester County Archives & History Center
Project Title: Veteran’s Exhibit and Memorial Day 2018 Ceremony
Project Director: LaClaire Mizell
Awarded: $5,000; Cost-share: $13,074
The Dorchester County Archives & History Center will create an exhibit about Veterans/Active Duty Personnel that will span the Revolutionary War to the most recent conflicts. The exhibit will include artifacts and memorabilia like uniforms, medals, and weapons, and a database will be developed that includes oral histories of veterans from Dorchester County. The exhibit will open to the public on Memorial Day 2018 (May 28) with a ceremony honoring all veterans and military personnel.
Sponsoring Organization: University of South Carolina Upstate
Project Title: The Literature of Caregiving: Fostering a Humanities-Based Culture of Care
Project Director: Esther Godfrey
Awarded: $2,600; Cost-share: $5,117
The University of South Carolina – Upstate will partner with the Charles Lea Center, which provides services to people with intellectual disabilities or chronic medical conditions, to present a pilot reading and discussion program for medical caregivers that is modeled after the Literature & Medicine program from the Maine Humanities Council. Approximately 20 caregivers employed by the Charles Lea Center will participate in a 10-week workshop led by humanities scholar Dr. George Williams to discuss literary texts that present representations of caregivers. The participants will also work on a group project that will use digital technologies to create a record of participants’ insights and will be a new collective narrative about the nature of caregiving. The pilot program will culminate with a public event open to a general audience, including additional caregivers, that will be a discussion of the insights about caregiving gleaned in the workshop.
Sponsoring Organization: Olympia-Granby Historical Foundation
Project Title: Olympia-Granby Mill Village Museum
Project Director: Staci Richey
Amount Requested: $4,600; Cost-share: $7,700
The Olympia-Granby Historical Foundation will create an exhibit about mill village life in South Carolina to be installed at the new Olympia-Granby Mill Village Museum located in the first Olympia Mill Village School in Columbia. The exhibit will include 17 interior panels and four exterior panels as well as artifacts and interactive components like an audio recording of sounds of a textile mill village. The exhibit will be in production from November 1, 2017 through the spring, with the expectation of it being completed and installed by June 2018.
Sponsoring Organization: Historic Columbia
Project Title: Reconstruction’s Legacy: The History and Contemporary Significance of the Fourteenth Amendment
Project Director: Robin Waites
Awarded: $6,000; Cost-share: $24,900
Historic Columbia in partnership with the University of South Carolina History Center will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Fourteenth Amendment with a public symposium on “Reconstruction’s Legacy: The History and Contemporary Significance of the Fourteenth Amendment.” The symposium will take place April 18 – 20, 2018 at various venues in Columbia including Allen University, Columbia Museum of Art, and the Woodrow Wilson Family Home. Featured speakers will include Randall Kennedy of Harvard Law School (Thursday evening keynote) and David Levering Lewis of New York University (Friday lunch keynote).
Sponsoring Organization: The Citadel
Project Title: Los Ecos Del Lowcountry
Project Director: Kerry Taylor
Awarded: $5,764; Cost-share: $12,926
The Citadel Oral History Program will support the creation of a traveling multimedia art exhibition titled “Los Ecos Del Lowcountry.” The exhibit will feature 20 Latino visual artists who have been commissioned to create original artwork based on their interpretations of oral history interviews taken in 2013. It is anticipated that the exhibit will open in Charleston in August or September 2018 and also travel to Columbia and Greenville in 2019. The Citadel is planning on producing a printed catalog and an educational website to accompany the exhibit, as well as presenting several public programs such as “The Lowcountry—New Immigrant Destination in the Southeast” and “Music and Immigration.”
Sponsoring Organization: ETV Endowment of South Carolina
Project Title: Charlie’s Place
Project Director: Betsy Newman
Awarded: $6.750; Cost-share: $83,641
SCETV will create a 30-minute documentary titled “Charlie’s Place” intended to air as part of the Carolina Stories program in early 2018. “Charlie’s Place” tells the story of Charlie Fitzgerald and his Myrtle Beach nightclub, Charlie’s Place, which was a significant stop on the Chitlin’ Circuit of black nightclubs in the segregated South and which was attacked by the Ku Klux Klan in 1950. The documentary will be offered for national broadcast to all PBS stations.
Sponsoring Organization: James Agee Film Project
Project Title: At The Common Table: People, Place, and Food in the American South
Project Director: Jamie S. Ross
Awarded: $4,000; Cost-share: $30,966
The James Agee Film Project requests Major Grant funds to support the creation of a 58-minute, feature-length documentary about the multiethnic roots of Southern food titled At the Common Table: People, Place, and Food in the American South. The documentary is intended for national primetime broadcast on PBS, and a rough cut is expected to be ready approximately a year from now. Themes for the film include how food can help us understand and communicate the past; the deep roots of Southern food and culture in Native America, Africa, and Europe; and how Southern food has been intertwined with southern identity from the beginning to the present. Several South Carolina scholars are key consultants on the film, and there will be many scenes featuring South Carolina locations, food events, and people.
Sponsoring Organization: South Carolina Archives & History Foundation
Project Title: South Carolina’s Reconstruction: Restoration, Revolution, Reaction
Project Director: Patrick McCawley
Awarded: $4,770; Cost-share: $7,327
The South Carolina Department of Archives and History (SCDAH) will present an exhibit titled South Carolina’s Reconstruction: Restoration, Revolution, Reaction from April – November 2018. The exhibit will use the collections held by SCDAH to highlight key themes of Reconstruction like citizenship, land and labor, and education. Original copies of three of South Carolina’s constitutions – those written in 1865, 1868, and 1895 – will anchor the exhibit. A virtual exhibit will also be created for the SCDAH website.
Sponsoring Organization: South Carolina State University/I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium
Project Title: Resistance, Reform, & Reasoning: The Orangeburg Massacre & Its Aftermath 50 Years Later
Project Director: Frank Martin
Awarded: $5,764; Cost-share: $13,796
The I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium at South Carolina State University will produce two exhibits and a series of public lectures on the topic of “Resistance, Reform & Reasoning: The Orangeburg Massacre & Its Aftermath 50 Years Later.” The 50th anniversary of the Orangeburg Massacre will take place on February 8, 2018, and these special programs will take place from February 6 – April 7, 2018. One exhibit will be photographic works by Cecil Williams documenting the events that culminated in the Orangeburg Massacre, and the other will be images created by a diverse group of artists. Additionally, there will be at least three public colloquia: “Creating Change: Student Protest as Public Moral Consciousness,” “Envisioning Controversy: Image, Idea, and Human Tragedy,” and “Discussions on Civil Rights, Gender, and Inclusion: Who Sits at the Table and Why.” One of the purposes of the project is to establish an intergenerational dialogue regarding the changing meaning and significance of the term “Civil Rights.
Sponsoring Organization: Claflin University
Project Title: Cecil J. Williams Image Collection Preservation and Digitalization Project
Project Director: Morgan Montgomery
Awarded: $5,000; Cost-share: $5,000
Claflin University is working on the preservation and digitalization of The Cecil J. Williams Historically Significant Image Collection. The collection has an estimated 250,000 negatives spanning more than 50 years. The digitized collection will be made available to researchers and the general public at no cost to view or use low-resolution reproductions. The collection will be shared with all of South Carolina’s digital libraries as well as SCETV’s Knowitall.org.
Sponsoring Organization: Town of Estill
Project Title: “Growing Strong Together” 2017 Estill Fall Festival
Project Director: Heather Docalavich-Bruemmer
Awarded: $5,200; Cost-share: $27,400
The Town of Estill will present their fall festival “Growing Strong Together” on November 8 – 11, 2017. The event has been reimagined in 2017 to include more cultural programming, such as a “Taste of Tradition” community meal featuring family recipes; a “Remembering Our Roots” history harvest for senior citizens of Estill; a special night of enrichment for children featuring a presentation by Sharon Cooper-Murray; and a Harvest Celebration featuring historical hayrides and more. The anticipated outcome is empowering citizens of Estill to be more engaged and invested in preserving its past for a bright future.
For more information about any of these grant-supported projects, please contact T.J. Wallace at 803-771-2477.
