Undaunted Valor: The Beaufort Volunteer Artillery in the Civil War

The Beaufort Volunteer Artillery is one of the longest-serving military units in the history of the United States.  Its service includes the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I and World War II.  This presentation will focus on its Civil War exploits in over a dozen … Read more

The Entrepreneurial Artist: John James Audubon in the Lowcountry

John James Audubon’s Birds of America ranks as one of the greatest achievements in American art. Its groundbreaking format depicting 435 of North America’s known bird species life-size and in habitat captured the imagination of the public and catapulted him into international fame.  This presentation provides audiences with insight into Audubon’s ambitious, self-styled role as adventurer, artist … Read more

Historic South Carolina Ghosts and Legends

Dozens of tales of ghosts and haunted places have found their way into South Carolina’s mainstream media. Many have their origins in the 19th century and most in historic places. Some places have only one or two supernatural stories while others like Charleston, Columbia, Beaufort, Chester, Darlington and Edgefield have numerous sightings and unexplained phenomena. … Read more

Henry Timrod: Poet, War Correspondent and Reluctant Soldier

Henry Timrod’s stint as a war correspondent for South Carolina’s Charleston Mercury was brief, but the Civil War and his experiences at the battlefront were the inspiration for poems that created his legacy as an important 19th century Southern poet. His poetry, which is usually included in Southern studies and most anthologies of American poetry, was “borrowed” … Read more

Edgar Allan Poe in South Carolina

Edgar Allan Poe was stationed at Fort Moultrie in 1827 and 1828 under the assumed name of Edgar Perry. While there, Poe was gathering material for the first detective stories in the English language, including The Goldbug, which was set on Sullivan’s Island. He also created the first American detective—C. Auguste Dupin, who was the … Read more

Water as Vehicle and Healing in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust

The 1991 film Daughters of the Dust was the first to portray the Gullah culture on film to a national audience from St. Helena Island in South Carolina. Water in the film takes on the symbol of flight, migration, and separation of the Peazant family from its roots. This lecture explores how views of water in the … Read more

Gamechanger: The Life and Writing of Julia Mood Peterkin

Julia Peterkin was a white woman who wrote about Gullah people living on her family’s plantation out of a desire to honor and preserve their culture. She was shunned by white Southerners for “betraying her race” but became accepted by Harlem Renaissance writers, such as Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois. Regardless of criticism, she continued … Read more

Who Knew? Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman in South Carolina during The Civil War

In 1863, both women were in South Carolina’s Lowcountry—Barton provided supplies and medical care for Union and Confederate soldiers at the Battle of Fort Waggoner with Massachusetts’s 54th Regiment. Tubman, a formerly enslaved woman, ran reconnaissance and led Union forces up the Combahee River to free more than 700 enslaved persons. This presentation recognizes two … Read more

Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy

“Writers of the world, if you’ve got a story, I want to hear it. I promise it will follow me to my last breath.”—Pat Conroy Although beloved writer Pat Conroy (1945-2016) served as a classroom educator for little more than three years, he remained a teacher and mentor to his fellow writers throughout his lifetime. … Read more

Pat Conroy as Lifelong Learner

“Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.”—Pat Conroy The author of The Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, and The Water Is Wide, author and educator Pat Conroy (1945–2016) is synonymous with the lowcountry. Explore Conroy’s lifelong commitment to education and self-improvement through stories of three of … Read more

Pat Conroy’s Great Love of Poetry

“The poets of the world occupy a place of high honor in my city of books.”—Pat Conroy Best known as a beloved novelist and memoirist, internationally acclaimed author Pat Conroy (1945-2016) began his writing life wanting to be a poet. Over time, Conroy transitioned successfully to prose, incorporating the lyrical and descriptive elements he most … Read more

“I Was Born to Be in a Library”: Pat Conroy’s Great Love of Libraries

“A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.”—Pat Conroy This one-hour presentation on best-selling author Pat Conroy’s lifelong love of books and libraries focuses on the roles public libraries, school libraries, and Pat’s own personal library played in his writing life. Through video and audio clips, photographs, and published and unpublished … Read more

Pat Conroy’s Reverence for Teaching

“The great teachers of the world fill you up with hope and shower you with a thousand reasons to embrace all aspects of life.”—Pat Conroy This presentation explores best-selling author Pat Conroy’s transformational years as a student at Beaufort High School and later as a teacher at BHS and on Daufuskie Island. Included are audio … Read more