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 story of the Underground Railroad is one of the most epic in American History. This presentation describes the heroic efforts of African Americans and whites to hide and guide runaway slaves in their desperate journeys to freedom in the north and in Canada. Highlights of the presentation include first person narratives of escaping runaway … Read more
When writer/editor Aïda Rogers asked other writers in South Carolina to write about the one place in the state that means the most to them, what she got was … complicated. And what love isn’t? South Carolina’s many conflicting characteristics have marked its many writers, whether their genres are poetry or fiction, journalism or history. … Read more
An illustrated, candid talk takes the audience back to 1950’s rural Georgia where Tom recalls momentous times hanging out at the local Confederate monument, days playing football, and summers on his granddad’s farm. It was there he spent days with his childhood best friend, Jesse Lee “sweetie Boy” Elam, a black boy. Neither had any … Read more
(An illustrated talk) Tom brings back the Sunday drive with memories and sights to be seen today. Times were mom, dad and the kids would head out to see the countryside. Back in the Burma-Shave days, mom-and-pop drive-ins and gas station biscuits fed folks. Cheap gas filled cars, and people made Sunday drives through a … Read more
An illustrated talk based on Tom’s book, Carolina Bays: Wild, Mysterious, and Majestic Landforms, published by the USC Press … From Woods Bay State Park to Carolina bays in the coastal plain, Savannah River Site, Georgia, and North Carolina, Tom takes the audience on a journey to unique landforms some once believed a meteorite bombardment … Read more
Hear how a mule kick killed eight people, how to murder with voodoo, why we used to sit up with the dead, and learn of a haunted French Huguenot Cemetery.
“South Carolina Country Roads” takes readers on a journey down forgotten routes and lesser-traveled byways. Join Tom as he shares photos and discusses what he discovered along the 10,000 miles he drove deliberately avoiding the interstates. Discover the bones of the land, the DNA of real life—rural icons, old home places, oddities, vanquished communities, and relics … Read more
Tom wrote Save The Last Dance For Me (USC Press), the story of how the blues evolved into beach music and how the shag evolved to become the state dance of North and South Carolina. What surprised him most while writing the history of the shag and the Society of Stranders was a revealing glimpse into his … Read more
Tom shares experiences about the legendary Goat Man, a colonel who turned from war to camellias, a sweet man who ended up homeless, and an unforgettable teacher. Enduring places include adventures at a bus station as a ticket agent, filming a wildlife refuge’s lovely isolation, the smell of rain on dirt roads, a kudzu-covered land, … Read more
The South our forebears knew lingers … rivers free of dams, old-timey religion camp meetings, classic BBQ haunts, old home places, rice plantations, a night on a primitive barrier island untouched by man, the High Hills of Santee, and a sentimental journey down US Highway 1. Experience why the South remains iconic. Fading but hanging … Read more
Tom’s habit of photographing old gas pumps at country stores had him cross paths with the grandson of a man killed for $500—murder for hire. The mayhem that ensued made history, involved Strom Thurmond, and led to eight people’s death, all because a mule kicked a calf in the head. The sole electrocution of a … Read more
An illustrated talk takes the audience behind the scenes to a haunted cemetery, South Carolina’s oldest bridge, North America’s only tea plantation, a wild ride down the Chattooga, an old mill where a tractor killed one of the last men making stone-ground cornmeal, a colony of carnivorous pitcher plants, forest fire entrapment while photographing rocky … Read more
Before walking out as SC Wildlife‘s managing editor to freelance, Tom made a road trip with photographer Robert Clark in search of a story. They found it and “Tenant Homes, Testament To Hard Times,” landed them a book contract. That book led to four others. Their initial 100-mile journey in time would lead to more than … Read more
Tom often writes about the vanishing ways, places, and traditions that have blessed the South with a sense of place: small towns that close at noon Wednesdays, vanishing country stores, telephoning fish, wasp attacks in church, casting spells to remove warts, and more. He brings the Southland of yesteryear alive … despite change and newcomers … Read more
Tom travels many a road off the beaten path. Three legs across South Carolina on Highway 76 reveals the state’s rich and surprising character. Other journeys have taken him from the Chattooga River to the Glendale Ruins to the Lowcountry. A surviving drive-in theater, the Kings Highway, a covered bridge, nuclear weapons reactors, poke salad … Read more
A traveling display of Lincoln and Civil War memorabilia and artifacts is available as a separate program. It requires a dedicated classroom for the day and at least six folding or library size tables. One or more classes can be rotated through the exhibit during a period of perhaps four repetitions; commentary and historical explanation … Read more
Kate has written four picture books about our state’s history: Palmetto – Symbol of Courage, about the famous Revolutionary War battle that inspired the color and symbols on our beautiful state flag; Francis Marion and the Legend of the Swamp Fox, the story of South Carolina’s most famous Revolutionary War hero; Almost Invisible – Black Patriots of the … Read more
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’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 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
General Sherman went to great lengths during the burning of Columbia, South Carolina to protect a friend whose family he had visited frequently while he was a bachelor stationed at Fort Moultrie between 1842 and 1846. The book and letters that Sherman sent to his friend along with an eyewitness account of his visits, finally … Read more
Isabel Whaley Sloan started teaching ballroom dancing and social etiquette in Columbia when she was 17 years old in 1914. For three-quarters of a century, generations of children, including Gov. Henry McMaster, flocked to her classes. Sloan was also well-known for organizing dances and social events for thousands of servicemen who were stationed at Fort Jackson during World … Read more
Sherman’s brilliant campaign through Georgia and the Carolinas ended in political turmoil with public insinuations from President Andrew Johnson’s administration that Confederate President Jefferson Davis had bought his freedom from Sherman with gold from the Confederate treasury. Sherman was accused by high government officials of being “a common traitor and a public enemy” while subordinates … Read more
Veteran reporter, author and USC Professor Emerita Pat McNeely presents recently edited military diaries and family histories of her husband and her father-in-law who served in the Cold War and World War I respectively. McNeely has added family pictures and additional information to both diaries to make them lasting histories. Hear about how she pulled … Read more
General William T. Sherman created a new form of physical, economic, and psychological “total warfare” against civilians and private property in Georgia and the Carolinas that he readily admitted would be violent and cruel. In addition to physical and economic assaults, he designed a massive psychological strategy of disinformation, deception, and blame designed to cripple … Read more
Joseph McGill will chronicle nights spent in several slave dwellings throughout the United States.
South Carolina is home to several nationally acclaimed African American poets who have left the state to pursue their crafts and careers in stunning fashion. Three South Carolina native poets have gone on to win the National Book Award for Poetry in the last decade. This lecture will explore the work of such poets as … Read more
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
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
