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Articles by: Charleston Currents

HISTORY: Women’s suffrage in South Carolina

S.C. Encyclopedia | The enfranchisement of women in South Carolina was first discussed publicly during the Reconstruction period. A women’s rights convention held in Columbia in December 1870 received a warm letter of support from Governor R. K. Scott. In 1872 the General Assembly endorsed a petition of the American Woman Suffrage Association to grant women political rights, but it adjourned without taking any specific action. The earliest suffrage clubs in the state were not organized until the 1890s, but suffragists were beginning to receive notice. Writing for the Charleston News and Courier in 1882, the journalist N. G. Gonzales described the typical suffragist as “thirty to sixty, a majority of considerable embonpoint, a majority passable looking, a majority with gray hair and a majority wearing bright colors.”

by Charleston Currents · 02/19/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

CALENDAR, Feb. 12+: SEWE returns to Charleston this week

Staff reports | The Southeastern Wildlife Exposition returns to Charleston starting Feb. 16 for the annual three-day sportsman’s extravaganza that brings thousands to the Holy City to enjoy wildlife and nature-oriented activities. An awards dinner is set for Feb. 14, followed by private viewing hours and a gala on Feb. 15.

This year, wildlife enthusiasts will enjoy everything from art auctions and sales to balls, oyster roasts and wildlife tours. There will be education events, such as the Feb. 18 discussion by Garden & Gun on the future of oyster aquaculture, and fun events, such as the always-popular Dock Dogs performances.

by Charleston Currents · 02/12/2018 · Comments are Disabled · calendar

Photo courtesy of Charleston International Airport.

GOOD NEWS: Frontier Airlines adds flights to Austin, Trenton

Staff reports | Low-fare carrier Frontier Airlines last week announced it will begin the only nonstop flights to Austin, Texas, and Trenton, N.J. in April. This announcement comes before the carrier even begins service at Charleston International Airport on Feb. 20 with previously announced nonstop flights to Denver and Philadelphia. Flights to Chicago start in May.

“Even though we have yet to start service, the Charleston community has already embraced our unique brand of ‘Low Fares, Done Right,’” said Scott Fisher, senior director of ancillary revenue and loyalty for Frontier Airlines. “We are committed to making flying affordable for everyone and to be adding new service here before our first flights have even departed speaks to the early support of the community and our partners here at the Charleston airport. With these two new flights, we will now offer low-cost, nonstop flights to five great destinations.”

by Charleston Currents · 02/12/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Good news, News briefs

MYSTERY PHOTO: Twin towers

Where are these impressive twin towers located in South Carolina? Send your guess to editor@charlestoncurrents.com with “Mystery Photo” in the subject line. Please make sure to include your name and contact information.

Last issue’s mystery: The Jan. 29 mystery, shown at right, was a picture from 1979 of the railroad station in Branchville, S.C. What’s interesting about it is how two sets of tracks split with the station in the middle. Hats off to those who correctly identified the image: George Graf of Palmyra, Va., Tom Tindall and Mary Honey Coan, both of Edisto Island; Paul Hedden of James Island; and Mary Bush Bryan of Hampton, S.C. (If there were others, we apologize for not identifying you, but some of our inbound emails over the last week didn’t get to us.)

by Charleston Currents · 02/12/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Mystery Photo, Photos

FEEDBACK: Forgiveness column still touches heart

John W. Martin III, McBee, S.C.: “It has been over a year and a half since I read your column about forgiveness at Emanuel Church in Charleston (I just read it again). You are one of the few who seem to acknowledge the greatness of what happened there. The difference in what happened in Charleston and what happened in other places after similar atrocities is incredible. It continues to return to my mind to the point that I want to visit that church.”

by Charleston Currents · 02/12/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Feedback

HISTORY: Mepkin Abbey

S.C. Encyclopedia | Located on the Cooper River, Mepkin Abbey has a diverse history. In its early life the property served as the seven-thousand-acre rice plantation and family home of the eighteenth-century statesman Henry Laurens. Surviving traces of the plantation include a family cemetery and a large oak avenue. In 1936 the noted publisher Henry Luce, who established both Time and Life magazines, purchased the property.

While living at Mepkin, Luce and his wife, Claire Booth, hired the architect Edward Durell Stone to construct several buildings on the site, including a forester’s lodge, a laundry building, a pump house, and a farm manager’s house, made mostly of brick. Stone received his training at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and spent his early career designing houses in the international style. The buildings at Mepkin reflect his modernist sensibility. The Luces also hired the landscape architect Loutrel Briggs, designer of many important gardens in South Carolina, to create a formal composition of camellias and azaleas overlooking the Cooper River.

by Charleston Currents · 02/12/2018 · 1 comment · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

A 2014 photo of the bowling alley that is part of the story of the Orangeburg Massacre. Photo by Andy Brack

FOCUS: The Orangeburg Massacre, 50 years ago

By Jack Bass | On the night of Feb. 8, 1968, police gunfire left three young black men dying and twenty-seven wounded on the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. Exactly thirty-three years later, Governor Jim Hodges addressed an overflow crowd there in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Auditorium, referring directly to the “Orangeburg Massacre”—an identifying term for the event that had been controversial—and called what happened “a great tragedy for our state.”

The audience that day included eight men in their fifties—including a clergyman, a college professor, and a retired army lieutenant colonel—who had been shot that fateful night. For the first time they were included in the annual memorial service to the three students who died—Samuel Hammond, Delano Middleton, and Henry Smith. Their deaths, more than two years before the gunfire by Ohio National Guardsmen that killed four on the campus of Kent State University, marked the first such tragedy on any American college campus.

by Charleston Currents · 02/07/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Features, Focus, S.C. Encyclopedia

CALENDAR, 2/5+: Get a singing Valentine, more

Staff reports | The Charleston Barbershop Chorus and Palmetto Vocal Project will deliver Singing Valentines to that special someone in your life on Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day.

For $50, the a cappella singers wearing distinctive red, white and black attire will visit all kinds of places — restaurants, schools, offices, hospitals, retirement communities or homes — and sing for your loved one a love song, deliver a Valentine’s Day card and a long-stemmed rose provided by Belvas Flower Shop of Mount Pleasant.

by Charleston Currents · 02/05/2018 · Comments are Disabled · calendar

CALENDAR, Jan. 29+: How to book a singing Valentine

Staff reports | The Charleston Barbershop Chorus and Palmetto Vocal Project will deliver Singing Valentines to that special someone in your life on Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day.

by Charleston Currents · 01/29/2018 · Comments are Disabled · calendar

GOOD NEWS: Series to look at healing from cultural trauma

Staff reports | The College of Charleston is offering a semester-long series to give voice to sociological trauma and the ways in which societies, countries and cultures have worked to heal from conflicts born out of issues such as systemic racism, slavery, genocide and political oppression.

According to a news release, the loosely unified series, titled “When the War Is Over: Memory, Division, and Healing,” brings together a collection of public lectures and forums that address historical trauma and the ways in which sites that have experienced such trauma have moved, or might move toward building a sustainable, peaceful community. From slavery and segregation in the United States to the Holocaust and the impact of the native Brazilian peoples upon the arrival of the Portuguese in the 17th century, the series explores the complexities of how groups move on from a collective feeling of trauma.

by Charleston Currents · 01/29/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Good news, News briefs