Charleston Currents – Reconstruction

BRACK: Beaufort to become national hub of Reconstruction history

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Sandwiched between the Southern stains of slavery and oppressive Jim Crow laws were a few years of mostly forgotten history, the Reconstruction era.

In the months ahead, the Beaufort area is poised to become the nation’s hub for rediscovering and understanding the promise of Reconstruction to newly-freed slaves as they started to engage in America by voting, buying land and living in freedom.

by Andy Brack · 03/04/2019 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

3/4: The long hike; Beaufort and Reconstruction; Home tips

IN THIS EDITION

FOCUS: Headed out to hike the Appalachian Trail … again
COMMENTARY, Brack: Beaufort to become national hub of Reconstruction history
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: South Carolina Ports Authority
REAL ESTATE: What you need to know about maintenance of your home
GOOD NEWS: New director hired for public library system
FEEDBACK: Palm’s right on the money about folly of I-526 extension
MYSTERY PHOTO: There’s a big clue in this photo mystery
S.C. ENCYCLOPEDIA: Reconstruction (part 1 of 2)
CALENDAR: Columbia Ballet to stage production based on Green’s paintings

by Charleston Currents · 03/04/2019 · Comments are Disabled · Full issue

HISTORY: Reconstruction in South Carolina

S.C. Encyclopedia | The final defeat of the Confederacy in 1865 brought an important and difficult problem for the federal government: how were the defeated states to be brought back into the Union? Most agreed that this should be accomplished as rapidly as possible, but not so rapidly that the planter elite that had led the South in secession would be able to renew the rebellion or reverse the results of the war. The South would have to remain under federal control until it was deemed safe to leave matters to the southern state governments. This probationary period of federal control was termed “Reconstruction.”

by Special to Charleston Currents · 12/05/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

Depression-era photographer Marion Post Wolcott snapped this image in 1939 of tomato pickers on their lunch break in a field near Homestead, Fla. Charleston County once was home to a huge truck farming industry, which included tomatoes that were shipped to northern markets. Photo from the Library of Congress.

FOCUS: Toward a more truthful — and useful — Charleston history

By Charlie Smith, Special to Charleston Currents | When the Charleston County Planning Commission’s subcommittee on historic preservation announced last year that consultants had been hired to conduct the 2016 update of the Historic Resources Survey, I was initially very excited that we would finally be addressing some of our past failures to protect important historic sites and buildings throughout Charleston County.

Realizing that we did not have endless funds with which to work, we began to narrow the scope to a task that was feasible given our limited resources. I was initially not happy at all with the 1940-1975 time frame chosen for the limited study.

Charleston has a deeply-rooted complicity at every level in the atrocious politics of skin color …

by Andy Brack · 09/05/2016 · 1 comment · Focus, Good news