Join the South Carolina Archives & History Foundation for our Spring Speaker Series. The three-part lecture is free.
The February and March programs will be held virtually using Webex. Noon – 1:00 PM; The April program will be in person.
FEBRUARY 8 Noon-1:00 PM (virtual via Webex)
South Carolina African American Confederate Pensioners
Speaker: Dr. Walter Curry, Publisher and Historian
This session explores the reasons why South Carolina used African American labor during the war; the diverse roles of African American labor during the war; SC approval of Confederate pensions for African Americans; notable features of the pension application; and notable South Carolina African American Confederate Pensioners. The session also offers suggestions for research and curation projects to broaden the stories of SC African American Confederate Pensioners.
MARCH 8 Noon-1:00 PM (virtual via Webex)
Bates-Foreman Cemetery Project: Cold War Era Re-Interments in Jackson, South Carolina, 1951-1954
Speaker: Haley Milner, Brian Milner, Savannah River Archaeological Research Program
Over 70 years ago in 1951, 6,000 residents in rural Aiken, Allendale, and Barnwell Counties were displaced for the construction of what is now the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site. From those communities, 162 cemeteries located within the proposed plant boundary were affected. Of this number, 127 cemeteries were moved. The 5,634 burials that were removed to cemetery locations outside the plant hold a unique place in the United States’ Cold War history. Since the spring of 2019, staff of the Savannah River Archaeological Research Program have researched the site of some of the grave reinternments at the Bates-Foreman Cemetery in Jackson, South Carolina. This presentation highlights the procedures followed by the AEC and Corp of Engineers as they endeavored to relocate single graves to entire cemeteries and continues with the subsequent survey and case study of the rural Bates-Foreman Cemetery by program staff.
APRIL 7 11:00 AM – Noon Drayton Hall Stories: Preserving the Recent History of a Place
Location: Archives & History Center, 8301 Parklane Road, Columbia, SC 29206
Speaker: Dr. George McDaniel, Retired Executive Director of Drayton Hall
How can we use historic preservation and recent history to build bridges? If Charles Drayton and Catherine Braxton, descendants of the slave owner and of the enslaved at Drayton Hall, can use them to try and forge a way forward, can we? Drayton Hall Stories: A Place and Its People is the book that they wanted. The result is grounded in a specific site yet universal. It will underscore the importance of using a place to preserve recent history and will ask how diverse people can tell their stories about the past yet to be unified by their hopes for the future.