Charleston Currents – S.C. Encyclopedia

S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Citizens’ councils in South Carolina

S.C. Encyclopedia | Founded in 1954 in Indianola, Mississippi, Citizens’ Councils quickly spread across the South. The organizations promoted membership as a “respectable” way for disgruntled segregationists to protest civil rights activism. The councils distributed pro-segregation propaganda and attempted to protect the legality of racial segregation throughout the South. They publicly renounced violence but encouraged organized economic pressure against African Americans and whites who were sympathetic to the black freedom struggle.

by Charleston Currents · 01/16/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: ACE Basin

S.C. Encyclopedia | The ACE Basin consists of around 350,000 acres in the watershed of the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto Rivers in the South Carolina Lowcountry, which drains one-fifth of the state. The ACE Basin encompasses a range of ecosystem types from forested uplands to tidal marsh (salt, brackish, and fresh water). The basin is home for more than 260 permanent and seasonal bird species and seventeen rare or endangered species, including the wood stork and the loggerhead turtle.

History, as much as geography, unites the three rivers. By the 1750s the rivers were lined with plantations dedicated to rice production and using African slaves for the arduous labor required. Most plantations controlled tidal flows by a series of floodgates (rice trunks), dikes, and canals to grow vast amounts of rice.

by Charleston Currents · 01/08/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Circular Congregational Church, Charleston

S.C. Encyclopedia | Circular Congregational Church, dedicated in 1892, is the fourth house of worship on this site at 150 Meeting Street in Charleston. Its Richardsonian Romanesque style reflects Charleston’s tradition of adopting current architectural fashion for ecclesiastical buildings, despite the city’s famous conservatism in residential design.

Followers of many creeds populated early Charleston. The city’s first congregations, St. Philip’s (Church of England) and the Dissenter’s Society, were organized in 1681. Builders of the “White Meeting House” that gave Meeting Street its name, the Dissenters included Presbyterians, Huguenots, and Congregationalists. French Protestants soon had their own church and others withdrew to form First (Scots) Presbyterian, but the independent church flourished, dedicating a larger building in 1732.

by Charleston Currents · 01/01/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Early Judaism in South Carolina

S.C. Encyclopedia | Following the Revolutionary War, South Carolina’s Jewish population surged. When Columbia became the state capital in 1786, seven Jewish men from Charleston were among the first to buy town lots.

Jews arrived in the British colony of Carolina with the first wave of European settlement. A new outpost in the mercantile traffic of the Atlantic basin, Carolina offered economic opportunities, as well as risks, and a degree of religious tolerance remarkable for the time. The colony’s Fundamental Constitutions of 1669 granted freedom of worship to “Jews, Heathens, and other Dissenters from the purity of the Christian Religion.” Although the colonial assembly never endorsed the provision, British Charleston became known as a place where people of all faiths—except Catholics—could do business and practice their religion without interference. In 1696 Jews in Charleston allied with French Huguenots to safeguard their rights to trade and the next year to secure citizenship.

by Charleston Currents · 12/18/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: South Caroliniana Library

S.C. Encyclopedia | The South Caroliniana Library building was completed in 1840 as the central library building for South Carolina College (later the University of South Carolina). It was the first freestanding college library building in the United States, predating those of Harvard (1841), Yale (1846), and Princeton (1873).

The structure contains design elements from several architects, most notably the South Carolina native and federal architect Robert Mills. A typical Mills architectural feature is the curved stairway leading to the second-floor reading room, which was closely modeled after the original Library of Congress.

by Charleston Currents · 12/11/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: South Carolina barbecue

S.C. Encyclopedia | South Carolina barbecue is slowly cooked, hand-pulled or shredded pork that is flavored with a tangy sauce and usually served with side dishes such as rice, hash, coleslaw, sweet pickles, white bread, and iced tea. Barbecue often is served on festive occasions such as holidays, family reunions, weddings, church and community fundraisers, football tailgating parties, and political meetings. It varies widely across the state with respect to cooking methods, cuts of pork, sauce type, and side dishes served. Barbecue is often the topic of friendly debate since many South Carolinians have strong preferences for particular types that reflect the cultural character and identity of specific regions or places.

by Charleston Currents · 12/04/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Edisto Memorial Gardens

S.C. Encyclopedia | Edisto Gardens were established in the 1920s when azaleas were planted to beautify five acres in the city of Orangeburg. “Memorial” was added to the garden’s name in 1950, and a large fountain at the entrance honors the memory of those who gave their lives in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and in Vietnam. Located on the Edisto River, the gardens feature Horne Wetlands Park, where a boardwalk, boat dock, gazebo, and educational interpretative shelter allow visitors to appreciate the flora and fauna of a free-flowing black-water river surrounded by old tupelo and cypress trees.

by Charleston Currents · 11/27/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Debutante balls

S.C. Encyclopedia | The debutante ball as a rite of passage for young girls probably evolved from a seventeenth-century European custom in which aristocratic families presented their daughters at court to help them find suitable husbands. While a debutante may be presented to South Carolina society at an individual ball, tea dance, or other party given by her parents, the social events that accompany the debutante season across the state usually revolve around the official debutante balls held by organizations created specifically for that purpose.

by Charleston Currents · 11/20/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

Medals of Honor awarded by the three branches of the U.S. military. Left to right are the Army, Coast Guard/Navy/Marine Corps, and Air Force. (Source: Wikipedia.)

S.C. ENCYCLOPEDIA: S.C. Medal of Honor recipients

S.C. Encyclopedia | Approved by the United States Congress in 1862, the Medal of Honor is America’s highest award for military valor. Thirty native South Carolinians have been awarded the medal for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity” above that of their comrades in arms. On rare occasions the Medal of Honor has been awarded for individual exploits taking place in peacetime. Among them is Shipfitter First Class George Huber Wheeler of Charleston, who received the award for extraordinary heroism during a fire at Coquimbo, Chile, on January 20, 1909.

The first South Carolinian to receive the award during military action was Ernest A. Garlington of Newberry, who earned the honor for “distinguished gallantry” against the Sioux Indians at the Battle of Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890. Early in the following century, naval surgeon Middleton Stuart Elliott of Beaufort and Commander William A. Moffett of Charleston each received the decoration during hostilities against Mexican forces at Vera Cruz in April 1914.

by Charleston Currents · 11/13/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

Lighthouse at Hunting Island State Park.

SC ENCYCLOPEDIA: South Carolina’s lighthouses

S.C. Encyclopedia | South Carolina’s 180-mile coastline is replete with bays, inlets, and harbors. To assist shipping and aid navigation, lighthouses and beacons have dotted the South Carolina coast for centuries. The earliest warning lights were probably bonfires lit to aid ships entering the harbor at Charleston. South Carolina’s first lighthouse, built in 1767, stood on Middle Bay Island (now a part of Morris Island) in the Charleston harbor.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 11/06/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia