Holiday Schedule at SCPC

Please take note: SCPC will be closed for Christmas and New Year's from December 24th through January 4th. We will reopen on January 5th.

"Christmas on the Potomac"

Please go to the East Gallery on the ground floor of Thomas Cooper Library to see SCPC's Christmas card exhibit. This year's theme is presidential greetings, and we have included a variety of cards sent by presidents from Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson to Clinton and Bush. The exhibit will be on display from December 1st through January 15, 2009.
Merry Christmas!

Two New Finding Aids Online: Edgar & Ann Morris and Charles Wickenberg

We've recently added two finding aids to our online listings:

Edgar & Ann Morris were both key figures in the growth of the Republican Party in South Carolina during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1950 Edgar was named Chairman of the state Republican Party, and he soon became involved in an effort to renew the Party as something more than a patronage organization and provide the state with a viable alternative to the Democratic Party.

Charles Wickenberg (pictured, during his tour in Korea) enjoyed a distinguished forty-year career as a journalist, primarily with The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C. He served in the Marine Corps in both World War II and the Korean War, and subsequently as Gov. George Bell Timmerman’s Executive Secretary from 1955 to 1958. This collection also contains papers concerning the Wickenberg family.

Harry C. Walker Oral History Transcript Online

We have updated our Oral History web pages with the transcript of a 1999 interview conducted by Herb Hartsook with Harry Clayton Walker (1925-2008).

Walker served as Governor Fritz Hollings’ legal assistant from 1959 to 1963. He was responsible for all legal matters that reached the Governor’s office, advised Hollings on the constitutionality of bills sent for the governor’s signature, oversaw statewide appointments and those requiring Senate confirmation, and served as disaster coordinator for South Carolina and as liaison with all law enforcement. This latter capacity proved particularly challenging, as Walker worked closely with SLED chief Pete Strom (at left, in profile) to ensure the peace during this watershed period of civil rights activities.

As Walker notes, “When I went to work in the morning, I never knew where I was going to lay my head...that night.” In this interview, he reflects on his service, particularly civil rights matters, and provides his appraisal of Hollings’ gubernatorial legacy.

Re-elected!

Joe Wilson, U.S. House of Representatives (2nd District), and Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senator, were both re-elected on Tuesday. Both have donated their collections to SCPC for future research.

Graham has served in the U.S. Senate since 2003 and previously in the U.S. House from 1995 to 2003. Wilson began his service in the U.S. House in 2001, winning a special election following the death of Congressman Floyd Spence.

Congratulations to them and their supporters.

Republican Party "Pioneer" Reunion

Gov. and Mrs. Mark Sanford and the Republican Party hosted a reunion at the Governor’s Mansion on Saturday, Oct. 25, 2008 for over three hundred Republican “pioneers,” folks active in the Party prior to 1974. SCPC was invited to mount an exhibit and the pioneers were requested to bring memorabilia to add to SCPC’s Heritage Hunt collection.

James B. Edwards, South Carolina’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, welcomed the crowd, which included such early Party luminaries as Gayle Averyt, Mark Buyck, Marshall Cain, Crawford Clarkson, John Courson, Martha Edens, Ray Harris, Tommy Hartnett, Joyce Hearn, Marshall Mays, Roger Milliken, John and Erminie Nave, Marshall Parker, Ken Powell, Arthur Ravenel, Greg Shorey, Johnnie Mac Walters, Billy Wilkins, and Ed Young, as well as congressmen Henry Brown and Joe Wilson and newly elected National Committeeman Glenn McCall.

The exhibit was well received. Six portable cases featured materials from our collections of the papers of Charlie Boineau, Jim Edwards, Edgar and Ann Morris, Ken Powell, the Republican Party, Greg Shorey, Floyd Spence, and Bill Workman, and vertical files on Marshall Parker and Albert Watson. One case was devoted to the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, a landmark event in the rise of the Republican Party in South Carolina.

We appreciate the kindnesses shown us by Rusty DePass, Gov. & Mrs. Edwards, Gov. & Mrs. Sanford, and Gay Suber in assuring that we were represented in this fine event and to thirteen pioneers who brought and donated memorabilia.

Revised Finding Aid: Charles Cecil Wyche

C.C. Wyche once noted, “A Judge cannot be a great Judge unless the members of the Bar of his State are great lawyers. Lawyers teach Judges the law. That feeling that Judges know all the law is clearly erroneous.” Wyche would have known. The South Carolina native served for thirty years as a U.S. District Judge in Spartanburg.

Charles Cecil Wyche (1885-1966) began his public career by representing Spartanburg County in the S.C. House of Representatives from 1913 to 1914. He served in the U.S. Army during World War I, shipping out to Europe in 1918. Upon his return to South Carolina he served as city and then county attorney for Spartanburg from 1919 to 1933 before his judicial appointments.

We have created a new and improved finding aid for the C.C. Wyche papers, and it is now available on the Wyche collection page.

The papers, ranging from 1903 to 1969, consist largely of correspondence to and from Judge Wyche on a number of topics. From letters he wrote to his mother while at The Citadel, to letters to and from other judges, to letters from inmates and their families, to letters of condolence upon the Judge’s death in 1966. Other material relates to Wyche’s judicial appointments and subjects ranging from desegregation, judicial annual reports, and his military career among others.

Many thanks to grad assistant Julie Milo for her diligent work on this project!

Cartoon Question from the Hollings Collection

Help us figure out what this means!

We know that Fred Lasswell was a popular cartoonist best known for his comic strip Barney Google and Snuffy Smith.

However, we can't explain the meaning behind this particular sketch.


If you have any thoughts about it, please let us know!

New Digital Collection: I.D. Newman

SCPC recently collaborated with USC Libraries' Digital Collections department to scan and make available the items in our I. DeQuincey Newman collection due to the fragile nature of the papers. Thanks to painstaking efforts on the part of the digitizers, the product is now up and running!

I. DeQuincey Newman was a Methodist pastor, entrepreneur, and a leading figure in the Civil Rights movement in South Carolina, serving as the NAACP's state field director from 1960 to 1969. In 1983, at age 72, he was elected to the South Carolina Senate, thus becoming the first African American to serve in that body since Reconstruction.

Please take a look at the digital collection, and feel free to let us know if you find it helpful. NOTE: Photo by Bill Barley

Presidential Prospects & Palmetto Politics

We mounted a new exhibit in Thomas Cooper's East Gallery on September 22nd in conjunction with an Associated Press photographic exhibit.

View of the East Gallery showing the new exhibits

One of our cases showing items from

the 1976 and 1984 presidential campaigns

The first of more than a dozen panels on display from the AP;

On September 25th AP photographer Scott Applewhite

gave a lecture sponsored by the School of Journalism and

Mass Communication and the University Libraries.

Part of the mobile exhibit we brought to the Applewhite lecture

The Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library

Today our future building, now being constructed behind Thomas Cooper Library, was officially named for Senator Fritz Hollings. The Senator's collection, recently opened to researchers, is currently our largest at 860 feet.

The Naming was marked by a reception at

Thomas Cooper at which the Senator made remarks.

Senator Hollings speaking with the press

For the reception we put together this portable

exhibit of classic Hollings photos and ephemera.

And here we are with our student assistants.