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