South Carolina 
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SOURCE: PEN America
6/13/2023
PEN Condemns Censorship in Removal of Coates's Memoir from AP Course
Several students reported their teacher using terms that mirrored the language of the state law—claiming the lesson "made them ashamed to be Caucasian"—resulting in the school board's decision to remove the book from an Advanced Placement Language course.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
3/30/2023
Gullah Geechee of Sea Islands Fight for their Post-Slavery Legacy
by DeNeen L Brown
The Gullah Geechee people were chosen for enslavement in the Sea Islands because of their experience cultivating rice in Africa, and maintained a distinctive culture with strong African elements through slavery and emancipation. Development and gentrification threaten that legacy today.
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SOURCE: NBC News
3/23/2023
SC Barbecue Restaurant With History of Civil Rights Rejection in News Again
In 1964, Piggie Park Barbecue defended its owner's choice no to serve Black customers by claiming racial integration violated his religious beliefs, a claim the Supreme Court later called "patently frivolous."
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SOURCE: Substack
2/16/2023
Nikki Haley's Confederate Flag Revisionism
by Kevin M. Levin
"Hopefully, Haley understands that a presidential bid means that she is no longer sitting in a room with the Sons of Confederate Veterans."
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/15/2023
Nikki Haley's Confederate Flag Story
The former South Carolina governor, now once again a presidential candidate, has claimed credit for taking the Confederate flag off of the state house. A timeline shows she was often more conciliatory to the powerful pro-Confederate constituency in the state.
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SOURCE: Black Perspectives
2/14/2023
HBCUs and the 1950s Red Scare
by Candace Cunningham
South Carolina officials were able to use the purse strings to coerce public HBCU administrators to expel student activists. When private HBCUs became centers of sit-in organizing, state legislators turned to accusations of Communism.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
4/8/2022
Why Legislators Want to Fire All of University of South Carolina's Trustees
Legislators have challenged the board's handling of a presidential search and the campus budget, among other concerns.
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SOURCE: The State (SC)
1/21/2022
Legislators: Come See How I Use 1619 Project in My Classroom Before You Ban It
by Woody Holton
South Carolina's H. 4343 bill would impoverish the history education legislators claim to value. Could an invitation to observe how the demonized 1619 Project is used as a teaching tool change any minds?
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SOURCE: Washington Post
9/8/2021
The Shocking Saga of the Murdaughs of South Carolina
"People with power and money in such tribal regions can retain their hold on their ways — and their communities — for a long time. But corruption never strays far from the prideful and the powerful, especially among those who inherit privilege."
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SOURCE: Bitter Southerner
8/17/2021
Who Owns Uncle Ben?
by Shane Mitchell
"Why would anyone preserve a crop, no matter how flavorful and aromatic, with such a disturbing heritage?" Shane Mitchell examines why.
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SOURCE: Vox
5/20/2021
Why Firing Squads are Making a Comeback in 21st-Century America
South Carolina's proposed return to execution by firing squad reflects the facts that, while the Roberts Court is very protective of capital punishment, it is increasingly difficult for states to acquire the drugs needed to perform lethal injections. It remains to be seen if firing squads will turn public opinion against capital punishment.
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SOURCE: USA Today
5/3/2021
Teacher Appreciation Week: In a Tough Year, These Educators Stood Out
Clemson historian Rhondda Thomas is among the history teachers lauded for excellence – for work to memorialize the Black people who were enslaved by the university or employed under exploitative conditions of convict labor or Jim Crow.
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SOURCE: USA Today
3/12/2021
Rice is a 'Frequent Visitor' at Tables in the South, A New Cookbook Digs Up the Complicated Way it Got There
Food historian and chef Michael Twitty examines the cross-cultural and transatlantic history of rice in Southern cooking and culture.
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SOURCE: Go Upstate
3/16/2021
Digging into the History of the Former Dixie Shirt Textile Business in Spartanburg
Founded by an immigrant Jewish family who moved to Spartanburg from New York City, the Dixie Shirt Company connected the histories of American Jews, labor, industry, and war mobilization in the South. Furman historian Diane Vecchio uncovered the story as part of a plan to redevelop the site.
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SOURCE: WIS-TV
3/9/2021
SC Lawmakers Announce Legislation to Protect Monuments Statewide
"Democratic Representative Seth Rose says the controversial monuments like Ben Tillman, who was the former governor and known racist, need to come down."
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SOURCE: Columbia Post and Courier
2/16/2021
Veteran Journalist Donates Trove of Civil Rights-Era Research to University of South Carolina
“I think that’s what I find amazing. Even in terms of the curriculum in the state of South Carolina, that those kind of moments are not necessarily common knowledge, where you have an Orangeburg Massacre,” Crump said. “No pun intended, it’s almost like an educational blackout.”
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/10/2021
The Attempted Insurrection was Only Part of the Right’s Anti-Democratic Playbook
by Melissa DeVelvis and DJ Polite
The overthrow of Reconstruction in South Carolina involved a symbiotic relationship between white political leaders and a loose coalition of armed white vigilante groups.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/17/2020
Despite Everything, People Still Have Weddings at ‘Plantation’ Sites
Despite claims by many estates that weddings and events pay for educational programming that addresses the history of slave labor on the property, many still debate the ethics of using plantation properties for celebrations.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
9/29/2020
The Persistence of Segregation in South Carolina
The Supreme Court's artful directive to desegregate with "all deliberate speed" invited many school districts to do so as slowly as possible. Historian Millicent Brown was the first Black student to integrate a white high school in Charleston, South Carolina and has researched a book about the experiences of similar students.
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SOURCE: Greenville (SC) Post and Courier
8/17/2020
Clemson Discovers Graves of Dozens of People Enslaved by John C. Calhoun
“My research shows that Black lives hardly mattered at all at Clemson until after desegregation, and the discovery we made in this burial ground tells me that Black deaths mattered even less,” Dr. Rhondda Thomas said Monday. “The thing that I found was that Black labor mattered the most on this land where Clemson was built.”