Many thanks to The State for publishing Dr. W. Eric Emerson's article on the importance of the Ordinance of Secession. The creation of this document, no matter what your feelings are surrounding the time period in which it was written, changed the nation forever. It is incumbent upon us to "explore exactly how this occurred and to reshape long-held notions regarding
the document's place in our state's past and future." (excerpted from the editorial "How South Carolina Changed the World" by Dr. Emerson that appeared on 12/12/2010)
The 150th commemoration of South Carolina's Secession is a somber occasion to reflect on all aspects of that time in our history and take the opportunity to explore all causes including slaery. We are not dismissing the notion that slavery was the cause. It is our responsibility to recognize that cause as well as the other factors that helped motivate the creation of the document. We are more educated if we look at all pieces of the puzzle and not just the straight edges around the border.
The South Carolina Department of Archives and History's exhibit, From Confretonation to Conflict, depicts South Carolina's path from Nullification to Secession through historical documents. Please join us for the opening of the exhibit on Friday, December 17th at 11 am and check them out for yourself.
We would not presume to expect you to change your opintion on that period of our history, merely to open your mind to historical facts depicted in official state documents. You might be surprised.
To see the full article published in The State, please use this link: http://www.thestate.com/2010/12/12/1600767/emerson-how-south-carolina-changed.html
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Monday, December 13, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
Celebrating Archives Month
Did you know that October is National Archives Month? South Carolina Archives have lots of great events and exhibits planned and we hope you'll join us in celebrating the wonderful treasures we preserve! The theme this year, Documents Can Change a Nation, focuses on the importance of the records archives have. We don't just have paper, we have records that resonate and mark significant state and national historical events! We encourage you to visit our 2010 Archives Month website for all the latest event and exhibit happenings in South Carolina. http://scarchivesmonth.palmettohistory.org
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Annual Civil War Symposium is Approaching
This December marks the 150th anniversary of South Carolina secession from the Union. Happy Sesquicentennial South Carolina! And what better way to celebrate this anniversary than to register for our Annual Civil War Syposium, September 24th and 25th. You'll meet great people, see original documents, and learn about South Carolina and her role in the Civil War. The line up so far has some phenomenal speakers including featured speaker, Dr. William W. Freehling. Dr. Freehling has been teaching, researching, and writing about the Old South and the Civil War for over forty years so you don't want to miss a chance to hear and meet this award winning historian. Registration information can be found at http://civilwarsymposium.palmettohistory.org/ and we hope to see you all there!
Monday, March 1, 2010
Updates! and Notes on the Zen of Archiving
So it's been a while. Busy couple of weeks. Not a lot of good news floating around the archives, but on the up side, March 13 is the first Saturday of four that we'll be open with extra hours (8:30-5pm). Take advantage while you can!
It's contest season for those of you who are interested in the National History Day program, and for those of you who want to participate, they always need people to volunteer, whether as judges or simply to post signs. Odds are that there's a contest in your region, going on now. Or very soon. And of course, there's the state contest here in April. Start looking here.
Now, onto the zen of archiving. "Zen" being used loosely here, of course.
I've been chewing over the dichotomy of archival work, specifically that of public history. On one hand, as a professional, you're obligated to protect and defend, as it were, the records that constitute the known history of said particular locale (in this case, a state). On the other hand, you are summarily required to provide access to these records. Very often, these two demands are at odds - excess handling, copying, usage, etc. tends to destroy documents over time. But locking them away in a climate controlled, sterile environment for all eternity is (while perhaps best for preservation) contrary to everything the historical community stands for (knowledge and truth seeking), and in this case, possibly illegal (hence the public in public records).
Trying to find a happy medium, then, is the best one can presumably achieve. But how does one define balance between destruction and preservation, access and exclusivity? At what point is the line drawn, and a decision made: to prioritize preservation over access, or knowledge over future existence, or worse yet, that no one cares? Is there a way to do it all?
It's contest season for those of you who are interested in the National History Day program, and for those of you who want to participate, they always need people to volunteer, whether as judges or simply to post signs. Odds are that there's a contest in your region, going on now. Or very soon. And of course, there's the state contest here in April. Start looking here.
Now, onto the zen of archiving. "Zen" being used loosely here, of course.
I've been chewing over the dichotomy of archival work, specifically that of public history. On one hand, as a professional, you're obligated to protect and defend, as it were, the records that constitute the known history of said particular locale (in this case, a state). On the other hand, you are summarily required to provide access to these records. Very often, these two demands are at odds - excess handling, copying, usage, etc. tends to destroy documents over time. But locking them away in a climate controlled, sterile environment for all eternity is (while perhaps best for preservation) contrary to everything the historical community stands for (knowledge and truth seeking), and in this case, possibly illegal (hence the public in public records).
Trying to find a happy medium, then, is the best one can presumably achieve. But how does one define balance between destruction and preservation, access and exclusivity? At what point is the line drawn, and a decision made: to prioritize preservation over access, or knowledge over future existence, or worse yet, that no one cares? Is there a way to do it all?
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Old Skool
Since we're experiencing some problems adding files to our facebook photo album "Buried Treasures", you get to view here the following rules for the Yorkville Female Academy, dated 1820. My favorite part is the cost of tuition.
So Popular!
Guess who else made it in the news? Rebekah Dobrasko from the State Historic Preservation Office, in an article about mid-century school construction in response to "separate but equal". Props to Rebekah, too!
The State article is here: Segregation Spurred SC School Building Spree.
The State article is here: Segregation Spurred SC School Building Spree.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Path to the Stacks
Or, Wait, I Can Do What With My Degree?
Graduate school at a large research university exposes one to the peculiar variety of faculty temperaments found at an institution where the phrase “publish or perish” is bandied about over coffee. On the one hand, it brings in excellent faculty, trotting around waving their Ivy league doctorates, their prestigious awards, fellowships, committees, obligations, and, in a few cases, demanding entourages. There’s the group that loves to research their field, and resent having to teach at all. There’s the group who loves to teach, and is annoyed by the pressure to publish profusely or be replaced. And largely, there’s a group trying frantically to balance it all and have a real life, too, you know, one with a mortgage and kids and a lawn to mow and maybe the time to see a movie once in a while.
In the perfect world, grad students are expertly trained in their field of study and properly prepared for a career path, whatever the path may be in their chosen field. Choosing a career path is dependent on student motivation, and also on advisor willingness to make the student aware of options they may be overlooking. And this particular balance has been the subject of freak-outs by those in the archival profession for decades. Research and presentations on the subject of archival awareness and training date back at least 40 years in the trade journals, such as the Journal of American Archivists. Who are these students? How many are there? Are there enough to support and expand the field as people retire? Are they getting the right education to be ready for employment without too much investment on the part of their employers? Do they even know that the archival profession exists and is a viable option? How do we recruit more? Etc.
If (sigh) only (alas) those were the problems nowadays. Budget cuts have closed archival training programs at major universities (and for that matter, at least one also suspended its history teaching & certification program, creating a history-major crisis among students and setting the stage for an entirely new set of problems in the future [No history teachers!]). Archives themselves have been the subject of enormous cuts across the country. Some close, some dissolve, some are “restructured” into nonexistence or folded into sister institutions or libraries that are also facing red tape. Now the opposite problems face the archival profession – too many cuts, not enough money, a too-tight job market, no hope, general despair, and the concerning problem of what will happen to these priceless documents if all the archives are gone.
Graduate school at a large research university exposes one to the peculiar variety of faculty temperaments found at an institution where the phrase “publish or perish” is bandied about over coffee. On the one hand, it brings in excellent faculty, trotting around waving their Ivy league doctorates, their prestigious awards, fellowships, committees, obligations, and, in a few cases, demanding entourages. There’s the group that loves to research their field, and resent having to teach at all. There’s the group who loves to teach, and is annoyed by the pressure to publish profusely or be replaced. And largely, there’s a group trying frantically to balance it all and have a real life, too, you know, one with a mortgage and kids and a lawn to mow and maybe the time to see a movie once in a while.
In the perfect world, grad students are expertly trained in their field of study and properly prepared for a career path, whatever the path may be in their chosen field. Choosing a career path is dependent on student motivation, and also on advisor willingness to make the student aware of options they may be overlooking. And this particular balance has been the subject of freak-outs by those in the archival profession for decades. Research and presentations on the subject of archival awareness and training date back at least 40 years in the trade journals, such as the Journal of American Archivists. Who are these students? How many are there? Are there enough to support and expand the field as people retire? Are they getting the right education to be ready for employment without too much investment on the part of their employers? Do they even know that the archival profession exists and is a viable option? How do we recruit more? Etc.
If (sigh) only (alas) those were the problems nowadays. Budget cuts have closed archival training programs at major universities (and for that matter, at least one also suspended its history teaching & certification program, creating a history-major crisis among students and setting the stage for an entirely new set of problems in the future [No history teachers!]). Archives themselves have been the subject of enormous cuts across the country. Some close, some dissolve, some are “restructured” into nonexistence or folded into sister institutions or libraries that are also facing red tape. Now the opposite problems face the archival profession – too many cuts, not enough money, a too-tight job market, no hope, general despair, and the concerning problem of what will happen to these priceless documents if all the archives are gone.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Building Great Schools (For All the Wrong Reasons)
Sung to the tune of Johnny Lee’s Country classic “Looking for Love”
Pop Quiz: Which Southern state passed its first sales tax (3%) and spent $124 million dollars on new schools and buses between 1951 and 1956 with the expressed purpose of keeping the state’s children segregated?
A. Georgia
B. Mississippi
C. South Carolina
D. Maryland
E. All of the above
If you answered C, you are correct. If you answered A or B, you get partial credit, since Georgia and Mississippi enacted similar programs. If you answered D, you, like many of that state’s residents, are under the delusion that Maryland is still considered a “Southern” state.
In 1951 South Carolina passed its first general sales tax in order to fund a statewide program of school construction in response to Briggs v. Elliott, a lawsuit based in Clarendon County, which challenged the state’s constitutional “separate but equal” education provision. This “equalization” program was intended to construct new African American elementary and high schools across South Carolina to circumvent a potential desegregation ruling by the Supreme Court. The multi-million dollar school building campaign utilized modern school design, materials, and architecture to build new rural, urban, black, and white schools in communities throughout the state.
SCDAH staffer Rebekah Dobrasko has done an outstanding job of documenting this fascinating, bizarre, shameful, and yet beneficial period in our state’s history through her research and the creation of a website entitled South Carolina’s Equalization Schools, 1951-1960 at http://scequalization.schools.officelive.com. The site is an example of the stimulating research being conducted by members of our busy and intellectually curious staff. Take a look at the website; you won’t be disappointed.
Pop Quiz: Which Southern state passed its first sales tax (3%) and spent $124 million dollars on new schools and buses between 1951 and 1956 with the expressed purpose of keeping the state’s children segregated?
A. Georgia
B. Mississippi
C. South Carolina
D. Maryland
E. All of the above
If you answered C, you are correct. If you answered A or B, you get partial credit, since Georgia and Mississippi enacted similar programs. If you answered D, you, like many of that state’s residents, are under the delusion that Maryland is still considered a “Southern” state.
In 1951 South Carolina passed its first general sales tax in order to fund a statewide program of school construction in response to Briggs v. Elliott, a lawsuit based in Clarendon County, which challenged the state’s constitutional “separate but equal” education provision. This “equalization” program was intended to construct new African American elementary and high schools across South Carolina to circumvent a potential desegregation ruling by the Supreme Court. The multi-million dollar school building campaign utilized modern school design, materials, and architecture to build new rural, urban, black, and white schools in communities throughout the state.
SCDAH staffer Rebekah Dobrasko has done an outstanding job of documenting this fascinating, bizarre, shameful, and yet beneficial period in our state’s history through her research and the creation of a website entitled South Carolina’s Equalization Schools, 1951-1960 at http://scequalization.schools.officelive.com. The site is an example of the stimulating research being conducted by members of our busy and intellectually curious staff. Take a look at the website; you won’t be disappointed.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Teaching American History (Instead of "Sports 101")
“History is like an amusement park. Except instead of rides, you have dates to memorize.”
Marjorie Bouvier Simpson
Flash back to the 11th or 12th grade, and you and your classmates are sitting before your high school's assistant football coach. On this day, he is your “history teacher,” and he is supposed to lecture on the causes of World War I. You have read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August to prepare for the lecture. Your “history teacher,” however, is so excited about Friday’s game that he breaks out the projector and shows grainy film footage of a night, ten years before, when he blew out his knee. He rewinds the film again and again to show the exact moment a white helmet crashed into his leg and negated a scholarship offer from a “big time college program” (if you can call Mars Hill a “big time college program”). The bell rings and you stumble to your next class wondering if Austria-Hungary would have been better served by an emperor with the attention span of your history teacher/coach.
Sound familiar? Well there is a program designed to ensure that budding young historians do not suffer at the hands of poorly-prepared teachers. For the past three years, SCDAH has been a co-sponsor of the Teaching American History in South Carolina program, which provides professional development support to teachers by offering a series of 10-day summer institutes, which take place in the Pee Dee, Upstate, and Midlands. A history professor, or master scholar, leads the course, and provides content instruction in American history. Participants also take part in master teacher workshops and cultural institution presentations. Classes are held at local museums, libraries, and historic sites across South Carolina, and all activities utilize local primary source materials or objects relating to the periods or themes being studied. Participants conduct primary-source research and create original lesson plans.
The program’s goal is to ensure that our state’s history teachers offer accurate and engaging curriculum to their students, instead of regaling them with tales about how they “won the big game” (which is more than Kaiser Wilhelm II could say). For more information about Teaching American History in South Carolina, please contact Don Stewart at stewart@scdah.state.sc.us or 803-896-6224, or visit the website at www.teachingushistory.org.
Marjorie Bouvier Simpson
Flash back to the 11th or 12th grade, and you and your classmates are sitting before your high school's assistant football coach. On this day, he is your “history teacher,” and he is supposed to lecture on the causes of World War I. You have read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August to prepare for the lecture. Your “history teacher,” however, is so excited about Friday’s game that he breaks out the projector and shows grainy film footage of a night, ten years before, when he blew out his knee. He rewinds the film again and again to show the exact moment a white helmet crashed into his leg and negated a scholarship offer from a “big time college program” (if you can call Mars Hill a “big time college program”). The bell rings and you stumble to your next class wondering if Austria-Hungary would have been better served by an emperor with the attention span of your history teacher/coach.
Sound familiar? Well there is a program designed to ensure that budding young historians do not suffer at the hands of poorly-prepared teachers. For the past three years, SCDAH has been a co-sponsor of the Teaching American History in South Carolina program, which provides professional development support to teachers by offering a series of 10-day summer institutes, which take place in the Pee Dee, Upstate, and Midlands. A history professor, or master scholar, leads the course, and provides content instruction in American history. Participants also take part in master teacher workshops and cultural institution presentations. Classes are held at local museums, libraries, and historic sites across South Carolina, and all activities utilize local primary source materials or objects relating to the periods or themes being studied. Participants conduct primary-source research and create original lesson plans.
The program’s goal is to ensure that our state’s history teachers offer accurate and engaging curriculum to their students, instead of regaling them with tales about how they “won the big game” (which is more than Kaiser Wilhelm II could say). For more information about Teaching American History in South Carolina, please contact Don Stewart at stewart@scdah.state.sc.us or 803-896-6224, or visit the website at www.teachingushistory.org.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Hope Springs Eternal
Or at least for a good while longer. Congratulations to the Hope School Community Center!The Hope School Community Center is the name of a Rosenwald School located in rural Newberry County near Pomaria. This little gem of a building was named for the local family who donated the land upon which it was built. It also represented the hope for a better future of the African American children who attended this two-room school from 1925-1954.
And on Saturday August 22, 2009, “hope” captured the feeling of the many guests who gathered in the recently renovated building to celebrate its new life as a community center. Guests marveled at the natural sunlight flooding through the windows, the freshly painted walls and ceiling, the well-worn but newly shined wood floors, the beautifully restored metal roof. Folks in their 60s, 70s and beyond, told stories of what it was like to attend school in this sturdy building, of the miles walked each day, the fires built on cold mornings, of the discipline and love of their teachers.
,+Pomaria.jpg)
The restoration process is a remarkable story of many folks coming together – alumni, children of alums, descendants of the Hopes, students at Clemson, and many others—to make the vision of a restored school possible. And it is through their generosity in donating original school desks and a pot belly stove, the school sign, and oral history interviews to the Smithsonian, that future visitors to the National Museum of African American History & Culture, will learn about and share in this hope as well.
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To read more about the Hope School Community Center go to http://www.hopeschoolcenter.org/.
For more information about Rosenwald Schools in South Carolina go to http://www.state.sc.us/scdah/afamer/hprosenwald.htm
For more information about the national Rosenwald School Initiative go to http://www.preservationnation.org/travel-and-sites/sites/southern-region/rosenwald-schools/
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