History's his thing

Slave cabin expert to speak at lunch and learn

NOVEMBER 14, 2010 2:12 p.m. (0)

Slaves were marginalized in life and shortchanged by history, but their memory lives on in the dwellings they occupied.

“Lots of places spend inordinate amounts of money on preserving the big house on plantations,” said Joseph McGill, a program officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation office in Charleston. “But it was the slaves who drove the economic engine of the plantation system and at many sites the places where slaves lived are rapidly vanishing.”

Southerners have a love affair with the idea of plantations; moonlight and magnolias is an easy sell for tourists visiting one of the many plantation homes converted into bed and breakfast inns across the South.  Continue reading...

 

The Heritage Green space

County looks for ways to improve public awareness of arts area.

FEBRUARY 3, 2011 3:39 p.m. (1)

Heritage Green is having an identity crisis.

The home of four museums, a community theater and the county’s main library is just three blocks from Main Street, yet is not widely thought of as a part of Greenville’s burgeoning downtown.

Some say that’s because of Academy Street, one of Greenville’s main central city thoroughfares that dissects Heritage Green from the rest of downtown and a more pedestrian-friendly Main Street.  Continue reading...

 

The South, at work

Artist works to preserve a vanishing way of life

MARCH 2, 2011 12:05 p.m. (0)

Jane Bechdolt is honored to be a part of Charleston artist Mary Whyte’s latest body of work, “Working South.”

But it saddens her as well.

Bechdolt is one of 30 workers included in Whyte’s series of watercolor portraits highlighting Southern workers, but they are Southerners working in jobs that are fading away.  Continue reading...

 

And then there were 14

They helped change the course of civil rights dialogue here

MARCH 7, 2011 7:16 a.m. (0)

On the night of Feb. 15, 1947, one of the most notorious and tragic sagas in the Greenville community began when a young African American man named Willie Earle hired Thomas Brown, a white taxi cab driver, to drive him to his mother’s house in Pickens County.

Within hours after that ill-fated cab ride, a critically wounded Brown was taken to St. Francis hospital, where he died less than 48 hours later.

Soon after Brown’s injuries became known to local law enforcement, police arrested Earle and took him to the Pickens County jail.  Continue reading...

 

Need a pirate statue?

The state museum has them for sale, and plenty more

MARCH 7, 2011 8:37 a.m. (1)

Clear the props and sweep the stage for new exhibits at the South Carolina State Museum.

The state museum has filled up its storage closets and will be opening them up to the public – for sale.

On March 12, the state museum will host a garage sale for the first time since 2009.  Continue reading...

 

GSP: A History

"Thank God for Mr. Milliken and Charles Daniel"

MARCH 11, 2011 1:23 p.m. (1)

It began with a letter sent in 1945 to Eastern Airlines president Eddie Rickenbacker, inviting him to Greenville to talk about Eastern’s service to the area and the need for a new regional airport location.

Greenville and Spartanburg, back then, had their own downtown airports and the Army, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, told Greenville officials that an airbase would be built south of Greenville to train B-24 and B-25 bomber pilots fighting in World War II. The base was renamed Donaldson Air Force Base in the late 1950s.

As larger aircraft were being built to carry 100 or more passengers, the downtown airports, already 15 years old, were becoming antiquated and unprepared for handling the coming jet age.  Continue reading...

 

The most common canvas

Tattoo artists are focus of Pickens County museum exhibit

JUNE 30, 2011 12:41 p.m. (0)

They produce their artwork on what is has to be the most common “canvas” in the country.

From the whimsical to the mythological and from heartfelt tributes to fallen comrades, mothers and childhood heroes to political statements, their artistic creations are seen on upper arms, chests and legs of bikers, veterans and professionals alike.

They’re tattoo artists.  Continue reading...

 

Art and soul at the history museum

Folk art exhibit reveals the ‘put it out there spirit’ of the Gullah South

MARCH 22, 2012 2:09 p.m. (0)

Scott Blackwell was driving a seafood truck on summer break during his college years when he discovered the folk art that Gullah artists were creating along the South Carolina coast. The folk art bug hit him hard.

What started as a few pieces here and there has grown into a 500-piece folk art collection, a sampling of which is on loan to Greenville’s Upcountry History Museum for the Uniquely Southern Folk Art exhibit running until Sept. 2.

Blackwell’s collection includes pieces by Pendleton artist Richard Burnside and Greenville artist William Thomas Thompson, as well as pieces by Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Bernice Sims, Mose Tolliver, Leonard Jones, Lonnie Holley and a host of others.  Continue reading...