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...

 

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...

 

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...