Walter Edgar's Journal

South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal is retiring at the end of 2015. First elected to the court in 1988, Toal has served as its chief since 2000. This week on Walter Edgar's Journal, Toal joins Dr, Edgar to talk about her career and about the changes she has helped bring to South Carolina’s court systems. And she gives a preview of her upcoming James Otis Lecture, September 18th.

Walter Edgar welcomes two old friends to Walter Edgar's Journal this week, Dorothea Benton Frank and Mary Alice Monroe. Monroe talks about her new novel, The Summer’s End (Gallery/Simon & Schuster, 2015), the final installment her Lowcountry Summer trilogy of books. In All the Single Ladies (Harper Collins, 2015), Dorothea Benton Frank again takes us deep into the Lowcountry of South Carolina, where three unsuspecting women are brought together by tragedy and mystery.

--- All Stations: Fri, Aug 7, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Aug 9, 4 pm ---

Charleston native Margaret Bradham Thornton is the editor of the highly praised Tennessee Williams’ Notebooks (2006, Yale Press), for which she received the C. Hugh Holman Prize for the best volume of southern literary scholarship, given by the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. Her latest work is the novel, Charleston (2014, Harper Collins), which Walter Isaacson calls a "lyrical tale [which] explores the emotional terrain of love, loss, and memory." She talks with Walter Edgar this week about her life growing up in Charleston, her career, and the vital role of literature in her life.

--- All stations: Fri, Jul 10, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jul 12, 4 pm ---

---All stations: Fri, Jul 3, 12 pm | News stations: Sun, Jul 5, 4 pm---

There's a long history to the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., — affectionately known as "Mother Emanuel" — where nine churchgoers were allegedly shot and killed by 21-year-old Dylann Roof on Wednesday night. Part of that history involves Denmark Vesey, a West Indian slave, and later a freedman, who planned what would have been one of the largest slave rebellions in the United States had word of the plans not been leaked.

--- All Stations: Fri, Jun 19, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Jun 21, 4 pm ---

(Originally broadcast 10/30/12) - In his book, The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera, Dr. Harvey H. Jackson III traces the development of the Florida-Alabama coast as a tourist destination from the late 1920s and early 1930s, when it was sparsely populated with "small fishing villages," through to the tragic and devastating BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.

Greenville Chautauqua has been performing educational interactive historical theater continuously since 1999. The group's administrator, Caroline McIntyre is our guest, along with local historian Judy Bainbridge and presenter Leslie Goddard. They will talk about this year's program, America at the Movies. Presenters will portray Mary Pickford, Orson Welles, Gordon Parks, and Walt Disney.

---All Stations: Fri, May 22, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 24, 4 pm--- (Originally broadcast 01/10/14) - In the years following World War I, the New Orleans French Quarter attracted artists and writers with low rent, a faded charm, and colorful street life. By the 1920s Jackson Square became the center of a vibrant but short-lived bohemia. A young William Faulkner and his roommate William Spratling, an artist who taught at Tulane, were among the "artful and crafty ones of the French Quarter." In Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s (LSU Press, 2012) John Shelton Reed introduces Faulkner's circle of friends ranging from the distinguished Sherwood Anderson to a gender-bending Mardi Gras costume designer and brings to life the people and places of New Orleans in the jazz age.

----All Stations: Fri, May 15, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 18, 4 pm----

--- All Stations: Fri, Apr 10, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Apr 12, 4 pm --- In his book, Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order (Free Press, 1992) John F. Marszalek presents general William Tecumseh Sherman as a complicated man who, fearing anarchy, searched for the order that he hoped would make his life a success.

- All Stations: Fri, Apr 3, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Apr 5, 4 pm -

- All Stations: Fri, Mar 27, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Mar 29, 4 pm -

The University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Humanities and Institute for Southern Studies concludes its series Conversations on the Civil War with a look back to 1865, the end of the war, the beginning of freedom for thousands of slaves, and the period of Reconstruction in the South.

(Note: this program was originally scheduled for 02/20/15)

Please Note: Conversations on the Civil War with guest Robert Brinkmeyer has been resheduled for next week.

- All Stations: Fri, Feb 13, 12:00 pm | News Stations: Sun, Feb 15, 4:00 pm -

Bryan Tayara and Dr. John Mark Dean share a passion for sustainable, locally caught seafood. Tayara is owner of Our Local Catch, and Dr. Dean is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Science and Ocean Policy with the University of South Carolina's Marine Science Program. They talk with Dr. Edgar about the state of South Carolina’s crabbers, fishermen, shrimpers, and other suppliers.