For more than 40 years, Walter Edgar taught the history of South Carolina to USC students and was a prolific scholar, writing several history books about the Palmetto State. Now retired but still hosting a podcast about state history, Edgar reminisces about his long career at the university.
Welcome to Remembering the Days, where we explore the stories and talk with the people who are part of the rich history of the University of South Carolina. I'm Chris Horn, and today, university historian Evan Faulkenberry and I are talking with Walter Edgar, who is one of the most recognized professors in USC's history department for his books and teaching and longtime radio show about South Carolina history. Among his many books, Professor Edgar wrote a definitive history about the Palmetto State that's one of the all time bestsellers for the University of South Carolina Press.
He also founded the public history program at the university and was a long-time director of USC's Institute for Southern Studies. In our conversation today with Dr. Edgar, we talk about how he ended up at Carolina in the first place, and we'll enjoy some memories about his early years at the university. Whether you've heard him on his long running radio show that's now a podcast or read one of his books, or maybe even had him as a professor back in the day, you're in for a treat. Let's get started.
Evan Faulkenbury: Thank you, Dr. Edgar, for talking with us today. We first wanted to hear from you about what brought you to USC in 1965 after wrapping up your studies at Davidson.
Walter Edgar: At Davidson, I had majored in history and with some good faculty advisors, decided to go to graduate school. I had applied to five different graduate schools, accepted at all, trying to figure out which one I could afford. And then out of the blue, I got a letter from the University of South Carolina. I'd applied here and they offered me a graduate fellowship which paid $1,800 and also courses could be had for $10 an hour.
The decision was made that I was coming to the University of South Carolina to get my Ph.D. I did in four years. I got my degree in August 1969. I actually took leave from active duty a long weekend and came back and was hooded at the Township Auditorium — that's where they used to do the graduate ceremonies. Spent two years in the military, including a year in Vietnam on an advisory team. And while I was there, I applied for a postdoctoral fellowship with the National Archives, working with the writing project. And I was selected to come back to USC to work with the papers of Henry Laurens. And when that year was up, I worked briefly for the House Committee on Historical Research and started teaching in the history department at USC.
My graduate work was with the late George Rogers, who was one of the the country's most distinguished scholars, certainly of the revolution and, and of South Carolina. And my dissertation had been on colonial South Carolina, um, in general and Revolutionary War America. George was teaching the first half of the South Carolina history course. It was a two semester course. He taught the first half. The late Dan Hollings taught the second half. First half ended in 1865, and I'd been on the faculty two years. And George said, ‘I'm tired of teaching South Carolina. You're going to teach it.’ ‘Yes, sir!’ That was 1975. And so until I retired in 2012, that was among I taught that first half of South Carolina history. I taught courses in the Revolution. I taught graduate courses in Colonial America, historic preservation.
You can't plan everything. Some things are just going to happen. My career was never planned. It just it just kind of worked out.
Evan Faulkenbury: How did you graduate with a Ph.D. in four years? Because usually it takes five, six, seven, eight, nine.
Walter Edgar: At Davidson, I had gone through ROTC and I was commissioned, and the Army said that we will postpone you for up to four years to get a graduate degree if you do that. I said, I came here knowing that, um, I did what a lot of graduate students didn't do. I took directed seminars in the summer, in both summer sessions, um, with faculty cooperating. I was able to get the hours to complete it in in four years. I knew what I was, what was facing me in 1969. And so I didn't waste any time. I frequently I took an overload.
Evan Faulkenbury: You were a man on a mission.
Walter Edgar: I was a man on a mission.
Walter Edgar: Back then, in the dark ages, in the 1970s, junior faculty, those of us who were not tenured had to teach. In fact, junior faculty also included associate professors. The only people who got a reduced teaching load were full professors.
So you taught three courses. You advised undergraduates. There was no professional advising corps. You were expected to serve on faculty committees, and you were to produce scholarship. By the way, as a TA (teaching assistant), my first year I worked for Dr. Gus Williamson, who's no longer here. He taught two sections of American history 201, 200 students in each section. I was the only TA.
Evan Faulkenbury: Baptism by fire.
Walter Edgar: Baptism by fire. And, of course, TAs in the history department were expected to wear coat and tie. So if you wore a coat and tie on campus and were a young person, you were either in law school or a graduate student.
Chris Horn: You saw enormous change just in the kind of students coming in and just the whole culture of the university. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about some of the things you saw over that 40-year span.
Walter Edgar: Let's go back to when I was a graduate assistant. There was still a universal bell system on campus. The bell rang, classes changed. Then that became more difficult because all of a sudden, you've got buildings that are not hooked into the system. In many ways, it's necessary because some faculty just didn't stop when it was time. And if you're hiking from the engineering college back up to campus, you know, you need more than 10 minutes in between classes in order to get there.
I mentioned the dress code for those of us who were TAs. The whole time I was here in graduate school, young women were either supposed to be wearing a skirt or they wore their raincoat. They could not come to campus, could not come to class in slacks or shorts.
Drugs were probably beginning to come into campus in 1969. I experienced having to deal with that when I was in the Army and when I came back to campus, drugs were everywhere. I can remember kids just literally just dropping by the sidewalk, you know, and then somebody calling a paramedic. In class, kids could be spaced out, that was a big change. Before that the big deal was if you taught a Friday class, you knew that everybody in the fraternity went out and got drunk on Thursday nights, so they might be hung over.
Evan Faulkenbury: You grew up in Alabama. You went to Davidson in North Carolina. How did you get interested in South Carolina history?
Walter Edgar: My field actually was Colonial America. And if you're working in colonial America, South Carolina is a very rich resource. So, as I said, I worked with the late doctor George Rogers in, in colonial America. My thesis was on the libraries of colonial South Carolina. I had taken courses with Bradley Barger, who specialized in colonial history in Imperial British history. His version of colonial history was a little bit different from George Rogers different version of colonial history. So I had a really good background in colonial history in general.
Dean Winnefeld, who had been dean of the graduate school, you had to take Winnefeld's class.
The bell would ring. He would go to the podium, he would open his notebook, he would read, the bell would ring. He'd close his notebook and walk out. There were no questions. That was just it. Bradley Barger, when the bell rang, he did welcome questions, but when the bell rang, he closed his notes and said, ladies and gentlemen, I am paid to teach for 50 minutes, not 51. Good day.
This was before the the campus had expanded across Pickens Street. So all the major departments, foreign languages, history, English, they were basically around the Horseshoe. And so that's where registration, how registration took place. And, of course, we graduate students were supposed to — we helped with registration. The most popular history course at that time was Charlie Coolidge’s History 101 classes.
And somebody said, 'There are vacancies in Coolidge's class!’ and about 50 undergraduates run across the Horseshoe to try to be in line so they could get in Charlie Coolidge's class. They did try computers, I think, in ‘67 or ‘68, and it was an unmitigated disaster.
Evan Faulkenbury: So you were here as a grad student, Ph.D. in four years. What was it like going from there into the army, into Vietnam?
Walter Edgar: I must say, having had to be a graduate assistant, a teaching assistant, being up before a crowd, being prepared, the Army taught me to do that even more. But that was, you know, a skill that I think was was useful. It's hard to say that I enjoyed my military time. I did learn at the time, particularly in Vietnam, wasn't all that pleasant, but I tried to learn as much as I could about a foreign culture. And when I came back, I said, 'I'm through with all this stuff.' But when you went through ROTC, you had to when you came off active duty, you had to go into the active reserve. And then the following summer, after I'd been home, I was activated to go to Fort Bragg to umpire war games. And I came back and told my wife, you know, I think I really like this. I'm going to try to find me a reserve unit. And I did, and I spent 25 years in the Army Reserve.
Evan Faulkenbury: I think it's rare for folks who get their Ph.D. at a certain university to then be hired not too long after as an assistant professor, as an early tenure-track person. So how did that come about? How did you feel about returning to USC and what was going through your mind?
Walter Edgar: I always felt like I had to do more than my peers, and I did.
There were some people who ... 'Yeah, he got his degree here.' But those of us who were cynical, said, 'OK, I can prove myself,' and ironically, I was tenured and promoted before some people who were on the faculty as assistant professors when I was a graduate student.
Chris Horn: That was because of your scholarly productivity, I'm guessing.
Walter Edgar: Well, it was that and I had also begun to develop what they now call the public history program. And it started with the history department. Got a new chair. Dr. Oakes retired. And Jack Sproat was hired from outside.
One of the first things Jack Sproat did was start talking to the younger faculty about where should the department go in the future. And of course, that got some senior folks a little bit — you know, 'you're supposed to talk to us about what the department is going to do.' And at some point, I was already working with the Historic Columbia Foundation. I was on their board, and I also was talking to people who were at other local historical societies. You know, they need trained staff.
So I just said, you know, we really could start training people. Jack liked the idea. He said, give me a proposal. I did, but then, you know, getting something adopted is the university is not very easy. There were some people in the history department — you mean we're going to get somebody a master's degree to work in an archive. We're going to call that history or to be the director of a historical society. Is that really a historian? The graduate director at that time was Owen Conley, who was also a little bit crusty and what have you. And he thought it was a very good idea, and he basically pushed it through the department and over to the graduate faculty, where George Reeves also saw that this is a wave of the future. And that's how the public history program got started.
Part of making a success of public history was spending time on the road, talking to the Calhoun County Historical Society, talking to the friends of the Library in Greenwood, but that at the same time I was building a relationship 'Aha! I can place an intern at the Calhoun County Museum.' It was part of my job. I also found that I really liked taking history outside the classroom and into the world, and most of my writing I did because I wanted it to be read by people outside the academy.
Reaching out into the community, ironically, that's what historians used to do in the 19th century instead of becoming so specialized and rarefied.
Evan Faulkenbury: I got to know, when did you start wearing the bow ties?
Walter Edgar: I wore them some in the '70s, and then I stopped. But when the history came out, somebody gave me a bow tie.
Evan Faulkenbury: You mean the book, The History of South Carolina?
Walter Edgar: The History of South Carolina. Well, for one thing, if you're signing books, the damn four and a half tie gets in the way. So I started wearing a bow tie, and then people started giving me bow ties. And I still have a small collection of bow ties. I don't wear that many except to go to church or occasional other function. Now, a lot of people, including college kids, will wear a bow tie. And yes, I've become identified with a bow tie.
Chris: Well that was a lot of fun listening to Walter remember his graduate days from the 1960s and his early teaching years in the 1970s. It's a treasure to be able to continue to hear him on his podcast 12 years after he's retired from the university and still learn about Colonial history of the state and really the full history of South Carolina. He is almost Mr. South Carolina when you think about the history of the Palmetto State.
Evan: But he didn't set out to become Mr. Historian of the Palmetto State. What I really enjoyed hearing was how it was almost thrust upon him by a professor in the history department who was tired of teaching South Carolina history. Then Walter Edgar through a series of events, he became the person. Then one thing led to another and he kept at the research and eventually wrote the big book on state history.
Chris: On the next episode of Remembering the Days, we're going to talk to someone who has her hands in the dirt of history, literally. Kelly Goldberg is an instructor here on campus in anthropology, and for the past year or so, she has been leading a series of digs on the Horseshoe with students. We're going to talk to her about what they are uncovering. That's on the next episode of Remembering the Days.