The University South Caroliniana Society will hold its 77th annual meeting on Saturday, April 6. A reception will be held from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at South Caroliniana Library on the USC Horseshoe. A luncheon will take place beginning at 1 p.m. at the Capstone House Campus Room.
At the luncheon, Dr. Edna Greene Medford, professor of history and department chair at Howard University, will speak on the Emancipation Proclamation and its meaning to African Americans.
The community is invited to attend both events.
Medford, shown in the photo, specializes in 19th-century African-American history. She teaches courses in the Jacksonian Era, Civil War and Reconstruction, and African-American History to 1877. She was educated at Hampton Institute, now Hampton University, in Virginia; the University of Illinois Urbana, and the University of Maryland College Park, where she received her Ph.D. in United States history. She lectures widely to scholarly and community-based groups, and has published numerous articles and book chapters on African Americans, especially during the era of the Civil War. Her publications include the co-authored The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views (2006). She also compiled and wrote the introductions to the edited two-volume work The Price of Freedom: Slavery and the Civil War, Volume I (2000), and The Price of Freedom: Slavery and the Civil War, Volume II (2000). She is the recipient of numerous awards and serves on several boards, including the Abraham Lincoln Institute and the Ulysses S. Grant Association.
The University South Caroliniana Society is a network of dedicated individuals supporting the study and preservation of South Carolina history. The Society actively collects, preserves and encourages research in materials documenting the history of the Palmetto State. Recent acquisitions made possible by the Society include the collection of artist Jak Smyrl, and an oil portrait of plantation owner Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard (1803-1886), whose life is documented in part in A Plantation Mistress on the Eve of the Civil War (1992), edited by John Hammond Moore from the manuscript diary owned by the South Caroliniana Library. Many of the items the Society has assisted in acquiring will be on display during this special Society event.
There is no charge to attend the reception; tickets to the luncheon are $40 per person. To attend either event, please RSVP by April 1 to 803-777-3131 or troyera@mailbox.sc.edu.
