The South Caroliniana Library, located on the historic Horseshoe of the University of South Carolina campus in Columbia, is one of the premier research archives and special collections repositories in South Carolina and the American Southeast. The library's holdings—manuscripts, published materials, university archives, and visual materials—are essential to understanding the Palmetto State and Southern culture as it has evolved over the past 300 years. When opened as the South Carolina College library in 1840 it was the first freestanding academic library building in the United States. Designed by Robert Mills, architect of the Washington Monument, it is built in the Greek Revival style and features a replica of the reading room that once housed Thomas Jefferson's personal library in the second Library of Congress. When the college built a larger main library (now known as the McKissick Museum) in 1940, the Mills building became the home of "Caroliniana"—published and unpublished materials relating to the history, literature, and culture of South Carolina. Through a dedicated mining of the resources this library has held, art historian John M. Bryan crafted this comprehensive narrative history of the building's design, construction, and renovations, which he enhanced with personal entries from the diaries and letters of the students, professors, librarians, and politicians who crossed its threshold. A treasure trove of Caroliniana itself, this colorful volume, featuring 95 photographs and illustrations, celebrates a beautiful and historic structure, as well as the rich and vibrant history of the Palmetto State and the dedicated citizenry who have worked so hard to preserve it. A foreword is provided by W. Eric Emerson, director, South Carolina Department of History and Archives.

This work offers a look at the construction and renovation of South Carolina's most important government structure, the State House. Prompted to research the building by its restoration between 1995 and 1998, the author witnessed every stage of excavation, demolition and rebuilding.

Describes the transformation of one of the nation's oldest public institutions of higher learning into a modern research university The history of the modern University of South Carolina (originally chartered as South Carolina College in 1801) describes the significant changes in the state and in the character of higher education in South Carolina. World War II, the civil rights struggle, and the revolution in research and South Carolina's economy transformed USC from a small state university in 1939, with a student body of less than 2,000 and an annual budget of $725,000, to a 1990 population of more than 25,000 and an annual budget of $454 million. Then the University was little more than a small liberal arts college; today the university is at the head of a statewide system of higher education with eight branch campuses. Henry H. Lesesne recounts the historic transformation of USC into a modern research university, grounding that change in the context of the modernization of South Carolina and the South in general. The half century from 1940 to 1990 wrought great changes in South Carolina and its most prominent university. State and national politics, the challenges of funding modern higher educations, and the explosive growth of intercollegiate sports are among other elements of the University that were transformed. Lesesne describes with candor and impressive research how the University of South Carolina and, indeed, all of the state's higher education system emerged from a past limited by racism and poverty and began to measure its aspirations by national educational standards.

The first comprehensive narrative of the South Carolina state capitol and the history enshrined in its monuments from 1787 to the present The South Carolina State House grounds are a work in progress—a cultural landscape of human-built and natural components connected physically, conceptually, and aesthetically. As public property, the grounds should represent and welcome everyone in the state. While it is a beautiful space, it is not neutral. Over the past two centuries, various groups have jostled for political and cultural power, and the winners have used the grounds to assert their authority and broadcast political positions on the state's most visible stage. These struggles have resulted in a perpetually evolving space. In The South Carolina State House Grounds, the first comprehensive narrative of this important site at the heart of the Palmetto State, Lydia Mattice Brandt details the history of the state capitol and its setting—including the national, state, and local histories enshrined in its monuments—from 1787 to the present. Brandt argues that generations of private citizens and elected officials, who recognized the power of erecting public monuments and buildings that recall certain versions of history, have consciously shaped this highly charged, visible, and public place to assert authority over both the past and present. By recounting the intentions behind each element in the landscape, this guidebook considers how South Carolinians have used this place as a site of storytelling and mythmaking. The South Carolina State House Grounds, a chronological history of the state's grandest public space, includes more than sixty illustrations that track the site's transformation over more than two centuries. Brandt chronicles the events that occurred in and around its buildings, the stories of the people memorialized in the grounds' monuments, and the histories of the monuments themselves.

In the 1940s South, it seemed that non-Black Latino people were on the road to whiteness. In fact, in many places throughout the region governed by Jim Crow, they were able to attend white schools, live in white neighborhoods, and marry white southerners. However, by the early 2000s, Latino people in the South were routinely cast as "illegal aliens" and targeted by some of the harshest anti-immigrant legislation in the country. This book helps explain how race evolved so dramatically for this population over the course of the second half of the twentieth century. Cecilia Marquez guides readers through time and place from Washington, DC, to the deep South, tracing how non-Black Latino people moved through the region's evolving racial landscape. In considering Latino presence in the South's schools, its workplaces, its tourist destinations, and more, Marquez tells a challenging story of race-making that defies easy narratives of progressive change and promises to reshape the broader American histories of Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, immigration, work, and culture.