On April 25, 1998, historians, collectors, literary scholars, and students met at McKissick Museum on the University of South Carolina’s campus to learn more about the life of the enslaved potter, David “Dave” Drake (ca. 1801- after 1870). The all-day symposium was the first academic forum to discuss not only the pottery of Drake but the political, cultural, and religious environment that shared this poet and master potter. The exhibit, also organized by McKissick Museum, examined Drake’s work as a turner in the pottery factories in Edgefield, South Carolina, for over thirty years.

In honor of South Carolina Tricentennial celebration, Archibald Rutledge, Poet Laureate of South Carolina, wrote this collection of poems about his home state. Rutledge (1883-1973) was born in McClellanville and had family ties to many prominent South Carolina families, including the Rutledges, Middletons, Pinckneys, and Horrys. After retiring as an English professor in Pennsylvania, Rutledge returned to South Carolina after being appointed the state’s first poet laureate in 1934.

Hugo Blue, a collection of student writing and drawing, records what it means to experience a terrible hurricane. This anthology informs and reassures others who have to go through a similar disaster. Students who experienced Hurricane Hugo in September 1989, either by being in the path of the storm or by hearing and reading about its destruction, shared their experiences in vivid emotions and descriptions.

In the early 1980s, English instructor Dale Alan Bailes held writing workshops in prisons across South Carolina. While attendance was often inconsistent, Bailes said, “they come and go; I keep a core of 4 at the men’s prison and 3 at the Women’s Correctional Center who attend every class and write poems both in and out of class.” Bailes considered it a privilege to teach these students something about writing, something about putting the pieces of themselves together through using words.