Project to digitize 60 years of S.C. newspapers
A rich but dusty archive of South Carolina history -- newspapers published throughout the state from 1860 to 1922 -- will become Web accessible through the S.C. Digital Newspaper Project, an initiative of University Libraries.
The project, funded with a two-year $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), will scan, enhance, and deliver to the Library of Congress an estimated 100,000 pages of selected S.C. newspaper titles. The resulting online archive will reflect major artistic, literary, religious, ethnic, cultural, economic, and political events in South Carolina and surrounding states.
“The 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War in 2011 offers our nation an opportunity to reexamine the war’s origins and impact,” said Craig Keeney, cataloger for the Published Materials Division of South Caroliniana Library. “As South Carolinians played significant roles during and after the Civil War, it is crucially important that South Carolina newspapers spanning the years 1860 to 1922 be made available to researchers through the ‘Chronicling America’ online database.”
Staff from University Library’s Digital Activities Center and the South Caroliniana Library, which holds roughly 1,000 newspaper titles representing every county in South Carolina, will comprise the project staff.
“For over 200 years, librarians have acquired, collected, preserved and made accessible manuscripts and printed materials at the South Caroliniana Library,” said Kate Boyd, digital collections librarian. “I hope that this next step towards even more accessibility to South Carolina newspapers will capture people’s interest from around the world in South Carolina and American history. We are excited to bring these invaluable primary resources to the people through free access on the Web.”
University Libraries have previously partnered with the NEH to provide access to South Carolina newspapers. In the 1980s, the University received a planning grant to inventory South Carolina newspapers, which culminated in the publication of South Carolina Newspapers, an exhaustive county-by-county reference book. In the 1990s, University Libraries cataloged 1,249 newspaper titles and filmed 990,332 pages with financial support from the NEH U.S. Newspaper Program.
Newspaper publishing in South Carolina during Reconstruction (1865-77) saw the emergence of papers published by former ruling elites (Democrats), recently freed African Americans, and reformers from the North. By the early 20th century, four major daily newspapers—The State (Columbia), the News and Courier (Charleston; now Post and Courier), the Greenville Daily News (now Greenville News) and the Daily Herald (Spartanburg; now Spartanburg Herald-Journal)—covered local, regional, and national news for the state’s inhabitants.
Other notable papers of the era included the Sumter Herald, the Camden Chronicle, and the Aiken Journal and Review. The papers reflected such national events as the Spanish-American War and economic trends such as industrialization. S.C. news stories included the disenfranchisement of African Americans, the passage of discriminatory Jim Crow laws, the establishment of the S.C. Dispensary (the only entity legally authorized to sell alcohol), and the shooting of The State newspaper’s editor by the lieutenant governor and his subsequent trial and acquittal.
By 1920, approximately one hundred newspapers were being published concurrently in South Carolina, including 18 dailies and 73 weeklies. Their contents reflected the various progressive reform efforts within the state to address child labor laws, the state’s poorly funded and operated educational system, and the harsh working and living conditions in the textile mills and mill villages.
By University Marketing & Communications