Category: Uncategorized

This week guest contributor Laura McCarty, executive vice president of Georgia Humanities, considers the Civil War Sesquicentennial in our state.

For the last five years, Georgians and groups across the state have been marking the Sesquicentennial, or 150th anniversary, of the Civil War.

We read today — with heartbreak — of ISIL’s destruction of some of the world’s most important cultural sites in civilization’s “Fertile Crescent,” a few of which date back to the beginnings of known civilization.

Our connections with places and their names around the world are reminders that the past is always present, and the distant is always nearby. Nothing is more revealing of these ancient truths than the poetry of the Persian mystic Rumi, the most widely read poet in the United States.

This week guest contributor CLIFF KUHN, Georgia State University professor and Oral History Association executive director, discusses the importance of major oral history projects that have taken place in our state.

Since 2013 the Oral History Association (OHA), the national professional organization in the field, has been headquartered at Georgia State University (GSU). GSU’s own record of excellence in oral history, as manifested by outstanding collections housed in the GSU library and by work done by faculty and students across departments and disciplines, was a key reason for the OHA to move to Atlanta.

This week guest contributor PAUL PRESSLY, recounts the remarkable history of the Gullah-Geechee community of Pin Point, just outside Savannah.

Over the past several decades, South Carolina has made much of the Gullah heritage of African American communities along its coast and virtually patented the term Lowcountry, a word that conjures up the traditions and culture of a people with roots deep in West Africa.