Free Event – Call, Click or Email to Register

George W. McDaniel Education Center at Drayton Hall

Sunday, February 11, 2024  –  2 pm to 4 pm

****To register for this free event, please call Drayton Hall 843-769-2606 or email asatterthwaite@draytonhall.org or click here. 

“Just Sharing: Building Community through Stories of Our Past” is a series of discussions across South Carolina about stories from the past regarding the impact of hate. Its aim is to inspire community members to work toward shared goals through conversations and community building. George McDaniel, former executive director of Drayton Hall, will participate. Owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the site is managed by the Drayton Hall Preservation Trust.

The Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at Clemson University and the Director of the Humanities Collaborative in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina joined the Project Director to plan “Just Sharing.” The phrase originated from a partner who offered “Just Sayin’,” a Southern expression with a hint of sarcasm, but also a connection to the pursuit of truth and justice. 

A faculty member from the University of South Carolina and one from Clemson University will present stories of the American and South Carolina past. George McDaniel, an historian and former director of Drayton Hall, will share stories from his new book: Drayton Hall Stories: A Place and Its People, stories that strengthened individuals in their resolve to overcome adversity.  Audience discussion will ensue.

After the program, copies of Drayton Hall Stories from Drayton Hall’s museum shop will be sold and signed by McDaniel as well as by others in the book who might be at the program. Light refreshments will be served.

Presenters:

George W. McDaniel, Ph.D., is the former executive director of Drayton Hall and the author of Drayton Hall Stories: A Place and Its People, recently published by Evening Post Books of Charleston. The book has won the SC Preservation Honor Award from the SC Dept. of Archives and History and the A.S. Salley Professional Service Award from the Confederation of SC Historical Societies.

Jennifer Gunter, Ph.D., is a historian at the University of South Carolina and Director of the Collaborative on Race.  She is a trained facilitator and mediator. She helps to foster honest dialogues in organizations and communities to increase community, respect, and belonging. In 2022 she was named a Racial Healing Practitioner Fellow with the WK Kellogg Foundation.

Rhondda Robinson Thomas, Ph.D., is Clemson University’s Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature. She has published the award-winning Call My Name, Clemson: Documenting the Black Experience in an American University Community.  She and community partners are developing a Mellon Foundation funded Black Heritage Trail on campus and in Seneca and Clemson, South Carolina. She serves on the State Board of Review for the National Register of Historic Places.

Project Leadership:

Randy Akers, Executive Director, South Carolina Humanities

Alice Taylor-Colbert, Ph.D., Project Director, is an American historian focusing on Southern Culture and Cherokee Studies who is currently a consultant for SC Humanities.  In 2004 she participated in a Fulbright-Hayes summer seminar in South Africa to design a course that compared and contrasted segregation in the American South to apartheid in South Africa.  As a leader of humanities projects since 1987, she will guide this SCH partnership project. 

Program locations for the Series: Allendale, Beaufort, Charleston, Clemson, Columbia, Conway, Florence, Lancaster, Laurens, Lyman, and Orangeburg.  To facilitate trust and open discussion, the programs will not be recorded.  

Sponsoring Organizations: A Partnership Project of South Carolina Humanities, Clemson University and the University of South Carolina.

A National Endowment for the Humanities Initiative: “United We Stand: Connecting through Culture” Grant Project, 2023-2024.