The Recovery Agent – Review of This New Treasure Hunt Novel

Recently, I received The Recovery Agent from a particularly well-read aunt who thought I’d enjoy the story. The Recovery Agent is a recent (2022) novel from the prolific writer Janet Evanovich. Evanovich has written almost as many novels as Taylor Swift has breakup songs, but her books are new to me, so I was in. […]

The Ellenton Riot – One More Bloody Massacre in American History

The Ellenton Riot began about a month after the Hamburg Massacre, on September 16 of 1876. Like the Hamburg Massacre, it was in South Carolina and involved angry, armed, racist whites massacring African Americans. The main difference seems to be that in the Ellenton Riot, the body count of dead African Americans was much greater. […]

The Hamburg Massacre – A Tragic, Bloody Day In U.S. History

The Hamburg Massacre took place in South Carolina in July of 1876. It was another of the low-water marks of the era of American history we call Reconstruction, the twelve years following the end of the Civil War. Hamburg was a small town in South Carolina, just across the Savannah River that forms the state’s […]

The Orangeburg Massacre – One More Killing the US Has Forgotten

My last post described the sit-in movement that began in Orangeburg, South Carolina in 1960. Today’s post is the story of how participation in the civil rights movement grew deadly, resulting in the Orangeburg Massacre in 1968. It ranks among the greatest losses of life of any event in the civil rights movement. Events Leading […]

The Orangeburg Sit-Ins – Revealing More Racist Injustice in America

The year 1960 was an important one throughout the South. It witnessed the beginning of the sit-in movement. Sit-ins began in Greensboro, North Carolina. They spread quickly and eventually included such places as Rock Hill and Orangeburg in South Carolina. What happened in the Orangeburg sit-ins sheds light on many key aspects of the Civil […]

Octavius Catto, Civil Rights Legend

The career of Octavius Catto ranks among the great stories of the United States in the 1800s. This versatile figure came to prominence during and after the Civil War. This was a time of dramatic change in America. Octavius Catto is a second-generation figure in the struggle of African Americans for equality in the United […]