Stories of Struggle: Claudia Smith Brinson in conversation with Marjory Wentworth

Author and journalist Claudia Smith Brinson in conversation with poet and activist Marjory Wentworth about the struggle for civil rights in South Carolina.

In this pioneering study of the arduous struggle for civil rights in South Carolina, Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, bombings, cross burnings, death threats, arson, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured—as well as the astonishing courage, devotion, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for equality. Through extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred fifty civil rights activists, many of whom had never shared their stories with anyone, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, preaching, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins that altered the landscape of civil rights in South Carolina and reverberated throughout the South. 

Claudia Smith Brinson, a newspaper journalist in South Carolina for more than thirty years, spent much of her career with Knight Ridder media company as a senior writer, writing coach, associate editor, and columnist. She taught writing at the University of South Carolina and directed the Writing for Print and Digital Media major at Columbia College. Brinson won more than thirty state, regional, and national awards, including Knight Ridder's Award of Excellence and an O. Henry Award for short fiction, and she was a member of the Pulitzer finalist team covering Hurricane Hugo.

Marjory Wentworth is the New York Times bestselling author of Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets with Kwame Alexander and Chris Colderley. She is the co-writer of We Are Charleston: Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel with Herb Frazier and Dr. Bernard Powers and Taking a Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights, with Juan E. Mendez.  She was named by Governor Mark Sanford as the sixth South Carolina Poet Laureate in 2003. Wentworth serves on the Board of Advisors at The Global Social Justice Practice Academy, and she is a 2020 National Coalition Against Censorship Free Speech is for Me Advocate. She teaches courses in writing, social justice and banned books at The College of Charleston.