In this authors-in-conversation event, we will be joined by South Carolina journalists Claudia Smith Brinson and Issac J. Bailey to discuss the history of the struggle for civil rights in South Carolina as well as the current topics that have increasingly divided Americans, from police brutality and Confederate symbols to poverty and respectability politics.

This event will be hosted as a YouTube Live stream on Itinerant Literate's channel. The link to watch is provided upon ticket purchase. Participants will be able to submit questions via a live chat window.

Both authors' books are available from the Bookstop, and your entry fee goes toward your purchase (coupon code sent with admission ticket).

About the Authors

Claudia Smith Brinson, a South Carolina journalist for more than thirty years, has won more than thirty 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. Visit StoriesofStruggle.com. She is the author of Stories of Struggle.

Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina by Claudia Smith Brinson

In this pioneering study of the long and arduous struggle for civil rights in South Carolina, journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, cross burnings, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured—as well as the astonishing courage, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for equality. Through extensive research and interviews with more than 150 civil rights activists, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins. These intimate stories of courage, both heartbreaking and inspiring, shine a light on the progress achieved by nonviolent civil rights activists while also revealing white South Carolinians’ often violent resistance to change. Although significant racial disparities remain, the sacrifices of these brave men and women produced real progress—and hope for the future.

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Issac J. Bailey is an award-winning journalist and the James K. Batten Professor of Public Policy at Davidson College. He has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Charlotte Observer, Politico Magazine, Time, and many more, and has appeared on NPR, CNN, and MSNBC. Bailey was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and has taught journalism and applied ethics at Coastal Carolina University. His memoir, My Brother Moochie: Regaining Dignity in the Face of Crime, Poverty, and Racism in the American South, was published by Other Press in 2018. He currently lives in Myrtle Beach with his wife and two children. He is the author of Why Didn't We Riot?

Why Didn't We Riot? : A Black Man in Trumpland

In these impassioned, powerful essays, an award-winning journalist deals forthrightly with what it means to be Black in Trump’s America. South Carolina–based journalist Issac J. Bailey reflects on a wide range of complex, divisive topics—from police brutality and Confederate symbols to respectability politics and white discomfort—which have taken on a fresh urgency with the protest movement sparked by George Floyd’s killing. Bailey has been honing his views on these issues for the past quarter of a century in his professional and private life, which included an eighteen-year stint as a member of a mostly white Evangelical Christian church.

Why Didn’t We Riot? speaks to and for the millions of Black and Brown people throughout the United States who were effectively pushed back to the back of the bus in the Trump era by a media that prioritized the concerns and feelings of the white working class and an administration that made white supremacists giddy, and explains why the country’s fate in 2020 and beyond is largely in their hands. It will be an invaluable resource for the everyday reader, as well as political analysts, college professors and students, and political consultants and campaigns vying for high office.

Buy the Book

Both authors' books are available from the Bookstop, and your entry fee goes toward your purchase (coupon code sent with admission ticket).