An Honest Look at Our History

Class 1. September 15 · Reading Greenville

Week 1 asked how to read a city. Greenville is layered. Its landscape holds evidence. We began with the Reedy River and the falls, then turned to the Cherokee homeland that existed before Greenville had a name. Richard Pearis claimed land but lost it in the Revolution, Greenville’s first false start. Vardry McBee bought more than 11,000 acres in 1815 and built lasting institutions. He was also an enslaver. Both facts belong in one history.

lecture-1-reading-the-city

Class 2. September 22 · Building the Old Greenville

Week 2 asked who held power in early Greenville and who made its prosperity possible. By 1860, more than one in three county residents was enslaved. Lowcountry wealth, churches, and schools helped sustain that order. Benjamin Perry opposed secession but defended slavery. Greenville sent more than 2,000 men to Confederate service. After emancipation, Wilson Cooke, once enslaved by Vardry McBee, helped write the 1868 state constitution. Black churches and schools outlasted Reconstruction’s end in 1877.

lecture-2.-who-build-greenville

Class 3. September 29 · From Reconstruction to Textile Capital

Week 3 traced Greenville from 1877 to 1900. As the city industrialized, South Carolina restricted Black voting through the Eight Box Law and the 1895 Constitution. Black churches and schools endured. Mary Camilla Judson and the Thursday Club built women’s civic life. Camperdown and Piedmont proved textiles could succeed, and mills multiplied. Mill villages offered farm families steady work, housing, and community under company control. Greenville built its modern economy inside a segregated political order.

lecture-3-reconstruction-to-textiles-2

Class 4. October 6 · Greenville Looks Outward

Week 4 followed Greenville as it looked outward from 1907 to 1940. The Kelsey and Guild plan imagined the Reedy River as a public asset. Camp Sevier brought about 100,000 soldiers and federal money. The Poinsett Hotel and municipal airport presented Greenville to the nation. The Depression showed the cost of those connections. New Deal programs left Paris Mountain State Park and Greenville Senior High School. The city grew more capable without becoming more equal.

lecture-4.-greenville-looks-outward

October 13 · The City Begins to Come Apart

Civil rights, highways, suburbs, shopping centers, textile decline,
urban renewal, and downtown disinvestment.

October 20 · Max Heller and the Politics of Belief

Downtown decline, the Bartholomew and Halprin plans,
Heller’s leadership, and renewed confidence in Main Street.

October 27 · Greenville’s Public-Private Gamble

Main Street’s redesign, the Hyatt project, redevelopment finance,
public risk, and preservation.

November 3 · Knox White and the Second Reinvention

Falls Park, the West End, RiverPlace, Fluor Field,
the Swamp Rabbit Trail, and Unity Park.

November 10 · The New Greenville and Its Unfinished Work

International growth, tourism, housing, displacement, inequality,
preservation, identity, and belonging.