“Destiny’s People: Stories from South Carolina” by Don
Koonce (30 min.) plays at the State Museum in Columbia, S.C., and presents a
view of colonial history as itself part of a Civil War. The film does not
diminish the fact that the demand for luxury clothing based on hand-spun cotton
increased the demand for the crop even in the 1700s and helped promote slavery,
even to brutal extremes.
The film then does cover the role of Fort Sumter, and the
hardships of reconstruction (and the economic abuses of sharecropping), before
S.C. turned itself into a manufacturing hub, especially for textiles, during
and right after World War II. Manufacturing
would decline with the globalization in the 1980s.
The film is narrated by a bearded man (Koonce?) talking to
children, as if teaching a history class.
The Museum also offers a 10 minute short “History of the
Columbia Mill”, which is the story of the renovated building that the Museum is
now in. The Confederate Relic Room is
now housed there, and the official Confederate flag (removed from the Capitol
recently) is not yet displayed because of political issues. The section also has some material from Fort
Jackson regarding the Vietnam War, and that is welcome since civilian visitors
are currently not allowed on the post to see the Post museums without military
escort during the heightened alert status.
The SC Military Museum near the USC campus and stadium also has some Ft.
Jachson material.
No comments:
Post a Comment