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2. Paul Flaherty, Interview by Ryan Little, 16 April 2018
- Date:
- 4/16/2018
- Description:
- Paul Flaherty, a former Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, discusses his upbringing as part of an Irish-American family in Boston and in Charleston. The paternal side of his family came from Galway in the early 1900’s and settled in Boston. The lore states that his family goes back to the twelfth century in Ireland. His father, Anthony, was in the Navy, while his mother, Mary, was a homemaker. He is the oldest of five children. He shares fond memories of growing up and being immersed in Irish culture at his grandparents’ house in South Boston, surrounded by a houseful of Irish immigrants and constantly hearing stories about Ireland. Most of the immigrants he came into contact with during childhood had emigrated to the States for work. He briefly discusses the importance of identifying as Americans first, specifically in how his grandparents spoke Gaelic but didn’t pass it on to the next generations, and of the importance of ensuring that the next generation of Irish-Americans are as well-educated as they can be. He also discusses the prevalence of Irish gangs in Boston. One of his main assertions is that, from his perspective, the Irish culture and Irish heritage is severely lacking in Charleston, especially when compared to the culture he was surrounded by in childhood in Boston.
3. Letter to Oliver W. Woodruff, 1968
- Date:
- 1968
- Description:
- Handwritten correspondence to Oliver W. Woodruff, Dean of Students at Emerson College, regarding Millicent Brown.
4. Letter to Jacob S. Raisin from Jane Lazarus Raisin, June 17, 1919
- Date:
- 1919-06-17
- Description:
- Handwritten letter from Jane Lazarus Raisin to husband Jacob Salmon Raisin, where she discusses plans in Isle of Palms, their daughter, the comings and goings of friends, and home rennovations.
5. William Martin Aiken Sketchbook, 1878-1879
- Date:
- 1878
- Description:
- Pencil sketches and occassional watercolors by Charleston-born architect William Martin Aiken. The sketches are primarily buildings and architectural elements from Charleston, Boston, Rhode Island, France, England, Switzerland.
6. William Martin Aiken Sketchbook, 1878-1885
- Date:
- 1878
- Description:
- Pencil sketches by Charleston-born architect William Martin Aiken. Primarily images of buildings and architectural elements in Boston, Charleston, Atlanta, Virginia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Montreal, and Quebec City.
7. Interview with Blanche Boyd, February 9, 2020
- Date:
- 2020-02-09
- Description:
- Blanche McCrary Boyd (pronouns: she/her/hers) describes the events that lead to her becoming an acclaimed novelist and professor at Connecticut College. Born in Charleston, SC in 1945 to working class parents, she lost her father at age 15, one of the crucial events of her life. Living with family on a 400-acre plantation near Rantowles, SC, she became “radicalized” by events seen on television, realizing, unlike other members of her family, that she lived in a racist society, finding a “sense of horror” and a “sense of beauty” in the South. She attended Duke University and met Dean Boyd, the man she married, while attending Harvard University summer school. Boyd credits her husband for helping her mature and encouraging her writing once she decided upon that as a goal. Moving to California, Boyd began writing seriously at Pomona College, and won a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University. Her marriage unraveled, as she discovered feminism, and her attraction to women, bringing her to a “different reality.” She had starting drinking alcohol soon after her father’s death and she spent over a decade abusing it and drugs as she moved to New York and became a “radical lesbian.” She helped set type for the classic novel Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown, and founded Sagaris, an “institute for feminist thought,” associating with leading feminists, including accused bomber Patricia Swinton. She published essays, mostly about the South, in The Village Voice, learned how to “seize” her authority, and published books on popular musicians under the name Vivian Claire. She returned to Charleston, continuing writing and publishing novels, becoming sober in 1981. She discusses how a teenage car wreck involving a Black man’s death became the “fulcrum of my understanding of life” and how it serves as a metaphor for America as she wonders “what white people who are anti-racist are going to do about white supremacy.” She and her wife Leslie are the mothers of twins, James and Julia, and Boyd reflects on parenting, Leslie’s life-threatening illnesses, and how her novel Tomb of the Unknown Racist has capped her fiction writing career. As retirement from Connecticut College looms, she assesses her accomplishments, notes satisfactions, and the many surprising turns her life took.