Opening Ceremonies

Collection contains photocopies, typescripts, handwritten notes and tape recordings compiled by Skardon as research undertaken to prepare a history of the College of Charleston from 1785 to 1985. It is incomplete and is primarily concerned with the period from 1935 to 1970. The history prior to 1935 was to be based largely on J.H. Easterby's "History of the College of Charleston: Founded 1770" (1935). A draft of one chapter of Skardon's planned history was completed, and it covers the years while George Daniel Grice was President (1945-1966).

Skardon gathered information from trustee minutes, the News & Courier, college catalogs, yearbooks, student newspapers, and the papers of college presidents. He completed an article on the history of the college, an outline accepted by an Advisory Committee, a preface, a rough draft for part of the early history, and a substantially completed draft for the Grice presidency (58 page typescript). He assembled photocopies of portions of the correspondence of Presidents Walter Raleigh Coppedge and Theodore Sanders Stern, and there are extensive notes to write the chapters on intergration and on the transfer of the College to the State of South Carolina.

The bulk of the collection consists of photocopies divided into topics such as accreditation, athletics, buildings and grounds, commencement speakers, curriculum, enrollment, faculty, finance, politics, student activities, trustees, and women. There is a small quantity of personal correspondence and sound recordings and also a partial transcritp of a symposium on Judge J. Waites Waring (two sound cassettes and a 14 page typescript).