Remembering the Days: A USC Podcast

Decades ago, an illustrator named Robert L. Ripley presented tales of the strange, the bizarre and the unexpected — and challenged the public to 'believe it or not!' In that spirit, here are three such tales from the University of South Carolina's past.

USC desegregated 60 years ago, admitting three Black students whose enrollment made headlines. But what about the students who would follow immediately in their footsteps, continuing the university's desegregation? Two men who were part of the small, second wave of Black students in 1964 recall their experiences. 

Ever made a meal out of a few appetizers? In today's episode, we’re serving up three bite-sized stories from the centuries-old history of the University of South Carolina. 

In the past 100 years, USC has been a member of four athletics conferences. Here's a quick primer on the whens and whys of each affiliation and a look back at the university's 21-year stretch as a football independent. 

The state of South Carolina has a surprisingly rich history of Jewish presence dating back more than three centuries. It's not surprising, then, that the University of South Carolina would have its own history of Jewish life on campus. 

USC students in 1977 buried an eclectic assortment of items in a time capsule that was unearthed in 2001 for the university's bicentennial celebration. That same year, another more elaborate time capsule was buried on the Horseshoe with a scheduled opening of 2051. Here's a sneak preview of what's inside. 

USC alumni and students have been singing the university alma mater for more than 110 years. But what, exactly, is an alma mater and how did USC end up with one?

For two centuries, social dances have been knitted into the fabric of the campus social scene at Carolina. Waltzes, the One-step, shag and hip-hop—the style of dance changes but the beat goes on. 

When The Gamecock student newspaper began publishing in 1908, there were only 300 students on campus to read it. Since then, the award-winning paper has published myriad stories about campus life and helped launch the careers of innumerable writers and journalists.

Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton engaged in an infamous duel in 1804, and a number of South Carolina College students nearly got tangled up in duels in the years before the Civil War. History records only one duel  involving South Carolina College students that ended in fatality — and this is the strange story of that tragedy. 

USC's South Carolina Honors College was born in the 1970s when several other of the nation's first honors colleges came into being. But rather than becoming an also-ran, USC's Honors College emerged as one of the nation's best by offering hundreds of unique honors courses across every academic discipline at the university.

Curtis Frye, head coach of field and track head at USC, knows a thing or two about coming in first place and being the first to do something. He's done all of those in his time at Carolina, including bringing home the university's first-ever national championship trophy. Perhaps most importantly, Coach Frye understands the importance of putting first things first. 

Every year, tens of thousands of prospective students and their families visit the University of South Carolina for a campus tour. Here's the story of how the university's Visitor Center came to be, as well as a peek behind the curtains at some unscripted moments in the lives of campus tour guides. 

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world … is a garden.” When Frances Hodgson Burnett penned those words more than a century ago in her classic children’s book The Secret Garden, there probably were very few, perhaps not any flower gardens on the University of South Carolina campus. But we’ve made up for it in the past 50 years or so. On this short tour, you'll learn the history of several not-so-secret gardens on campus and what's planted in each one. 

What building on the University of South Carolina campus was named for a Confederate navy commodore and commemorated on a picture postcard? It's a trick question! A high-rise residence hall was featured on a postcard in the late 1960s, and the caption on the postcard said the building was named in honor of alumnus Epaminondas J. Capstone. But how that came about is the real story!