Amble across the Horseshoe and take a stroll down more than 200 years of memory lane with Remembering the Days, a University of South Carolina podcast. We tell the stories of everything from campus pranks in the 19th century to how we became known as Gamecocks. It’s the always interesting, sometimes quirky history of an institution that has been part of the fabric of the Palmetto State since it opened its doors in 1805 and eventually became South Carolina’s flagship university.
More than 200 years ago, students at Carolina tried to start a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa — now the nation's most prestigious honor society — but their application was rejected by an Ivy League college. More than a century later, they tried again and succeeded, paving the way for high-achieving students to earn membership in one of academia's most exclusive clubs.
USC's swimming and diving team jumped into the deep end of collegiate competition in 1922, 17 years before the university even had a pool on campus. Over the years, the team has developed a number of All Americans and even some Olympic competitors.
Built in the 1950s as USC's first fraternity dorms, the McBryde Quad saw its share of keg parties and frat boy shenanigans back in the day. McBryde's reputation for rowdiness eventually gave way to more serious conversations among its residents in later years. Now, as the last of McBryde's buildings are slated for replacement, it's an auspicious time to consider the long arc of McBryde's story.
He was a star quarterback for the Gamecocks more than 50 years ago, and for most of the years since then Tommy Suggs has been the color commentator for radio coverage of USC football games. He recently sat down with Remembering the Days co-hosts Evan Faulkenbury and Chris Horn to look back on his career and look ahead to the fall 2025 football season.
As an architectural historian, Lydia Brandt is trained to read the world around her, which at USC means understanding the context of campus buildings — why they were built in a certain style, why they were named for particular individuals and how the institution defines its identity through its physical space. Our conversation with Brandt touches on those ideas and the university's recent efforts to tell a larger story of its past through figurative monuments.
You can stay up to date on current Gamecock sports through multiple news outlets and platforms, but to delve into the history of Gamecock sports, Alan Piercy is your guy. He writes a blog about Gamecock sports history and has written a book on USC sports during the independent era of 1971-91. He's also contemplating another book on the men's basketball program in the early Frank McGuire era and construction of the Carolina Coliseum in 1968.
The story of the Reconstruction era at the University of South Carolina is remarkable. A previously all-white institution admitted Black men, established a Normal School to train Black women to be school teachers and welcomed Black faculty and trustees. Museum of Education director Christian Anderson talks about his ongoing research on that chapter of USC's past.
In the decade after USC desegregated, the small but growing number of Black students wanted to establish a sense of belonging on a big campus that was growing bigger every year. In 1975, the Southern Christian Fellowship student group was established with a gospel choir called A Touch of Faith.
Kelly Goldberg once spent two summers on an archaeological dig at a Viking settlement in Iceland. Now the Honors College instructor is digging in the dirt right here on USC's Horseshoe, finding artifacts that offer clues to the university's past.
For more than 40 years, Walter Edgar taught the history of South Carolina to USC students and was a prolific scholar, writing several history books about the Palmetto State. Now retired but still hosting a podcast about state history, Edgar reminisces about his long career at the university.
While a doctoral student in USC's history department, Jill Found searched the university's archives to find clues about enslaved people who worked on the campus of South Carolina College. Those efforts help tell the story of those who for decades were nameless and unrecognized.
Harry Lesesne's A History of the University of South Carolina, 1940-2000 covers the six fascinating decades of history in which USC was transformed into a modern research university. How he organized and wrote the book is a story in itself.
Since it began in the early 19th century, the Carolina campus has had its share of natural and manmade disasters, including earthquakes, windstorms, fires and floods. Those threats persist in the 21st century, but the modern campus has a facilities team that works around the clock to prevent or at least mitigate the effects of those threats.
Imagine if all of the clues in the popular TV gameshow Jeopardy! were related to the University of South Carolina. USC archivist Elizabeth West's new book, The University of South Carolina Trivia Book, provides plenty of material — more than 500 questions and answers — for a "Gamecock" Jeopardy version of the show.
The USC Rugby Club has been on the field for more than 50 years, and the squad's success in its early years included a dramatic match and rematch with British naval personnel in 1973.
Jonathan Maxcy was Carolina's first and longest-serving president and the only former president to have his own monument on campus. Maxcy's leadership helped lay the foundation for South Carolina's flagship university.
WUSC-FM got its start in 1947, providing a training ground for generations of DJs, radio engineers and station managers. Students are still eager to be WUSC DJs, but the motivation today is more focused on sharing a personal passion for music.
In the early 1970s, USC's historic Horseshoe buildings had fallen into disrepair while new buildings sprouted across the campus. The university began a long renovation and restoration project that systematically rejuvenated each 19th-century building, and the vigilant maintenance process continues to this day.
The University of South Carolina has been around a long time — long enough to celebrate its 100th and 200th birthdays with the 250th less than 30 years away.
It began as a fledgling music department with only two professors and grew into one of the region's premier music schools. USC's School of Music is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2024.
When Frank McGuire arrived at USC in 1964, Gamecock fans knew they had a winning basketball coach. But early in McGuire's second season, the team had three starters who had never played against a conference opponent. Their first such matchup on Dec. 6, 1965 — the No. 3-ranked Blue Devils of Duke University.
The Horseshoe is the oldest part of the University of South Carolina's campus, but there is something older still — the university seal and motto. A little knowledge (or a quick tutorial) in Latin and Roman mythology is a prerequisite for understanding both.
USC's modern desegregation took place in 1963 when three African American students enrolled at the historically white university — but they actually weren't the first black students in the university's history. For a brief window in the 1870s, USC became the only state-supported public university in the South to open its doors to white and black students alike.
A century ago, USC built its first dormitory for women, whose presence on campus had not been warmly welcomed when they first arrived in the 1890s. While other women's dorms have come and gone on campus, the Women's Quad retains its status as the original location for and the only present location of women's-only residence halls at the university.
USC's connections to aviation go higher than you might think. From civilian and military aviator training to the state's only aeronautical engineering degree program, the university has been spreading its wings for decades. One chapter in the story includes a farmboy who flew a plane by himself at age 12.
As a blind student, John Eldred Swearingen had to make a case for admission to Carolina in 1895. The university went on to become a pioneer in accommodating students with major physical disabilities and continues to provide opportunities for students with disabilities both visible and invisible.
The two decades between USC's departure from the Atlantic Coast Conference and entry into the Southeastern Conference were a challenging time for Gamecock sports. But USC sports enthusiast Alan Piercy's new book about that era reminds us that a lot of cool things — including a Heisman Trophy winner and a new iteration of USC's mascot — came about in the midst of those wilderness years.
For nearly 80 years, the University of South Carolina Press has been publishing books — more than 1,000 and counting — on topics ranging from the history of the Palmetto State to literary figures, cuisine and much more. Pull up a reading chair and learn more about the Press came to be.
Visit any urban campus in America and the No. 1 complaint almost always will be the parking situation. Parking at USC became an issue in the 1960s as enrollment skyrocketed. The university dealt with it by building parking garages and adding a campus shuttle system. To enforce the parking rules, there was a regiment of parking officers, which, for nearly half a century, included 'Miss Pat.'
An integral part of the oldest building on campus, the Rutledge Chapel has been in continuous use since 1805 and has a rich history of its own. But that history is still being written as, every year, alumni say their wedding vows inside the venerable chapel's walls.
Since its founding in 1801, the University of South Carolina, its students and alumni have been profoundly affected by wars, most notably the Civil War, WWI, WWII and the Vietnam War. As Memorial Day draws near, it is a fitting time to remember.
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.
Sixty years ago, the University of South Carolina opened its doors to all students, regardless of race, when it enrolled three Black students — Henrie Monteith, Robert Anderson and James Solomon. But what was campus life like for the Black students who immediately followed in their footsteps in 1964 and beyond?
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 for a time capsule that was unearthed in 2001 as part of the university's bicentennial celebration. That same year, another time capsule was buried on the Horseshoe — with its own treasure trove of items — with an opening scheduled for 2051.
For more than 110 years, USC alumni and students have been singing the university alma mater — 'We hail theee, Carolina!' 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 Honors College was established in the 1970s around the time that several other of the nation's first honors colleges came into being. But the South Carolina Honors College would eventually emerge as one of the nation's best, boasting hundreds of honors courses and attracting some of the best students from the Palmetto State and beyond.
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, a Confederate commodore. But separate fact from fiction is the real story.
Fifty years ago, it wasn't uncommon to hear professors give the "look to your left, look to your right — one of you will have failed by the end of the semester" speech. But exactly 50 years ago, Carolina tried something different: a course designed to help freshmen feel like they belonged along with the academic tools they needed to succeed. It was called University 101, and it became model for hundreds of colleges across the country.
Women's college sports barely on the radar in the early 1970s, but Title IX changed everything by leveling the playing field for men's and women's sports at the collegiate level. Meet two of the first 18 women to receive athletics scholarships at the University of South Carolina, which is now a national leader in parity for its men's and women's sports programs.
Eighty-one graduates of the University of South Carolina have died in military service since the Spanish-American War at the close of the 19th century. In observance of Memorial Day, we remember three who died serving their country in World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War.
Pranks and pratfalls are part of life in any college residence hall, but one dormitory complex at the University of South Carolina seemed to have more than its fair share. Stories about life in the Towers, also known as the Honeycombs and the Veilblocks, are now almost the stuff of legend. Here are a few anecdotes from yesteryear about those long-gone dorms.