Eastside Day Coming up Oct 27th

Trident Technical College’s Palmer Campus will celebrate the life and the legacy of master blacksmith Philip Simmons for Eastside Day 2016 to be held Thursday, Oct. 27. Eastside Day is a part of the Palmer Campus’s Spirit Week held annually to celebrate the students of TTC and the heritage of the Eastside Community, where the college’s downtown Charleston campus is located. Spirit Week 2016 is slated for Oct. 24-28.

In collaboration with the Philip Simmons Foundation, the Eastside Neighborhood Association, TTC’s Visual Arts departments, as well as the Culinary Institute of Charleston, the Palmer Campus has planned a week of student-driven activities that the community and TTC students, faculty and staff are invited to attend. All events are free.

Kicking off the week will be a student welcome on Monday, Oct. 24, at the campus courtyard and park. Spirit Week will continue with a College Transfer Fair and Health Expo for TTC students Oct. 25-26.

Thursday’s Eastside Day activities are open to the public and dedicated to celebrating Simmons, who lived in the Eastside Community from 1919 until he passed in 2009. His house, located in walking distance from Palmer Campus at 30 ½ Blake Street, is now the Philip Simmons Museum House with a gift shop and operating workshop, where the art of his craft is being continued by his nephew Carlton Simmons and cousin Joseph Pringle. Following a celebration in the park, interested participants will have the opportunity to tour the Museum House. The tours will leave from campus at 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m.

You can also meet with representatives from the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture and the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative. The Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston collects, preserves, and promotes the unique history and culture of the African diaspora, with emphasis on Charleston and the South Carolina Lowcountry. The Lowcountry Digital History Initiative hosted by the College of Charleston Libraries publishes digital public history projects that highlight underrepresented race, class, gender, and labor histories within the Lowcountry region and historically interconnected Atlantic World.

Students and members of the community are also invited to visit the Library Commons Gallery for a reception on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. to view artwork by TTC Visual Arts students.

Dr. Susan Millar Williams has been getting ready to celebrate Eastside Day by publishing a series of blog posts about Eastside history. Dr. Williams is the author of a biography of Julia Peterkin titled A Devil and a Good Woman, Too: The Lives of Julia Peterkin and the history of the great Charleston earthquake Upheaval in Charleston: Earthquake and Murder on the Eve of Jim Crow. She has taught English, particularly creative writing, at the TTC Palmer Campus for 20 years, and she helped found and develop Eastside Day as a signature Palmer event. She leads walking tours around the Eastside for visitors, and does multiple presentations each year on Eastside history. When she walks around the neighborhood, she takes pictures and asks questions. Her blog posts are a result of her discoveries throughout the Eastside neighborhood. You can find her posts at:

• East Side History Series: Made Ground
• Rope Walk: North Side of Line Street from Meeting to Aiken
• The East Side (Hampstead) in 1872
• 729 East Bay Street
• 1 Cooper Street
• Celebrating our East Side Community: 44 America Street
•  Celebrating Our East Side Community: 66 Hanover Street
•  Lowcounty Digital Initiative Features Online Exhibit on The Cotton Factory (before it was the Cigar Factory)

The week will conclude with a Safety Awareness Fair on Friday, Oct. 28.

For more information, contact Regina Smart at regina.smart@tridenttech.edu or 843.722.5562.