CofC Professor Receives S.C. Governor's Award in the Humanities

College of Charleston professor emeritus of history Bernard Powers will receive a South Carolina Governor’s Award in the Humanities at the 34th annual South Carolina Awards in the Humanities Luncheon and Ceremony in Columbia, South Carolina, on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025.

Established in 1991, the Governor’s Awards in the Humanities recognize outstanding achievement in humanities research, teaching and scholarship; institutional and individual participation in helping communities in South Carolina better understand our cultural heritage or ideas and issues related to the humanities; excellence in defining South Carolina’s cultural life to the nation or world; and exemplary support for public humanities programs.

Powers certainly embodies these qualities.

He serves as the director of the College of Charleston’s Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston, which he was instrumental in launching. Powers has served on the boards of several historical societies and organizations, including the International African American Museum. In 2019 the Association for the Study of African American Life and History recognized his “research, writing, and activism in the field of African American life and history” with the Carter Godwin Woodson Scholars Medallion.

RELATED: Read all about Bernie Powers here.

Powers is co-author of We Are Charleston: Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel, about the city’s 2015 racially motivated murders. His Black Charlestonians: A Social History 1822-1885, was designated an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice Magazine. He also edited 101 African Americans Who Shaped South Carolina. 

In addition, Powers has appeared in documentary films including, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross and Emanuel: The Untold Story of the Victims and Survivors of the Charleston Church Shooting.

The mission of S.C. Humanities is to enrich the cultural and intellectual lives of all South Carolinians. Established in 1973, the organization is governed by a volunteer board of directors comprised of community leaders from throughout the state. It presents and supports literary initiatives, lectures, exhibits, festivals, publications, oral history projects, videos and other humanities-based experiences that directly or indirectly reach more than 250,000 citizens annually.