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.

Now serving as the director of the College of Charleston’s Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston, which he was instrumental in launching, Powers came to the College in 1992, when he began teaching history, where he has served as the chair of the history department and the director of the master of arts in history program. Since then, he has not only seen African American studies become a major, he’s been a part of the establishing the College’s African Studies Program and the Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World. He has served as president of the Avery Research Center’s advisory board, received the College’s Distinguished Advising Award in 2011 and was named professor emeritus of history in 2018.

RELATED: Read all about Bernie Powers here.

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.

Powers’ footprint extends well beyond the Charleston area, of course. He serves as a consultant to historic preservation organizations, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Drayton Hall Visitor Center and Interpretive Hall. He has appeared in documentary films, including the PBS production, African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross and Emanuel: The Untold Story of the Victims and Survivors of the Charleston Church Shooting.

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. 

In addition to Black Charlestonians and We Are Charleston, Powers wrote a book chapter titled “Churches as Places of History: The Case of Nineteenth Century Charleston, South Carolina” in Interpreting African American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites and was an associate editor of the Encyclopedia of South Carolina. He also edited 101 African Americans Who Shaped South Carolina. 

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.