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Civil War Bridge; Scottsboro Boys Stamp; Duke Ellington Plates
Elyse Luray visits Columbia in South Carolina to inspect the remnants of a bridge which could have been burned by Confederate forces during the American Civil War. Gwendolyn Wright seeks the help of a stamp expert to discover whether a stamp bearing the slogan ‘Save the Scottsboro Boys’ was connected to a civil rights case dating back to 1931. Finally, Tukufu Zuberi sets out to find whether some discarded metal Duke Ellington plates printed the first copy of the Ellington hit, Take the A Train., The possible location of a bridge Confederate forces burned in an attempt to prevent Gen. William T. Sherman and his men from crossing the Broad River in Columbia, S.C., and continuing their scorched-earth campaign. Also: the role of a black-and-white stamp in the case of the Scottsboro Boys, nine black youths falsely accused and convicted of a 1931 rape; printing plates that may have been used to print the sheet music for the Duke Ellington classic “Take the A Train.”
