JANUARY 16–22, 2025
LOWCOUNTRY LOWDOWN
LOLITA HUCKABY
County’s ‘transparency’ now includes ‘witch hunt’
WWW.YOURISLANDNEWS.COM
COVERING BEAUFORT COUNTY
4th annual Beaufort Oyster Festival this weekend
Staff reports morning, Jan. 18, with It’s that time again. the Oyster Boogie 5K Tides to Tables race in downtown Restaurant Week Beaufort. culminates with Then the Oyster the fourth annuFestival kicks off at al Beaufort Oyster 10 a.m. and runs unFestival this weektil 6 p.m. Admission end at the Henry C. is free. Chambers Waterfront On Sunday, Jan. 19, the Park in downtown Beaufort. Festival starts at 11 a.m. and goes The festivities kick off Saturday until 4 p.m.
There is a cornhole tournaEntertainment Schedule ment at 1 p.m. Visit https://bit. Friday VIP Night – Invite Only ly/3C7BDMZ to register. • Campfire Tyler, 7 to 9 p.m. More than 15 local educational Saturday organizations are involved in the • Boondockers, 10 a.m. to noon festival. • Southbound 17, noon to 2 p.m. Oysters provided are all locally • Purple Martins, 2 to 5 p.m. farmed or harvested. Oysters will Sunday be available steamed, raw, roast• Campfire Tyler, ed, or fried! Other food options 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. will be available, as well, and live • Stuck in Time Band, entertainment. 1 to 4 p.m.
4 more books may be removed from SC schools
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BEAUFORT eaufort County Council started off the new year with a major shake-up, selecting two of its three female members to elect this governing body of 11 for the next two years. As has been widely reported, Alice Howard, a 10-year veteran of the county council and Anna Maria “Tab” Tabernick, still serving her first four-year term on the council, were elected by their colleagues to serve as chair and vice-chair. Howard was elected by a 6-5 vote over incumbent Chairman Joe Passiment and Tabernick’s vote to replace Vice-Chair Larry McElynn was unanimous. Passiment, as has been reported, had irritated enough council members with his recent efforts to conduct a private meeting between Sen. Tom Davis, County and Hilton Head Island elected officials and staff members to discuss the U.S. 278 bridge project budget deficient, that the swing vote, Tom Reitz of Hilton Head, made it clear his support for Howard was a vote for government transparency. Not only was the election historic in that it’s the first time two women have held the top two leadership seats on the county governing board, but it also returned to the north-south balance which had traditionally comprised the council. That balance, shifting the leadership role to two Southof-the-Broad members, was done in 2020 when Passiment and McElynn were elected to the leadership positions. (Howard, for information only, is not the first female to serve as County Council Chairman. That title belongs to the late Martha Baumberger of Hilton Head who served as chairman in 1985 before leaving the County Council to serve as the mayor of Hilton Head Island.)
A monument to Robert Smalls, sculpted by Atlanta-based artist Basil Watson. Photo courtesy of Robert Smalls Monument Commission
Location chosen for Robert Smalls statue Monument to stand near Statehouse visitors’ entrance, depicts Beaufort native in a three-piece tuxedo
By Skylar Laird SCDailyGazette.com COLUMBIA — Civil War hero Robert Smalls could one day stand just outside the Statehouse visitors’ entrance, clad in the three-piece tuxedo he would have worn while serving in Congress, a legislative panel decided Wednesday, Jan. 8. Smalls, who escaped slavery on a Con-
federate steamship and later served in the Statehouse and Congress, will be the first individual Black person recognized on the Statehouse grounds. Another monument represents the story of Black South Carolinians, but it doesn’t identify any specific people.
SEE STATUE PAGE A8
By Delayna Earley The Island News A panel with the State Board of Education has decided that four more books should be removed from public schools in South Carolina due to their sexual content. Two books – “ The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros and “Bronx Masquerade” by Nikki Grimes – will not be removed from schools. The four books that were removed by the five-person committee will join the seven others that have been removed since the state regulation banned public schools from allowing access to books that contained sexual conduct. The four books that were reviewed in the meeting on Thursday, Jan. 9 and put up for removal were “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, “Flamer” by Mike Curato, “PUSH” by Sapphire and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky. The books reviewed Thursday came from a challenge from Ivie Szalai, who was the Beaufort County parent who put forth a list of 97 books in 2022 that resulted in a year-long district-wide committee review of the books. During that review, only five of the books were removed and all four of the books recently challenged by Szalai were not removed and were still in schools. This is the first time since the regulation was put into place that a book has gone through the appeals process from start to finish.
SEE BOOKS PAGE A5
SEE LOWDOWN PAGE A6
NEWS
EDUCATION
MILITARY
INSIDE
Penn Center hosting Martin Luther King Jr. celebration.
DAR Marian Anderson Legacy Scholarship accepting applications.
Nashville native Sailor of the Year for NMRTC Beaufort.
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