Upcountry History Museum

 

Rain or Shine!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10:00 am—Tribute Ceremony honoring veterans—Museum entrance

 

Patriotic music by Brass Tacts, a Furman Quintet and National Anthem sung by Miss Erika Grace Powell, Miss SC 2005; Boiling Spring High School JROTC color guard, and remarks from Senator Jim DeMint and others.

 

 

 

Immediately following the ceremony, Museum activities will include:

 

Hands-on children’s WWII activities—Classroom

 

WWII re-enactors and WWII and Vietnam displays—throughout the museum

 

Screenings of “Threads of Victory: The Upcountry during WWII”- Theatre

 

Screenings of the Academy Award Nominated Documentary “D-Day Remembered”- 2 ^nd floor

 

Military Paraphenalia and Research Expert Jack Green of the Naval Historical Center in Washington, DC- Resource Room

 

Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedom’s Posters- Focus Gallery

 

 Painted by Rockwell in 1942 in response to a speech President Franklin Roosevelt gave in January 1941 in which FDR discussed how America looked forward to a world founded upon 4 freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship as one chooses, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The Saturday Evening Post published the paintings and the Office of War Information subsequently issued them as posters to garner support for the purchasing of war bonds. These posters are on loan from the Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina.

 

 

 

LUNCH—Chick-Fil-A Cherrydale food items will be available for purchase outside 10:30 – 2:00 pm

 

 

 

Special programs will include:

 

11:30-12:30 pm—Panel discussion—Soldiers’ Stories: Combat in WWII--Orientation Theatre

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day-long Museum activities will include:

 

Screenings of “Threads of Victory: The Upcountry during WWII”- Theatre 

 

Screenings of “D-Day”- 2 ^nd Floor

 

 

Special programs will include:

 

2:00 – 3:00—Karen Tannenbaum, “SC Ties: Holocaust Histories of SC Families”- Theatre

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Post published the paintings as a series after the United States government declined it.

 

Seeing the huge success of The Post articles, the United States government changed its mind about Rockwell's creations. Soon afterward, the Office of War Information later issued the series as posters as an incentive for War bond purchasers. Many of these posters are still sold today.

 

Rockwell's inspiration for the series was the Four Freedoms speech given before Congress by Franklin Delano Roosevelt on January 16, 1941.

 

The relevant Four Freedoms portion of the speech is reproduced below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

 

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
excerpted from the Annual Message to the Congress,
January 6, 1941

 

 

Norman Rockwell was inspired to paint The Four Freedoms series by Franklin Roosevelt's speech of the same name.

 

Rockwell, knowing he was too old to serve in the military, sought to do something to help his country during World War II. He came up with the idea of illustrating Roosevelt's speech.

 

He labored on these paintings for 6 months in 1942. He lost 15 pounds and many nights sleep. When he was finished, he had created some of the greatest masterpieces of his entire career.

 

After seeking unsuccessfully to find a United States government wartime agency to sponsor these works, he turned to his old friends, The Saturday Evening Post and Curtis Publishing.

 

 

The editors of The Post did a masterful job of finding the right author for each essay. All four author added to the message the paintings conveyed.

 

Freedom of Speech
was written by Booth Tarkington (1869-1946.) At that time, Tarkington was called the "dean of popular American letters." He was a frequent contributor of short stories and serials to The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines. Tarkington's works are too numerous to mention them all.

 

Freedom to Worship
was written by essayist Will Durant (1885-1981.) Durant was one of the foremost philosophers and civil rights advocates of the time. As a former Catholic seminarian, Durant had a unique perspective on Freedom to Worship.

 

Freedom from Want
was written by Philippine immigrant Carlos Bulosan (1914-1956.) His first fiction book,The Laughter of My Father, a collection of short stories inspired by Philippine folk tales, became an international best-seller. Bulosan was and still is the least well-known of the essayists.

 

Freedom from Fear
was written by Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943), a novelist and poet. Benet's well known works include John Brown's Body and American Names. Benet also wrote the short story, The Devil and Daniel Webster.