World of Energy to host lunch on Sunday

Duke Energy’s World of Energy education center has added lunch to the special Sunday, April 29, presentation from Clemson University professor John Coggeshall on the Liberia community built by former slaves in northern Pickens County. The event is the latest celebrating the 150th anniversaries of Oconee and Pickens counties in 2018. Soapstone Baptist Church will bring its traditional meal of barbecue, fried chicken and pork loins with all the fixins’ to the World of Energy from noon to 1:30pm on Sunday. Plates are $12 each (cash only) and visitors will be able to dine on tables at the World of Energy under the shade of 50-year-old crepe myrtles. All funds raised benefit Soapstone Baptist Church. Coggeshall, an anthropologist, will host a free presentation at 3pm on Liberia. While researching mountain culture in 2007 in the Upstate, Coggeshall stumbled upon the small community of Liberia in the Blue Ridge foothills. There he met Mable Owens Clarke and her family, the remaining members of a small African American community still living on land obtained immediately after the Civil War. Through hours of interviews with Mable and her relatives, as well as friends and neighbors, Coggeshall presents an ethnographic history that allows members of a largely ignored community to speak and record their own history for the first time. This story sheds new light on the African American experience in Appalachia, and in it Coggeshall documents the community’s 150-year history of resistance to white oppression, while offering a new way to understand the symbolic relationship between residents and the land they occupy, tying together family, memory and narratives to explain this connection. Coggeshall’s book, titled “Liberia, South Carolina – An African American Appalachian Community,” will be available. All funds raised from the book sale benefit Soapstone Baptist Church. The World of Energy will open at noon on Sunday and close after the presentation reception. The World of Energy hosts events throughout the year, including guest speakers, community forums, art displays, entertainment and much more. For more information, visit www.duke-energy.com/worldofenergy.