Mable Owens Clarke will be the guest speaker at the Upcountry History Museum as part of the museum’s Lunchbox Learning on Wednesday, February 19 from noon to 1 p.m. Clarke’s program will be “Against All Odds: Stories from the Liberia Community and Soapstone Church and School.”

Clarke has been presented The Order of the Palmetto, the highest civilian honor awarded by the Governor, and she has received the Preservation South Carolina’s Governor’s Award for her work and dedication in preserving Soapstone Baptist Church and Soapstone School.

The Soapstone community is the subject of the book Liberia, South Carolina: An Appalachian African American Community by John M. Coggeshall, a professor of anthropology at Clemson University.

“The Museum wanted me to come for Black History Month,” Clarke told The Pickens County Chronicle on February 11. “People can come and bring their own lunch.

“I did the book Liberia, South Carolina with Dr. Coggeshall in the anthropology department from Clemson. He put my story in this book. It’s about the history of Liberia Road from 1864 until the present, and that’s what I’ll be speaking on.”

Clarke also told this writer that a celebration will be held in April with the reopening of the historic Soapstone School.  Click here to read that story in The Pickens County Chronicle.

The Upcountry History Museum is located at 540 Buncombe Street in Greenville. For more information and for tickets, please visit this website: https://www.upcountryhistory.org/event/lunchbox-learning-56/

The website for Soapstone Baptist Church is https://www.soapstonechurch.com/

The website for the Soapstone Preservation Endowment is https://www.soapstonepe.org/.

Click on The Pickens County Chronicle‘s GoFundMe tab to link to the GoFundMe for the Soapstone Preservation Endowment: