Flashback to Charleston’s distinctive July 1976 Bicentennial issue

_{Jasper Saving the Colors by Charles Deantonio}

In celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, we look back at Charleston’s distinctive July 1976 Bicentennial issue, featuring this cover created by late Mount Pleasant oil painter Charles DeAntonio. Throughout the magazine, then-editor in chief Robert Wintner took an imaginative approach, using Revolutionary War-era language and references to “present the situation as it was in July 1776, Charlestown, South Carolina.” Letters to the editor were “penned” by figures such as founding father and South Carolina governor John Rutledge, while features treated the lives of indigo planter Eliza Lucas Pinckney and newspaper printer Peter Timothy as current events. “Remarks on Recent Books” recommended volumes on independence from British rule, and a tell-all exposé from British Commodore Sir Peter Parker recounted how his pants were partially torn off by a flying splinter during the 1776 Battle of Sullivan’s Island. Even advertisements adopted the concept, chronicling requests for Jamaican rum and the availability of the 17th pew in St. Philip’s Church.