He chronicles SC’s Black history. It began with his great-grandfather

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Some begin their day with a cup of coffee. Every morning when he wakes up, Bobby Donaldson checks the obituaries. Obituaries commemorate birth dates and death dates. But it’s the dashes between the two that Donaldson is interested in. Those dashes represent peoples’ lives. Donaldson is a scholar of African American history and a history professor at the University of South Carolina. His work is built around Black South Carolinians, whose history has been neglected, lost with time or erased. These stories motivate Donaldson every day. Reading obituaries gives him a sense of ur...