In 2015, I interviewed Carrie Phillips of Historic Columbia about a citywide digital commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Burning of Columbia during the American Civil War.
The project interests me because it treated digital media not as promotion around a historical event, but as part of the interpretation itself. Audiences could encounter the commemoration through a dedicated website, social channels, images, live narration, exhibits and in-person events rather than through a single institutional voice or format.
A distributed commemoration
The Burning of Columbia project was part of a wider citywide effort that included lectures, tours, film, visual and performing arts, exhibits, public discussion and large public gatherings. The digital work extended that same distributed model online rather than creating a separate “digital project” alongside the commemoration.
One of the clearest examples was the collaboration between Historic Columbia and University of South Carolina history professor Thomas Brown’s students. Students worked with primary-source material—including soldiers’ and civilians’ diaries—to prepare a sequence of tweets tracing Sherman’s march toward Columbia. Historic Columbia shared the material from January 15 through February 20, 2015, increasing the frequency as the anniversary of the burning approached.
The method mattered because it let different historical voices surface in sequence. Instead of telling audiences what happened from a single retrospective viewpoint, the project used the constraints of social media to create a paced encounter with testimony, uncertainty and perspective.
Questions explored in the interview
- What inspired the campaign?
- What were its goals?
- Who participated and what roles did they play?
- How were platforms and messages chosen?
- What advice would the team give others considering a similar approach?
- What kind of audience feedback emerged?
- How did the companion website fit with the social campaign?
- What did it take to coordinate digital and in-person partners?
- How would the project be preserved after the anniversary ended?
The surviving audio above is the primary Voices record of Carrie Phillips describing the project in her own words.
Case Study at a Glance
Context: Columbia, South Carolina marked the 150th anniversary of the February 1865 burning of the city with a broad public-history commemoration involving cultural organizations, educators, artists and civic partners. Highlight the Supporting Passage
Challenge: Interpret a contested and emotionally charged historical event in a way that could hold multiple voices, primary sources and public programs together without reducing the story to a single summary. Highlight the Supporting Passage
Practice: Historic Columbia combined a dedicated website, social media, exhibits, public events and a real-time Twitter narrative. A University of South Carolina history class prepared tweets from primary-source diaries and other documents, allowing audiences to follow Sherman’s march and the burning through multiple historical voices. Highlight the Supporting Passage
Evidence: The surviving Voices interview with Carrie Phillips, archived project pages and contemporary reporting document the collaboration, its cross-platform design and the live-tweet sequence. This post does not claim audience-impact metrics beyond what those surviving sources support. Highlight the Supporting Passage
What this case suggests: Digital commemoration is strongest when the platforms are used to structure encounters with evidence and perspective, not merely to advertise an anniversary. Highlight the Supporting Passage
Supporting Documents & Surviving Sources
View the interview and surviving record of the 2015 commemoration
- The audio interview with Carrie Phillips on this page is the primary Voices source record.
- The case also draws on archived project pages and contemporary documentation of the citywide commemoration and live-tweet sequence.
- No audience-impact metrics are claimed beyond what the surviving sources support.
Archive Note / Provenance
View what survives after a time-bound digital commemoration
The Burning of Columbia campaign was designed around a specific sesquicentennial moment, so its website and social accounts were never likely to remain permanent destinations. The project survives more appropriately as an archived digital commemoration supported by the interview, archived pages, and contemporary documentation.
The durable lesson is the way the project distributed historical interpretation across people, evidence, place, and media. The website, social channels, primary sources, exhibits, and live events reinforced one another rather than competing for attention.
That remains relevant to digital public history: the technology changes, but the underlying design problem does not. How do we let audiences encounter a difficult past through multiple situated voices while still providing enough structure to understand how those voices relate?
Critical Questions + Add to the Record
- Who gets to speak, and whose knowledge is heard?
- How do we make knowledge more accessible without losing its meaning?
- How do we preserve memory when the systems carrying it keep changing?
Application here: the project used digital media to stage encounters with multiple primary-source voices over time, making the platform part of historical interpretation rather than merely promotion for an anniversary.
Did you participate in the 2015 commemoration, contribute to the live-tweet project, attend one of the events, or preserve screenshots and documentation from the campaign? Add firsthand knowledge, corrections, or surviving evidence.
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New #digitalheritage #podcast >> Burning of Columbia uses digital media to commemorate history http://t.co/O5PnsuxFx5
RT @heritagevoices: New #digitalheritage #podcast >> Burning of Columbia uses digital media to commemorate history http://t.co/O5PnsuxFx5
RT @heritagevoices: New #digitalheritage #podcast >> Burning of Columbia uses digital media to commemorate history http://t.co/O5PnsuxFx5
cc: @SeanBusick @wmjsimmons “@heritagevoices: Burning of Columbia uses digital media to commemorate history http://t.co/RfOoktpbWp”