Scholar, author and College of Charleston history professor Edmund Lee Drago was born in Chicago, Illinois. He received his BA from the University of Santa Clara in 1964 and his MA in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966. He served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War from 1969-1972 and completed his Ph. D. in History at the University of California at Berkeley in 1975. He began his teaching career at the College of Charleston in 1975. Drago is the author of Initiative, Paternalism and Race Relations: Charleston's Avery Normal Institute (1990), a history of Avery Normal Institute. The book reappeared, revised and edited by W. Marvin Dulaney, in 2006 as Charleston's Avery Center: From Education and Civil Rights to Preserving the African American Experience. He is also the author of The Confederate Phoenix: Rebel Children and their Families in South Carolina (2008), Hurrah For Hampton: Black Red Shirts in South Carolina during Reconstruction (1998), Broke by the War: Letters of a Slave Trader (1991), and Black Politicians and Reconstruction in Georgia: A Splendid Failure (1982). Dr. Drago has received numerous awards including a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers (1981), a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award (Teaching) Italy (1994) and numerous others. Dr. Drago served as a board member for Avery Institute of Afro- American History and Culture and in that role was instrumental in establishing the Avery Research Center, an African American archives, museum and cultural center at the College of Charleston in the former Avery Normal Institute building. His research focus is 19th century U.S. History, African American and Charleston history; and the American Civil War and Reconstruction.
From the description of Edmund Lee Drago papers, ca. 1975-ca. 2005. (College of Charleston). WorldCat record id: 233032568
