Dr. Dale Rosengarten is a library specialist and Jewish Studies professor here at College of Charleston. Born and raised in New York City, she did not have a “legacy,” in the South as she put it; however that didn’t stop Dr. Rosengarten and her friends from having an interest in Southern politics. They were passionate about fighting the injustices during the Civil Rights Movement, so they created,  “a youth committee,” and were “very focused on the south.” From there, her involvement in the south grew tremendously. As an undergraduate and doctoral student at Harvard University, she and her boyfriend, who’s now her husband, travelled to Alabama to help people in a sharecroppers union fight for equality and receive better treatment. Together they were intellectually and politically driven to make a change. Even now, Dr. Rosengarten says that her husband is still one of her biggest influences.

   Now, at the College, she studies quite a few topics. One of her biggest research projects was on the history of the Lowcountry Basket. She gathered information on the history of the baskets and how they have impacted the South Carolina economy and such. Her work was shown in the Gibbes Museum of Art and eventually was moved to the Smithsonian. Along with this, she is a big advocate for protecting the Lowcountry Basket community. Currently, she is trying to stop the town of Mt. Pleasant from expanding Highway 41 and taking over the area where these baskets are made. One of Dr. Rosengarten’s mentors, Peter Wood, influenced her work immensely. His writings helped her narrow what she studied.

      In addition to the Lowcountry Basket History, she has completed lots of research on Southern Jewish History. In 1995, she began collecting oral histories and manuscripts on Southern Jewish History and South Carolina Jewish History. Also she has created numerous maps on American Jewish History. One of them, for example, mapped 300 years of Southern Jewish History in America. Her current map was supposed to be a walking tour of Jewish Sites in Charleston; however, now it is online and you read about the different sites and their significance. She is working on another map which won’t be ready until next year. This one maps out southern synagogues using resources at the Addlestone Library.