Licensing Tour Guides in Charleston: New at Reason

You can’t practice history on the streets of Charleston without a license. Eric Boehm writes:

Anyone who wants to talk about Charleston’s history must first obtain a license from the city. Getting that license means passing a 200-question written exam—a passing grade is 80 percent or higher—and then passing an oral exam conducted by taxpayer-funded city officials.

To pass both exams, would-be tour guides have to memorize pretty much the entire history of Charleston.

That’s bad news for people like Mike Warfield, who works as a volunteer at one of Charleston’s history museums. He planned to give tours of the city’s historic pubs and haunted spots—hey, that sounds like the kind of tour I’d want to take—but was told he could do it only if he could pass the city’s comprehensive history exam.