CMN Backstory
Welcome to the launch site for my project, Call My Name. My name is Rhondda R. Thomas, and I'm the Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, where I research and teach courses about early African American literature and culture.
I became interested in learning more about Clemson's history on my first day of work during a campus tour in August of 2007 when one of my colleagues informed me the university was built on American statesman John C. Calhoun and his wife Floride Calhoun's Fort Hill Plantation. The Calhouns' son-in-law Thomas Green Clemson had through a bequest in his will of Fort Hill and his fortune established the land-grant Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina in 1889 for white males.
I had been hired as a visiting assistant professor/post-doc fellow to teach early African American and American literature in Clemson's Department of English. Later that fall, I accepted a tenure-track position and intensified my research, inspired by and building on the work of my English department colleagues Professors Susanna Ashton and Michael LeMahieu, and working alongside Professors Cameron Bushnell, Kimberly Manganelli, and Angela Naimou who were also engaged in recovering, examining, and sharing this history.
Photograph: Dr. Thomas standing in front of John C. & Floride Calhoun's Fort Hill Plantation house that is located in the center of the Clemson University campus. (Source: Clemson University Creative Media Services.)
Seven Generations of People of African Descent
in Clemson University History, 1737 onward
The Call My Name (CMN) team is researching and documenting the stories, acknowledging the contributions, and honoring the legacy of seven generations of people of African descent in Clemson University history. "Call My Name" was selected as the name of the project to evoke the call-and-response tradition in African American culture, as we are calling the names of Black people in Clemson history and inviting the public to assist us in making their stories accessible and visible in the university's public narrative. The project name also evokes the marching and running cadences of cadets and ROTC members at Clemson College, as well as the roll call that occurs in classrooms and at graduation for current Clemson students.
The CMN team utilizes an interdisciplinary methodology to document this history. We begin with Africans who lived freely before they were captured, sold into slavery, transported to the British colonies, and eventually forced to migrate to Calhoun's Fort Hill Plantation that he established in the South Carolina Upstate in 1825. We then trace the journey of African peoples from slavery forward more than a century to the enrollment of Harvey Gantt as the first Black student at the University in 1963 and the graduation of the first Black PhD student James Bostic Jr. in 1972. We recently added twenty-first century activists who are advocating for a more diverse and inclusive campus, nation, and world.
We have identified seven generations of Black people connected to Clemson University history: 1) free Africans and enslaved persons of African descent, 2) sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestics, 3) convicted laborers, 4) wage workers and cooperative extension service employees, 5) musicians, 6) students, faculty, staff, and administrators, and 7) twenty-first century activists. These stories will increase our understanding of South Carolina and America's complex history including that of families and plantations, and Black labor, race relations, and higher education.
The CMN team invites you to participate in our project by learning from and contributing to these powerful life narratives, thereby empowering yourself to be a change agent in your community.
CMN is the recipient of the 2020 Preserving Our Places in History Project Award from the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission.
To support the work of the Call My Name, you may click here to make a donation through the Clemson Foundation. Thank you.
Scroll down for more details about the seven generations and CMN initiatives below the photographs.
Generation I: Free Africans & Enslaved Persons of African Descent
At least 139 enslaved Black people lived and labored on Calhoun's Fort Hill Plantation. But their story really begins with free Africans like Polydore and Menemin who are believed to have been captured and enslaved in Africa and transported to South Carolina where they were sold to enslavers again and eventually forced to migrate to and labor for the Calhoun family in the Upcountry region of the state. The Calhouns had initially settled in Abbeville, SC, before John C. Calhoun relocated his family to his own plantation in 1826. Enslaved persons worked on Fort Hill as domestics, field hands, valets, gatekeepers, gardeners, blacksmiths, carpenters, carriage drivers, and weavers for the families of John and Floride Calhoun, Andrew Pickens and Margaret Calhoun, and Thomas Green and Anna Calhoun Clemson.
CMN is conducting research to document and provide new insights into the lives and labors of people of African descent who were enslaved at Fort Hill, as well as their descendants who remained in and migrated from South Carolina after the Civil War. In telling their stories, CMN will also increase our understanding of the Calhouns and Clemsons as enslavers and the institution of slavery in Upstate South Carolina.
Photograph: Thomas and Frances Fruster, former enslaved persons (foreground) and Mary Prince, caretaker (on porch) at the Fort Hill Plantation house, post-Reconstruction (Source: Thomas Green Clemson Papers, Clemson University Libraries' Special Collections & Archives. Used with permission.).
Generation II - Sharecroppers, Tenant Farmers, & Domestics
Between 1866 and 1874, at least 82 freedmen and freedwomen—formerly enslaved persons—signed annual contracts to labor as sharecroppers for Duff Green Calhoun, son of Andrew Pickens "A.P." Calhoun, and Clemson University founder Thomas Green Clemson and his agent at the Fort Hill Plantation. Sixteen children who worked alongside them were described as boys and/or classified as "half-hands." The adult laborers signed the documents with an "X" mark (likely due to illiteracy or disability) that stipulated the terms of their work, including pay for planting and harvesting crops, housing arrangements, rules governing behavior, and punishments for offenses.
Thomas Green Clemson also hired African Americans as domestics and tenant farmers to work for him at Fort Hill.
CMN is conducting research about the sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestics who labored on Fort Hill during the Reconstruction era. We are also seeking details about their enslavement during the antebellum period and their descendants. Additionally, CMN will investigate the roles of Duff Green Calhoun and Thomas Green Clemson and his agent and overseer for the sharecropping and tenant farming enterprises at Fort Hill and the maintenance of their home.
Read the sharecropper contract that Thomas Green Clemson signed with freedmen and freedwomen for 1868 by clicking the links below:
"Articles of agreement between Thomas G. Clemson and freedmen and women, 1868 January 1" (1868). Thomas Green Clemson Papers, Mss 2. 1134.
Image: Annual Articles of Agreement signed with an X mark by freed men and women, alongside notations regarding child laborers, to work as sharecroppers for Thomas Green Clemson on the Fort Hill Plantation during Reconstruction during Reconstruction (Source: Thomas Green Clemson Papers, Clemson University Libraries' Special Collections & Archives. Used with permission.).
Generation III: Convicted Laborers
Between 1890 and 1915, Clemson College trustees successfully petitioned the South Carolina State Assembly at least three times for permission to lease incarcerated boys and men from the state penitentiary in Columbia to help build Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina. The men and boys assigned to the Clemson College convicted laborer detail hailed from nearly every county in the state and ranged in age from 12 to 67 when they were processed into the penitentiary. The majority of convicted individuals that Clemson trustees actually leased to help build the college were under the age of 25. The youngest convicted laborer we've been able to document thus far who worked at Clemson was 14 years old. However, we are still examining some recently recovered state penitentiary records in the SC Department of Archives and History and will update this information as soon as we learn more.
Convicted of felonies varying from petty theft to murder with sentences ranging from six months to life, members of the predominately Black incarcerated workforce cleared land, made bricks, erected academic buildings, faculty houses, and a dike, farmed crops, and built an extension station for Clemson College, a higher education institution for white cadets founded in 1899 and opened for classes in 1893. A small percentage of the convicted men received pardons from several SC governors, including Benjamin R. Tillman, while working at the College. Those who died, at least 12 Black men documented to date, while laboring on campus are believed to have been buried in unmarked graves in Cemetery Hill, the same site where Woodland Cemetery was established in 1924.
CMN seeks to tell the stories of all of the men and boys who were listed in the registers of convicted laborers assigned to Clemson College and determine which of them actually labored on the work detail at the institution. We are also documenting their contributions to the building and maintenance of the college and associated agricultural enterprises. Additionally, we seek to provide insights into the lives of the men and boys before, during, and after incarceration, as well as identify their descendants.
In writing the stories of members of this generation, CMN illuminates the socio-political structure that white Democrats, particularly Tillman adherents, established in South Carolina after the end of Reconstruction, especially the excessive policing and criminalization of Black boys and men, the rise of the prison industrial complex, and the impact of Jim Crow laws and customs on the African American community.
Image: Page one of the first register listing the names of men and boys assigned to the Clemson College convict detail in August of 1890 (Source: South Carolina Department of Archives & History, Columbia, SC).
Generation IV: Wage Workers & Cooperative Extension Service Agents
Beginning in the late 1800s, Black Americans were hired as wage workers on the land where Clemson was built as domestics, cooks, nurses, farm hands, barbers, live-in domestics, groundskeepers, construction workers, and butchers to maintain the infrastructure of the institution and care for its white administrators, faculty, staff, and students.
Clemson also employed "Negro agents" for the segregated Cooperative Extension Service program to develop and support community organization, increase farm and home ownership, encourage educational pursuits and independence, improve residents' health and understanding of nutrition, and facilitate the development of sanitation services in rural Black communities throughout the state.
CMN seeks to identify and tell the stories of Black Americans who labored as wage workers and extension agents at Clemson prior to and immediately after integration, and to document the University's dependence on Black labor for its establishment, growth, and success. We will also tell stories about the impact of extension agents on the development of Black communities throughout South Carolina.
Photograph: South Carolina 4-H Club, Clemson College Extension Program (Source: Documenting the Clemson African American Experience, Clemson University Libraries' Special Collections & Archives. Used with permission.).
Generation V: Musicians
As early as 1920, Black American musicians performed for social events and gave concerts at Clemson. That year, the Tiger, the student-run newspaper, reported that a "negro orchestra" played for the Junior Prom. Throughout the Depression, other Black American musical groups, including Graham Jackson and the Seminole Syncopators, Neil Montgomery, the Jimmy Gunn Orchestra, and Fletcher Henderson and his Orchestra, were hired to play at Clemson. In 1939, Jimmie Lunceford became the first Black musician booked by Clemson's student-run Central Dance Association (CDA) to have his photograph included in a Tiger article about his performance (see image below).
In 1955, the CDA hired Duke Ellington and his orchestra for three performances. It had taken more than ten years to negotiate his concert series. Eight years later, while Clemson College administrators sought unsuccessfully to legally bar Black architecture student Harvey Gantt from enrolling at the higher education institution, the CDA continued to book Black musicians for performances at dances and social events for white Clemson students on campus.
CMN seeks to identify all Black musicians who performed at Clemson prior to and in the years after desegregation and to document their varied experiences at the institution.
Photograph: Duke Ellington autographed this photo for the Clemson Dance Association (Source: George Bennett Papers, Clemson University Libraries' Special Collections & Archives, ca. 1955. Photograph is in the public domain.).
Generation VI: Desegration
Students, Faculty, Staff, & Administrators
On January 28, 1963, Harvey B. Gantt became the first Black student to enroll in Clemson after winning a class-action lawsuit for admission. Gantt expressed an interest in attending Clemson as early as July 1959 during the summer before to his senior year of high school when he requested a bulletin and information on expenses and course requirements in a letter to the admissions office. After his application was repeatedly denied or delayed for various reasons, his father filed a lawsuit on his behalf in the summer of 1962, which he won on appeal to the US Supreme Court in December 1962.
South Carolina was the last state to desegregate its public schools after the US Supreme Court ruled in its Brown v. Board of Education 1954 decision that racial discrimination violated the 14th amendment that guaranteed American citizens equal protection under the law. Briggs v. Elliott, a lawsuit that originated in Clarendon County, SC, over school busing for Black children, was the first of five cases that was bundled into Brown v. Board of Education. Clemson was the first public higher education institution to desegregate in South Carolina since Reconstruction.
CMN seeks to ensure that the details regarding Gantt's two-year fight to gain admission to Clemson are accessible to the public, as well as information about the matriculations of other Black students who enrolled at the University, particularly during the first decade of integration. We will also document how the desegregation of the student body helped to facilitate the hiring of the first generation of Black faculty and administrators, the establishment of the Student League for Black Identity, the integration of athletics, and increased opportunities for staff at Clemson. And we will honor the accomplishments of Black Clemson trailblazers.
Photograph: Harvey Gantt at press conference following enrollment in Clemson College in January of 1963 (Source: Harvey Gantt Papers, Clemson University Libraries' Special Collections & Archives. Used with permission.).
Generation VII: 21st-century activism
The roots of Black protest on the land where Clemson was built stretch back into the antebellum period when an enslaved girl named Issey who was owned by the Calhouns nearly burned the Fort Hill Plantation house down by setting fire to a feather pillow in an upstairs bedroom. Through every generation, Black people have fought against injustice and demanded liberation and equality.
In the twenty-first century, Black Clemson students and their allies and accomplices have become increasingly involved in activism as the Black Lives Matter movement sparked protests across the nation and around the world.
In 2011, Clemson student Whitney Anderson produced a documentary titled Eyes of the Tiger: A Story of Racial Diversity to examine multiple perspectives on being a Clemson tiger. Watch parts 1 and 2 of the documentary below.
In 2014, A.D. Carson, then a graduate student in Clemson's Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design program, penned a powerful spoken-word poem that issued a call to action for Clemson tigers to directly address and fully acknowledge and honor the stripes--the lives and labors of enslaved persons, sharecroppers, and incarcerated men and boys--in the University's incomplete, whitewashed history.
Additionally, students have organized a series of marches and protests to demand change at Clemson and in the nation. They marched to call for the change of the name of Tillman Hall to its original name the Main Building, or "Old Main," an action supported by the Faculty Senate in 2015 and for which the Board of Trustees requested an exception in the SC Heritage Act to actually do in 2020. They staged a die-in on Bowman Field to protest the failure of prosectors to indict the police officers who murdered Eric Garner and Michael Brown. They issued grievances and demands for Clemson administrators to address the institution's failure to live up to its founder's vision and its mission to provide an empowering education in a safe and nurturing environment for all students. They staged a 9-day sit-in at Sikes Hall--which led to the arrest of five Clemson students--when racist incidents continued and the administration didn't respond to their grievances and demands when they promised they would. Administrators provided a response just as the student-activists ended the protest, but most of the demands have not been fulfilled.
More recently, student-athletes organized a peaceful march to call for an end to systemic racism after the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black people, often by police officers. Clemson students initiated an Instagram campaign called "Black and Brown at Clemson," now facilitated by Clemson Undergraduate Student Government's Council of Diversity Affairs, to provide a forum for people of color at the University to share their stories. In the fall of 2020, students launched a video campaign called hosted on YouTube "WeCU" in which they discuss different social issues and how they impact Clemson students.
CMN is documenting these stories in real time, offering students and their supporters opportunities to tell and preserve their history in their own words so that future generations will known their names and be inspired and empowered by their activism.
Photograph: Students and their supports during the Sikes Sit-in in April 2015 (Source: Rhondda R. Thomas).
South Carolina Historical Markers Project
Beginning in January of 2015, a team of Clemson professors, an alumnus, and staff, including Barret Anderson, Dr. James Bostic Jr., Will Hiott, Professor Jeremy King, Professor Denise Anderson, and Professor Rhondda Thomas researched, wrote text, and prepared the applications for three new South Carolina state historical markers that provide recognition of indigenous peoples' and Black life stories in early Clemson history. Some Clemson historians were also consulted for the project. After we secured Board of Trustees' approval, the markers were installed on campus in April of 2016: 1) Esseneca Town/Calhoun Bottoms, 2) Fort Hill Slave Cemetery and Convict Laborer Burial Ground/Woodland Cemetery, and 3) Fort Hill Slave Quarters/Convict Laborer Stockade.
Clemson University Woodland Cemetery and African American Burial Ground Historic Preservation Project
In February 2020, two Clemson students, Sarah Adams and Morgan Molosso, became interested in restoring and memorializing the “Fort Hill Slave and Convict Cemetery” after taking a Call My Name tour. A team of faculty, students, alumni, and staff were soon working collaboratively to document the burial ground before a memorial was installed.
During the summer of 2020, Preservation South, using ground penetrating radar (GPR), located hundreds of unmarked graves in two locations in Woodland Cemetery where African American enslaved persons, sharecroppers, convicted laborers, and wage workers are believed to be buried. By January 2021, additional unmarked graves were recovered using GPR, bringing the total to about 600.
The Clemson University Board of Trustees established a task force and Legacy Council to facilitate the development of a preservation plan for the site, including guidelines for a memorial, and asked Dr. Thomas to coordinate community engagement and later research for the project. CMN team members are also assisting with these efforts.
More information about the burial ground project can be found here and here.
We would like to talk with people who believe members of their families or their friends are buried in unmarked graves in the cemetery, especially Black American families. We would also like to talk with the families of Black Americans who were employed by Clemson prior to and immediately after desegregation in 1963, particularly through the mid-1990s.
If you have information or questions about the burial ground, please email afamburials@clemson.edu or call 864-656-8855.
For information about cemetery tours, please call 864.656.8855 or email afamburials@clemson.edu.
Clemson Student Research Projects
Call My Name Student Advisory Board
During the fall of 2020, Sarah Adams and Morgan Molosso organized the Call My Name Student Advisory Board. The group became an official student organization in May 2020 and meets regularly to plan initiatives that support CMN. One of their first initiatives was a Heritage Run for Clemson Athletics in which student-athletes ran a route around campus with stops at sites of significance to African American history. Below is a video recap of one of the runs.
The students also launched their first t-shirt campaign during Black History Month 2021 to emphasize how Clemson is "Indebted." to African Americans for its existence and success. All funds raised ($201) are being used to support the research goals of the CMN project. The students will launch more fundraisers in the future.
We will launch a new t-shirt campaign during the 2022-2023 academic year.
The Clemson Story and Call My Name Creative Inquiry Projects
During the 2021 Spring semester, a team of six undergraduate students are conducting research for the Call My Name Project. Their work includes developing a CMN Journey edition of social media posts for Black History Month, a CMN campus tour, and conducting research for a web-based app and a play.
During the 2015-16 academic year, a team of 13 undergraduate students conducted research for the Clemson University Story Project. Their work ranged from documenting all of the Clemson University trustees and their political affiliations to creating stories about Black women at Clemson.
"The African American Experience at Clemson" Honors English Project
During the spring of 2012, Kali Kupp, an English major in my Honors Seminar, renaissance @ clemson.edu which examined the lives and contributions of Clemson University founder Thomas Green Clemson and Harvey Gantt, who desegregated Clemson in 1963, developed a website devoted to Black peoples' contributions to and involvement in Clemson for her final project. Click the link below to learn more about Kupp's research.
Photograph: CI team member conducting research in the South Carolina state archives (Credit: Rhondda Thomas).
Call My Name Publications by Dr. Thomas
Note: The Biography article is available through Clemson Libraries digital catalog for Clemson faculty, staff, and students.
Call My Name, Clemson: Documenting the Black Experience in an Upstate American University Community, published in the Humanities and Public Life Book Series, University of Iowa Press, in November 2020. Winner of honorable mention in 2021 National Council on Public History book award competition. Order your copy from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Books-A-Million, or from the University of Iowa Press.
Listen to the book launch for Call My Name, Clemson, hosted by Professor Hilary Green and including three of the contributors to the book: Monica Williams-Hudgens, mixed-race granddaughter of Senator Strom Thurmond; Eric Young, Clemson alumnus and descendant of Thomas and Fannie Fruster who were enslaved on the Fort Hill Plantation; and Thomas Marshall III, Clemson alumnus.
Photograph: Susan Calhoun Clemson Richardson holding Byron Herlong (ca. 1895 ?). Mrs. Richardson was enslaved by John C. and Floride Calhoun and given as a gift to their daughter Anna upon Anna's marriage to Thomas Green Clemson. After the Civil War, Mrs. Richardson was employed as a caretaker for the Herlong family children for three generations. She died in Aiken, SC, in the early 1900s. Her burial site is currently unknown. (Source: Clemson University Libraries' Special Collections & Archives. Used with permission.).
StoryCorps Collaboration with CMN
Call My Name Coalition
A NEH Creating Humanities Communities Grant enabled CMN to partner with the Clemson University Humanities Hub and three local community partners to create a coalition of organizations.
Bertha Lee Strickland Cultural Museum, Shelby Henderson, Director
Clemson Area African American Museum, Angela Agard, Director
Lunney Museum, Nick McKinney, Director
Clemson University Humanities Hub, James Burns, Director
Together we are dedicated to the following: "By recording, representing, and soliciting the experiences of generations of African American life in an extraordinary microcosm of American history and racial politics, we hope to advance and encourage appreciation, understanding, of the African American experience, and to cooperate, when appropriate, with other groups to improve the cultural activities of the community."
Photograph: Participants in the first annual Black History Month Breakfast sponsored by CAAAM in 2019. (Source: CMN Archive.)
Media Coverage of CMN
Photograph (left to right): 90-year-old Mrs. Eva Hester Martin. Mrs. Martin's grandmother Matilda Brown—daughter of Sharper and Caroline who were enslaved on the Fort Hill Plantation. Mrs. Martin's mother Anna Brown, born after Emancipation. Mrs. Martin's high school graduation photo (Credit: Rhondda Thomas).
In March of 2019, CMN faculty director Dr. Rhondda R. Thomas gave a TEDx talk in Greenville, South Carolina, titled "The Power in Calling a Name."
Call My Name Walking Tours
Dr. Thomas and CMN team guides conduct 60- or 90-minute Black heritage walking tours of Clemson University. Stops include Lee Hall / Strom Thurmond Institute Building where the Fort Hill slave quarters and convict stockade were located, respectively; the historic district that includes buildings built by incarcerated boys and men (Hardin Hall, Trustee House, Sikes Hall, and Old Main [Tillman Hall]); the Fort Hill Plantation house; Memorial Stadium; and the African American Burial Ground in Woodland Cemetery.
Call My Name Tour Schedule
Please check back for the public tour schedule in the fall of 2022. If you would like to schedule a private tour, please email callmynamecu@clemson.edu.
Past
- International Town and Gown Association Conference, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, June 8, 2022.
- Black History Month Celebration, Clemson University's Harvey and Lucinda Gantt Multicultural Center, February 20, 2022; February 28, 2021; February 11, 2020; February 7 and 21, 2018; and February 7 and 21, 2018.
- Clemson Undergraduate Student Association Cabinet, November 2017.
- Contemplative African American Heritage Tour, October 2016 and March 2017.
- Greater Clemson Music Festival, April 2015 and April 2016.
- The Slave Dwelling Project Encampment at Clemson, former site of Fort Hill Plantation Slave Quarters, April 2016.
- Leading for Environment and Future Living Learning Community (LEAF), Clemson University, April 2016.
- Clemson Black Student Union, March 2016.
Call My Name Walking Tour of Clemson University
Below please find copies of the first edition of the CMN walking tour of the Clemson University campus. Please email us at www.callmynamecu@clemson.edu to request a hard or electronic copy of the map.
Call My Name Heritage 5K
We are currently developing a Call My Name Heritage 5K run and walk for groups, couples, and individuals on the Clemson University campus. Participants would walk or run to sites associated with Black history on campus and then be provided with information about that site electronically or on a printed map. We will introduce the CMN Heritage 5K Run and Walk to the public in February 2023.
For more information about tours, please email callmynamecu@clemson.edu
Photograph: Descendants of Frances and Thomas Fruster who were enslaved on the Fort Hill Plantation. (Source: Clemson University Creative Media Services, Ken Scar)
Coming Soon
CALL MY NAME
traveling Museum Exhibition
Call My Name: The African American Experience in the South Carolina Upstate from Enslavement to Desegregation will be a traveling museum exhibition that offers a case study of how Upstate South Carolina, particularly the greater Clemson community, became part of the African Diaspora. The exhibition will begin with free Africans in their homeland, and then trace their and other Black peoples’ journeys through slavery, freedom, emancipation, segregation, and desegregation in the Greater Clemson University community. Their stories include those of free Africans and enslaved people of African descent prior to Emancipation; freed men and women who labored as sharecroppers during Reconstruction; incarcerated laborers, aged 14-67, who erected the University’s earliest buildings; wage workers who maintained the campus infrastructure during the Jim Crow era; musicians like Duke Ellington and Ray Charles who performed at segregated social events; students, faculty, and staff who came to Clemson after desegregation in 1963; and twenty-first century student activists and their allies. Black Clemson will also restore the connection between Clemson University history and the stories of Black people and the development of institutions in local communities by/for Blacks, such as numerous churches including King's Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church organized in 1865 and the Abel Baptist Church established in 1868; Littlejohn's Grill, a nightclub-restaurant-hotel where musicians like James Brown and Count Basie performed; local landowners and entrepreneurs; the Calhoun and Cadillac Heights neighborhoods; the Silver Spring School, Calhoun Elementary School, and Seneca Institute; the activism of local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapters; sports organizations; and the integration of local public schools.
Key project partners are the Call My Name Coalition, the Bertha Lee Strickland Cultural Museum of Seneca, SC; the Clemson Area African American Museum; the Lunney Museum of Seneca, SC; and the Pendleton Foundation for the Study of Black History and Culture. Other collaborators include Clemson University Libraries Special Collections and Archives; the Clemson University Humanities Hub; and the Upcountry History Museum of Greenville - Furman University, a Smithsonian affiliate.
The exhibition reclaims these forgotten stories that are essential for understanding the intricate connections between the history of Black folks in Clemson and the region, state, nation, and world.
Coming Soon
Call My Name Podcast
August 2022: first episode
"Call My Name, Clemson: How It All Began"
Coming Soon
Call My Name History Videos
August 2022: first episode
"Issey Lights a Fire"
Coming Soon
Call My Name Music Video
Theme Song: "Hush"
Production Collaborators: Eric Young and Alpheaus Anderson
Coming Soon
Call My Name Book #2
The Voices of Black Clemson: Silenced No More
Stay tuned for more details to be announced in July 2022!
Coming Soon
CALL MY NAME Play Project
Produced in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Harvey Gantt's desegregation of Clemson University on January 23, 1963.
Production collaborations include Tectonic Theater Project, Clemson University Performing Arts Department, Clemson University College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities, Clemson University Global Black Studies Program, and the Call My Name Coalitioin.
Black Historic Site Database Project
This project will create a database of Black American historic sites in Pickens County and Oconee County, South Carolina, that can be used to create entries for the South Carolina Green Book Project sponsored by the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission, documentaries produced for the South Carolina Green Book Project sponsored by the International African American Museum, and possibly for an interactive Black Heritage Trail project coordinated by community partners, the Call My Name team, and Clemson faculty that will include markers, murals, memorials, and storytelling spaces on pathways that wind through the built landscapes of the Clemson University campus and the nearby towns of Clemson and Seneca. These projects will document the area’s rich and complex past and offer local residents and visitors to the region new ways to engage with significant yet missing parts of Upstate South Carolina history. Phase 1 of this project is made possible by a planning grant from SC Humanities.
Humanities Scholars
• Rhondda Robinson Thomas, Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature, Call My Name Project Faculty Director, and Coordinator of Research and Community Engagement for the Woodland Cemetery Preservation Project, Clemson University
• Joshua Catalano, assistant professor and director of the Program in Public History, Department of History, Clemson University
Resource Persons
• Joshua Parks, Digital Production Manager, International African American Museum
• Shelby Henderson, director, Arts, History, and Culture Department, Seneca, SC, District 3 Representative for the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission
• Nick McKinney, director, Museums, Technology, and Design, Seneca, SC
• Angela Agard, director, Clemson Area African American Museum
Gifts, Grants, and Awards, Sponsors, & collaborators
Gifts, Grants, and Awards
Clemson University Dean of the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities is providing recurring annual funds for Call My Name's operational and research expenses beginning January 2022 for three years.
Clemson University Dean of the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities and Office of the Provost to support the development and production of the play CALL MY NAME in collaboration with Tectonic Theater Project and Clemson's Department of Performing Arts. Performances scheduled for fall 2022.
Dabo's All In Team Foundation, facilitated by Daren Rencher and senior Clemson football student-athletes, February 2021.
NEH CARES Act Grant, support of post-doc for research of African American history in South Carolina Upstate, with co-PI Professor Lee Morrissey, director of the Humanities Hub, Clemson University, National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer 2020.
NEH Public Humanities Exhibitions - Implementation grant with co-PI Professor Lee Morrissey, founding director of the Humanities Hub, Clemson University, 2020.
NEH Common Heritage Grant, "Documenting Your Family Story" Community Digitizing Event, with co-PI Professor Lee Morrissey, Clemson University, 2019.
Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship (for exhibition project), 2018-19 .
NEH Creating Humanities Communities Challenge Grant, with co-PI Professor Lee Morrissey, 2017-2022.
South Carolina Humanities Mini-Grant (for exhibition project research), July 2017.
African American History, Culture and Digital Humanities Scholar, University of Maryland, Spring 2019.
Gift from Dr. James E. and Edith H. Bostic, Jr., Clemson University Foundation, 2014 and 2017.
Matching grant for Bostics' gifts from Office of the Provost, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, 2014 and 2017.
Donors
The Department of English, Clemson University
Office of the Provost, Clemson University
Division of Inclusion & Equity, Clemson University
College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities, Clemson University
Harvey and Lucinda Gantt Multicultural Center, Clemson University
The Humanities Hub, Clemson University
Collaborators
Clemson University Libraries' Special Collections & Archives
Pearce Center for Professional Communications, Department of English, Clemson University
Historic Properties, Clemson University
cNOMAS, Clemson University School of Architecture
Clemson Athletics Creative Media Team
Photograph: Descendants of Frances and Thomas Fruster who were enslaved on the Fort Hill Plantation attending History in Plain Sight Day at Clemson University on November 14, 2016. Seated far left is Eric Young, Clemson grad 2005, who discovered his family roots and ties to Clemson history after graduating from the University. (Credit: Ken Scar)
In March 2020, the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission awarded Call My Name the 2020 "Preserving Our Places in History" Project Award. The award recognizes the most outstanding local or statewide project related to African American history and culture in South Carolina during 2019.
Make a Gift to Call My Name
To support the research for and initiatives developed by the Call My Name Project, please click here to make a donation through the Clemson University Foundation. Thank you.
Current Funding Needs
Music Video ($5,000)
Podcast and Video Series ($5,000)
Traveling Exhibition ($100,000)
Call My Name, Clemson Play ($750,000)
All levels of contributors are welcome, including organization and corporate sponsors as well as private donors. Contact us for more information about sponsorships.
Contact
callmynamecu@clemson.edu
Phone: 864-401-6216
If you have information about people, organizations, events, etc. in any of the seven generations or in the Greater Clemson, Pendleton, Seneca, and Central, South Carolina, communities, please contact us. We'd love to hear from and talk with you.
All pictures are either used with permission or owned by the CMN project. No part of this site can be reproduced without permission from the CMN faculty director or the source cited.
Credits:
Created with images by paffy - "Studio condenser microphone with professional headphones acoustic panel" • smolaw11 - "Media Television film Production and interview reporter concept: Video recorder movie recording films shooting of grand opening in conference hall live event streaming for presentation by videographer" • Somboon - "A sound mixing plan for mixing music with lots of buttons and a lighted screen and a nightclub stage background" • Gorodenkoff - "University Library: Portrait of Gifted Beautiful Black Girl Stands Between Rows of Bookshelves and Searching for the Right Book Title, Finds and Picks one for Class Assignment" • .shock - "theatre"