Call My Name: The Black Experience in the South Carolina Upstate from Enslavement to Desegregation

FAIN: GI-269711-20

Clemson University (Clemson, SC 29634-0001)
Rhondda Robinson Thomas (Project Director: August 2019 to present)

Implementation of a traveling exhibition examining the history of the African Americans who lived and worked the land that became Clemson University.

This project records, represents, and solicits the experiences of six generations of African Americans in a microcosm of American history and racial politics-Clemson, SC. Through this one university campus, built on formerly Cherokee land by settlers from the Ulster Plantations of Ireland, we start with the pre-history of the plantation in British colonial settings to tell an intergenerational story of African American life to the present day. Emerging from six years of work documenting, highlighting, and inviting community reflections (with two prior NEH grants), Call my Name assembles an unprecedented volume of materials on African American life in Upstate, Appalachian South Carolina. With this application, we seek $400,000 for the implementation phase of the Call My Name exhibition, including a 2-year staff person. After the conclusion of its three-state tour, the exhibit will be permanently installed in an off-campus, independent location, the Clemson Area African American Museum.