Exodus: Literary Migrations of Afro-Atlantic Authors, 1760-1903

This dissertation analyzes Afro-Atlantic Exodus narratives that challenged slavery and racism throughout the African diaspora. Although many scholars have examined black writers' Exodus stories, none has explored the early development of these narratives from the mid-eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. My study of the extent to which Exodus stories pervade black literature supports my contention that their use is more complex than scholars have acknowledged. Tracing the origins of American Exodus narratives to the Puritan tradition, I explore how Afro-Atlantic people from Briton Hammon who invokes the Joseph story in his 1760 Narrative to W. E. B. DuBois who appropriates the Joshua story in his 1903 Souls of Black Folk decenter and rewrite white Christians' Exodus narratives, characterizing themselves as one of God's people deserving of freedom and equality. Detailed examinations of the Joseph and Joshua stories are two of the missing components of this discussion; they provide the essential bookends of the story. Quite simply, without an analysis of these narratives and the Moses story, any critique of this topic is incomplete and perhaps even misleading. In contrast to white writers who create linear narratives that chart the Puritans' transatlantic Exodus from European communities to the promised land of the New World, black authors develop multi-layered, sophisticated stories to advance their cause for freedom and equality. I demonstrate this complexity through an analysis of the literary strategies they rely on to develop their Exodus stories. Afro-Atlantic writers include fissures--breaks in the chronology of the biblical story--to depict their many varied experiences. Women writers are responsible for some of the major fissures. Afro-Atlantic writers also conflate biblical and secular/republican discourse as they demand their rights as citizens. Rather than recapitulate the entire Exodus story, they select specific episodes to support their arguments. Finally, in their search for a safe home, they represent their promised land, both in America and abroad, as unstable. Ultimately, Afro-Atlantic writers create Exodus narratives that reflect their persistent, diverse, and competing efforts to achieve their racial uplift goals but the stories do not fulfill the promise of freedom and equality

Call My Name, Clemson: Make Us Visible

Between 1890 and 1915, a predominately African American state convict crew built Clemson University on John C. Calhoun’s Fort Hill Plantation in upstate South Carolina. Calhoun’s plantation house still sits in the middle of campus. From the establishment of the plantation in 1825 through the integration of Clemson in 1963, African Americans have played a pivotal role in sustaining the land and the university. Yet their stories and contributions are largely omitted from Clemson’s public history

Call My Name, Clemson: Make Us Visible

Between 1890 and 1915, a predominately African American state convict crew built Clemson University on John C. Calhoun’s Fort Hill Plantation in upstate South Carolina. Calhoun’s plantation house still sits in the middle of campus. From the establishment of the plantation in 1825 through the integration of Clemson in 1963, African Americans have played a pivotal role in sustaining the land and the university. Yet their stories and contributions are largely omitted from Clemson’s public history

The South Carolina Roots of African American Thought

South Carolina has always loomed larger in the national imagination, particularly in terms of political and social policy, than its size and population might justify. The audacity and the often astonishing character of thinkers and political figures who have hailed from this region might suggest that climate affects personality. Edward Rutledge challenged the condemnation of the slave trade in the initial draft of the Declaration of Independence; John C. Calhoun penned the audacious philosophy of state nullification; Citadel cadets fired shots at Fort Sumter; and Senator Strom Thurmond defended racial segregation with the longest filibuster in Senate history. South Carolina has always used its passion to influence national debate