CLAW: Carolina Lowcountry & Atlantic World

2021 Slave Dwelling Project Conference: Changing Narratives in Changing Times

The Slave Dwelling Project, like so many museums, historic sites, and institutions of higher learning, entered 2020 with robust and ambitious plans. We were well on our way to celebrating our 10th anniversary by organizing a fall conference on the theme “Ten Years of Changing Narratives.” But the outbreak of COVID-19 dictated the postponement of those conference plans and the adjustment of our work to the realities of social distancing and remote communication.

During 2020, people around the world were also confronted with the appalling murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, and too many others. An array of changes followed: Confederate monuments rapidly came down; iconic images of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben were removed from product packaging, and some notable names were changed. Lady Antebellum became Lady A, and The Dixie Chicks simply called themselves The Chicks. Despite some resistance, the 1619 Project continued to challenge the White male historical narrative in this country. Internationally, England’s National Trust began examining that country’s relationship to slavery and colonialism, and in Brussels, the Royal Museum for Central Africa confronted its representation of colonized African and indigenous peoples.

Here in the United States, museums, historic sites, institutions of higher learning, and the Slave Dwelling Project have acknowledged our shared and urgent responsibility to contribute to the historical narrative and address the issues at the heart of the present-day social justice movement. Therefore, our sixth national Slave Dwelling Project Conference—to be held virtually September 30 through October 2, 2021—will focus on this question: What are we doing now and what will we continue to do to change the narrative in changing times?

Full Conference Program: https://slavedwellingproject.org/sdp-2021-conference-program-overview/

Registration information: https://registration.socio.events/e/slavedwellingproject?fbclid=IwAR1AyIGXifIc1ao989wNTd2aitxO2eEtM-NGVZ4q5m7LEq8lnsUltj8IuEo

CLAW Commemorates 150th Anniversary of the Capture of Charleston by the Union

Last week, the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program commemorated the 150^th anniversary of the occupation of Charleston by Union forces with two events.

First, on February 18^th, the day Charleston fell 150 years ago, a panel discussion was held in College of Charleston’s Addlestone Library. Participating in the panel were Dr. Amy McCandless, Dr. Bernard Powers, and Dr. W. Marvin Dulaney. Dr. McCandless is Dean of the Graduate School, University of Charleston, South Carolina at the College of Charleston and has undertaken research on the history of South Carolina’s women. Dr. Powers is a Professor of History at the College of Charleston whose work on African-Americans in the Lowcountry is well represented by his book Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1865. Dr. Dulaney is the chair of the Department of History at the University of Texas at Arlington, and he previously worked at the College of Charleston and spent a number of years as director of the Avery Research Center for African-American History and Culture. Dr. McCandless began the panel by exploring the experiences of women during the siege, focusing on the diary of well-to-do Charleston resident Miss Emma Holmes. Miss Holmes’s disgust and grief over the fall of Charleston contrasted greatly with the joy and celebration of free blacks and formerly enslaved people, which Powers and Dulaney explored in their presentations. Free blacks who had fled the city, such as preacher Daniel Payne, returned and the African-American population lost no time in establishing churches and civic organizations and taking advantage of their freedom. Following the panelists’ presentations, a number of great questions were asked, including one about the attitudes of white citizens in the days following occupation and one about enslaved attempts to use the siege to escape captivity. These questions and others allowed the discussion to dig deeper into the history of Charleston and the Civil War.

Then, on February 20^th, College of Charleston English professor Joseph Kelly led a discussion of his book America’s Longest Siege: Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March toward Civil War. While much of Dr. Kelly’s research has focused on the work of James Joyce, he has also become very interested in Charleston’s history and its place in the American Civil War. At the beginning of the discussion, Kelly overviewed the driving argument of his book. In America’s Longest Siege, he argues that the actions of several individuals, including Charleston clergyman Bishop England as well as John C. Calhoun, led to the survival of slavery and the emerging view of slavery as a positive good. Kelly examines this uncompromising view through the lens of Charleston’s history and finds that it led to the declaration of secession which doomed the city to its eventual fate. Following Kelly’s opening remarks, several questions were brought up, such as one asking about the view of the Founding Fathers toward slavery and about John Rutledge’s role in the slavery compromises of the Constitutional Convention. This and other questions further explored the ideas brought up in Kelly’s book and their importance for our understanding of the conflict that ended 150 years ago.

Dr. Tristan Stubbs lectures in Addlestone Library

On Thursday, October 30, 2014, the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World program continued the Wells Fargo Distinguished Public Lecture Series with a lecture by Dr. Tristan Stubbs. For his lecture Stubbs presented part of his research on the plantation overseers of eighteenth-century Virginia, Georgia, and South Carolina. He described how the nineteenth-century view of overseers as capricious and brutal men can be traced back to the eighteenth century. Stubbs noted that attitudes towards overseers had not always been so harsh, and he argued that the idea of overseers as both brutal and often incompetent arose in the eighteenth century due to a number of factors, including a rising absenteeism among plantation owners and strains of Enlightenment thought. Stubbs, who received his PhD from Pembroke College, Cambridge, is quite the expert on the overseers of the eighteenth century, his manuscript on the subject having won the 2013 Hines Prize. The lecture had the honor of being attended by Dr. Sam Hines, who led the creation of the CLAW program and is the man behind the Hines Prize, named after Dr. Hines’ mother. Right before the lecture Dr. Hines presented Dr. Stubbs with a certificate confirming him as the 2013 Hines Prize winner. The Wells Fargo Distinguished Public Lecture series will continue on November 6^th at 6 pm with a lecture given in the College of Charleston’s Jewish Studies Center by Dr. Ras Michael Brown, a professor from Southern Illinois University.

Hines Prize-Winner Coming to the College of Charleston!

Dr. Tristan Stubbs, winner of the 2013 Hines Prize, will visit the College of Charleston at the end of October. While here he will lead a faculty seminar as well as a public presentation on plantation overseers. For more details on the October 30th presentation see the flyer below.