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National Council on  Public History Book Award honorable mention

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.

This book traces “Call My Name: African Americans in Early Clemson University History,” a Clemson English professor’s public history project that helped convince the university to reexamine and reconceptualize the institution’s complete and complex story from the origins of its land as Cherokee territory to its transformation into an increasingly diverse higher-education institution in the twenty-first century. Threading together scenes of communal history and conversation, student protests, white supremacist terrorism, and personal and institutional reckoning with Clemson’s past, this story helps us better understand the inextricable link between the history and legacies of slavery and the development of higher education institutions in America.

“This book has much to teach all of us—historians or not—about the process of history, the politics of higher education, and the power of remembering.”—The Journal of Southern History
“Through a compelling blend of history, contemporary experiences, observation, and personal honesty, Thomas reveals how the nation’s institutions continue to rely on a small group of people to make change in the area of race and racism, not to mention other forms of diversity. Call My Name, Clemson is a fascinating, thought-provoking read for anyone interested in how political change happens.”—Leslie M. Harris, coeditor, Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies

2021 National Council on Public History Book Award, honorable mention

ISBN-13
9781609387402
Retail price
$19.95
Sale end date

ISBN-13
9781609387419
Retail price
$19.95

Publication Details

Publication Date
11/02/2020
Pages
284
Trim size
6 × 9
Art
8 b&w photos, 12 color photos
Edition
1st