Abstract
This study was provoked by the recent detection of 541 unmarked burials signifying the recovery of the African American Burial Ground (AABG) on the grounds of Woodland Cemetery (WC) at Clemson University, South Carolina. A case study analysis of this coexistent sacred burial ground, initially for enslaved individuals of African descent interred during the pre-emancipation plantation era, seeks answers to fundamental questions: Was Clemson University aware of the AABG’s existence, and why did it take so long to act on preserving this sacred ground, historically known to the local descendant community? This study reveals that Clemson University’s negligence and cultural erasure during the 20th century has in the present day given way to an institutional commitment to truth-telling brought on by student activism and concerns about long-standing social inequities. The recovery of the AABG aligns with and contributes to work on “Black Geographies” and “Black Landscapes” (Woods, 2000; McKittrick & Woods, 2007; Boone, 2020; Hood 2020). The study examines the national reckoning among universities as they consider the legacy of slavery at their institutions and navigate justice (Wilder, 2014; Harris, et al., 2019). This research draws upon the author’s larger study on South Carolina’s landscape legacy and the synthesis of novel typologies beyond the normative classification of cultural landscapes (Padua, 2020). The commemoration of the AABG on campus is explored as a potential “reconciliatory landscape” conceptualized through the lens of “retrospective justice” drawn from the human rights literature (Russell, 2003; Roth, 2004). Status-quo attitudes are questioned as disruption to the norm instigates change and asserts social justice.
INTRODUCTION
Student activism spurred Clemson University’s1 institutional response that led to the 2020/2021 field surveys and initial detection of 667 unmarked burials of individuals of African descent (UBIAD) at Woodland Cemetery (WC)—recovering the memory of the African American Burial Ground (AABG) at that site. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) technology was utilized for these surveys, and the survey data verified prior research on the AABG initially for interments of enslaved people during the pre-emancipation era—a sacred place known to the local African American descendant community (Cowan-Ricks, 1992). Later, African American convict laborers who died while constructing Clemson’s early buildings and cultivating the land circa 1890–1915 were interred at the AABG (Thomas, 2014). Essentially, this initial detection of 667 UBIAD was not a new discovery but marked the recovery of the AABG. In a more recent report, further analysis by the archaeological consultants have validated 541 UBIAD as the final count (R. Thomas, personal communication, December 22, 2022).
The AABG’s 21st-century recovery provoked questions about Clemson’s stewardship of this sacred landscape, and this study sought answers to fundamental questions: Was Clemson aware of the AABG’s existence, and why did it take so long to act on preserving this sacred place, historically known to the local descendant community? Finding answers required a historical reading of the land known as the Fort Hill tract, including ownership, occupancy, and use, and the transformation and development of the former farm into a South Carolina public agricultural college now known as Clemson University. Various Calhoun family members owned and operated the farm at the Fort Hill tract circa 1812 until it was conveyed to the State of South Carolina in 1889 through the terms of T. G. Clemson’s final will to establish a public agricultural college (Bartley, 2009). The first Calhoun family member was buried circa 1837, establishing it as a private family cemetery at the top of hilly terrain within reach of the main residence. The Calhoun family plot remains active today and was preserved through the terms of T. G. Clemson’s will in the area then known as “cemetery hill” (Figure 1). This area was established as a private cemetery for Clemson officials, long-serving faculty, and their families and renamed WC in 1924. Research for this study included analysis of Clemson University governance, policymaking, and the operation and management practices of campus properties. This study acknowledges the AABG as having its own cultural identity distinctive from WC, a private cemetery established for Clemson interments.
1903 campus map (cropped) indicates the location of cemetery hill facing the Seneca River and verifies institutional knowledge. Source: P. T. Brodie, S. W. Reaves, 1903 Map (cropped) of Clemson College Bottom Lands Showing Dike, Seneca River, and Other Surroundings. Copy courtesy of Clemson University Facilities.
RESEARCH APPROACH
The recovery of the AABG and its coexistence with WC create an exemplary case study for investigating and interpreting disruptions to the normative theoretical notion of the cultural landscape. A single case study approach was deployed in this research given the unique and revelatory nature of this case (Yin, 1994). Given Clemson’s heritage of slavery and exploitative labor practices, the case study of the AABG coexisting with WC sheds light on the national reckoning among public and private universities grappling with justice for their history of slavery (Wilder, 2014; Harris et al., 2019). In many ways, this study validates the AABG as a “Black Landscape”—a racialized space telling truths about the lives of those interred at the AABG whose contributions to the nation’s plantation economy during the antebellum era, to nation-building, and to the construction of a college campus have yet to be recognized or celebrated (Boone, 2020; Hood, 2020). Similarly, as a historic sacred burial ground for people of African descent, whose memory was suppressed and erased for over 100 years, it speaks to unjust spatial practices of social inequity interrogated in both the “Black Geographies” and “Black Landscapes” literature (Woods, 2000; McKittrick & Woods, 2007; Boone, 2020; Hood, 2020).
A key objective of this research is to bring to light a complex interpretative narrative of the AABG’s 21st-century recovery—a disturbing portrayal of 20th-century institutional negligence and cultural erasure in juxtaposition with 21st-century institutional truth-telling brought on by student activism. Another objective is to speculate on a way forward to commemorate the recovery of the AABG through the making of a “reconciliatory landscape”—a novel type of cultural landscape that illuminates and celebrates the lives of the numerous people of African descent as significant to the construction of the Clemson campus, and their wider role in the nation-building of America during the pre-emancipation plantation era. This typological exploration draws from the author’s larger ongoing study on the American Experiment, a wider, historic, interpretative and analytical reading of South Carolina’s cultural landscape that examines both normative traditions (or types) of landscapes and shifts, disruptions, or countertraditions along with the utopian notion linked to Thomas Jefferson’s 1776 Declaration of Independence of colonial America’s defiance of England (Schlesinger, 1977; Padua, 2020). New typologies for South Carolina’s cultural landscapes under synthesis for that broader study include “ancient coastal landscapes” and related coastal shell rings the same age as Stonehenge; “extraction landscapes,” now-defunct granite quarries that were sources for historically significant buildings; and “experimental (socially segregated) landscapes,” represented in public schools and federally funded housing circa 1940s and 1950s, among others.
In the speculative and typological exploration of the AABG as a reconciliatory landscape, the study discusses “retrospective justice,” a concept from the literature on human rights and the role of race in the law (Russell, 2003; Roth, 2004). This study discusses the New York African American Burial Ground as point of reference, and lightly gazes at novel types of built and unbuilt reconciliatory landscapes emerging in South Carolina. Adopting a humanitarian perspective and acknowledging the unnamed people interred at the AABG as individuals who lived, worked, and died during different periods of the land’s development, the study traces the site’s land legacy as an antebellum plantation that became a postbellum farm and college campus.
To answer the research question of why Clemson took so long to act and preserve the AABG, this study temporally mapped Clemson’s facilities management and operations and activities related to WC. This study also serves as a “living document,” status report, and “view from the field.” On one level, it reports on the processes occurring on the ground at Clemson as a temporal benchmark, and it brings to light the potential for commemorating the AABG as a reconciliatory landscape—an emergent type of cultural landscape disrupting the norm in South Carolina, and particularly on the Clemson campus, which still features Confederate statuary and buildings named after white supremacists. On another level, when combined with the recent report on the unmarked burials of Native American children who suffered abuse at federally sanctioned boarding schools in the United States and Canada, it points to a traumatized American landscape reconciling a legacy of dispossession and erasure (Walker, 2022).
This article initially orients the reader to the broader context of the AABG-WC case study, including the physical environment, the property owners and their related labor practices, and historical development of the campus. Changes to the case study’s natural and cultural resources, especially the AABG’s desecration during campus development and the area’s regional development during the mid-20th century, are also discussed. Key “actors” from the 20th and 21st centuries are also incorporated in this study.
In his last will and testament, the American diplomat, mining engineer, and Confederate Army veteran T. G. Clemson donated the Calhoun family property, known as Fort Hill, to the State of South Carolina for the creation of a public agricultural college (Clemson University-a, n.d.). The terms of his will established the formal governance of the college through the 13-member Clemson Board of Trustees (CBoT). Seven were self-perpetuating “successor,” or life-term members, and six were elected for four-year terms by the state’s legislature (Steadman, 2009). The names of the seven life-term founding CBoT members, all slaveholders and Confederate Army veterans (except for Benjamin Tillman who joined the Confederate Army but left due to serious illness), were listed in his will. The CBoT’s responsibilities involve setting policy and approving budgets and all expenditures for university operations and management, including the building construction and maintenance of all campus properties. As is the case in other public land grant institutions, the president, financial officer, facilities planning and management, and other institutional leaders and organizational entities engage in the day-to-day operations.
This research underscores the shift and disruption created by 21st-century student activism and ways they triggered “responsive activism” by the CBoT and Clemson administration. In turn, the CBoT and Clemson leadership publicly committed to institutional truth-telling. Clemson President James Clements publicly commented on Clemson’s uncomfortable history at a 2016 event: “And, although we cannot change our history, we can acknowledge it and learn from it, and that is what great universities do” (Barnett, 2016). This indicates a form of positive disruption to CBoT’s norm, one usually driven by fiscal responsibilities, fund-raising, and corporate management. Grassroots activism by students was instrumental in the recovery of the AABG. Without their active engagement, the process for illuminating this hidden sacred site might not have occurred.
Sources: Secondary and Primary Data
This study relied on available secondary data from various sources on the AABG and WC in four general periods: 1) 1812–1888, when branches of the Calhoun family operated and owned the Fort Hill tract as a plantation and farm; 2) 1899 through 1915, when African American prisoners were leased from South Carolina to build Clemson’s first campus buildings; 3) 1924–1999, the period beginning with the year the CBoT established WC as a private cemetery for Clemson officials, faculty, and their families, ending with the year President Emeritus James F. Barker, FAIA, was elected Clemson’s fourteenth president; and 4) 2000 to the present. This study acknowledged the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) Record SC-344 and the National Register of Historic Places, noting the 1784 establishment of the Fort Hill tract when the land was granted to its first owner. The property’s name was derived from Fort Rutledge, previously built onsite circa 1776 as a Revolutionary War outpost. The HABS Record also noted that the Fort Hill tract was owned by a Presbyterian reverend circa 1802–1811, before the Calhoun family took ownership and transformed the land into a plantation.
Various Clemson websites and social media pages contain information drawn from archival materials; the author’s objective was to elicit key facts and events given the constraints of time and the essay’s length. In addition to utilizing online Clemson sources, the study involved secondary data from various literature (scholarly works, articles from magazines, newspapers, and newsletters).
Primary data were generated from expert interviews and correspondence with individuals involved in the 2020/2021 surveys. Field observations and data generated from qualitative ethnographic research were another source of primary data. Immersive experiences and visual documentation through photography provided valuable insight on the AABG’s coexistence with WC.
This research fully acknowledges and builds on the ongoing research and extensive scholarship on Clemson University’s African American experience championed by Dr. Rhondda R. Thomas (2014, 2018, 2020), especially her ongoing “Call My Name” public history and community-based project. This case study research analyzed the socio-cultural and political contexts and interrogated the 20th- and 21st-century activities directly related to the operations and management of WC, particularly as they pertained to the AABG. Part of the corpus of this study synthesized an interpretative narrative for navigating the 21st-century recovery of the AABG at an active cemetery on the campus of a public university and speculated on ways forward through a new type of memorial and cultural landscape that addresses past injustices.
CASE STUDY
Physical Context and General Background
The AABG coexists with WC and occupies hilly terrain spanning approximately 17 acres located south of and adjacent to the Memorial Stadium on the Clemson campus (Figure 2). The academic core spans 1,400 acres nestled within 17,000 acres. A mature tree canopy made up of mixed hardwoods and a Loblolly pine forest dominates the AABG-WC landscape that is located one quarter mile southwest of Calhoun’s Fort Hill antebellum house and library (Figure 2), a registered National Historic Landmark. The campus is situated within a suburban milieu and physically located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in northwestern South Carolina. The history of Clemson University’s land and the general historical settlement pattern of northwest South Carolina represent the widely accepted socio-cultural narrative involving the ancient Native Americans and Cherokee Nation; the “Frontier” of America’s original thirteen colonies; development of South Carolina’s “backcountry” and “upcountry,” currently known as the Upstate and influenced by the Ulster Scots, or Scots-Irish immigrants; operation as a plantation and farm; and transformation into a college (Benjamin, 1989; Thomas, 2014; Clemson University-a, n.d.). Various Calhoun family members owned, occupied, and managed Fort Hill as an antebellum plantation and postbellum farm. These landowners included the American politician John C. Calhoun and his son-in-law, T. G. Clemson, who enabled the land’s transformation into a college (Clemson University-a, n.d.).
The AABG-WC is located south of Memorial Stadium and one quarter mile from the Fort Hill historic Calhoun house & library. Map by Xiwei Shen.
Enslaved people of African descent and freed postbellum African American workers were known to be buried west of the Calhoun family plot facing the Seneca River, with their graves marked by natural field stones at the head and feet (Cowan-Ricks, 1992). Scholars have speculated on whether this burial practice of placing field stones (west-east orientation with a larger unetched rough stone marking the head facing east toward Africa, and smaller stone marking feet) originated with West African tradition, or was an ad hoc practice (Roediger, 1981; Jamieson, 1995). These unmarked head and foot stones were not typical chiseled architectonic tombstones containing engraved names of the deceased.
Brief Labor History and Exploitative Practices
Before the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution abolished slavery circa 1865, typical American plantation owners were slaveholders, and everyday operations involved labor by people of African descent. The Calhoun family were slaveholders with over 135 people of African descent who worked as skilled gardeners, seamstresses, carpenters, field hands, or domestic servants at Fort Hill (Clemson University-b, n.d.).
It’s important to note that the Calhoun family’s workers of African descent were the primary laborers who constructed buildings at Fort Hill. This included the expansion of the main house, originally a four-room Clergy Hall built circa 1803 by the previous owner, a Presbyterian reverend. The Calhoun antebellum house and single-room library were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960. The contents of the nomination form for the property’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places focus on John C. Calhoun as the seventh vice president and his Fort Hill residency during the last 25 years of his life. The form described the building construction and overall layout of the plantation property, including the main dwellings, single-room office/library, gardens and slave quarters. No mention of the skilled African American laborers who built Fort Hill’s various dwellings and ancillary buildings was noted in the nomination form.
In the postbellum period after slavery was abolished, T. G. Clemson managed the farm at Fort Hill using formerly enslaved individuals (Clemson University-b, n.d.) The mostly illiterate freedmen and women were given contracts as “wage hands,” sharecroppers, and domestic workers. They signed these contracts with an “X” without question after being informed of its contents. This system was severely restrictive and differed little from the practice of slavery that had preceded it (Orser, 1986). Essentially, these freed men and women became indentured employees who did the same work as enslaved individuals for little compensation and were allowed to reside in their former slave quarters (Ransom & Sutch, 1977; Thomas, 2018). During the land’s postbellum period, these workers were interred at the AABG when they died.
The making of Clemson’s early campus buildings from 1890 to 1915 would demonstrate another period of exploitative labor practices. Given South Carolina’s slow economic recovery during Reconstruction, funds for campus building construction were nonexistent. Since Clemson was legally state-owned, the CBoT took advantage of South Carolina’s exploitative convict labor lease system enacted in 1877. This grew out of a political trend following the abolition of slavery to create “Black Codes,” or a set of laws that restricted African Americans, criminalized their behavior, and eventually caused state prison populations to grow (Browne, 2007). Around 700 state prisoners of African descent were assigned to clear land and construct Clemson’s first campus buildings between 1890 and 1915 (Clemson University-b, n.d.). Like the previous enslaved individuals and freed sharecroppers and domestic workers, these convict laborers lived and worked on the land, and those who died on the job were interred in unmarked graves on campus property then known as cemetery hill (Figure 1). Thomas’s archival research discovered the names of twelve convicted laborers who died while working at Clemson, and her research suggests their burials were on the west side of the cemetery (R. Thomas, personal communication, January 10, 2023).
20th-Century Action/Inaction, 21st-Century Preservation, Student Activism/Institutional Truth-Telling
This section temporally maps and analyzes WC since its 1924 establishment and traces various 20th-century campus development activities and their impact on the AABG and WC. The 21st-century temporal narrative sets the socio-political context for the 2020/2021 recovery of the AABG after campus unrest disrupted Clemson’s 20th-century preservation practices and ushered in a period of institutional truth-telling in response to student activism. A review of the key “actors” involved in the operations, management, preservation, and maintenance of WC and the AABG is followed by discussion of these actors’ roles throughout this section.
Key Actors. As noted earlier, T. G. Clemson’s will called for governance by the CBoT. Hence, the CBoT has been and continues to be a key actor along with its designated entities like the History Task Force and the Legacy Council. Other key actors included presidents, faculty, staff and students, state officials, and internal Clemson entities. Past entities included the Physical Plant Division and Building and Grounds Committee, and examples of current entities are the Department of Historic Properties, units within Clemson Facilities, and university historians. Carrel Cowan-Ricks (1945–1997) was jointly appointed as a visiting professor in the College of Architecture and archaeologist in the Department of Historic Houses (precursor to the current Department of Historic Properties) circa 1991–1993. President Emeritus James F. Barker, FAIA, understood WC’s value as a resource for Clemson during his 1999–2013 service. Dr. Rhondda Thomas, currently the Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature, joined Clemson University’s Department of English in 2007. In the 21st century, Clemson students were key actors.
20th-century dialectic of action/inaction. At their regular CBoT meeting in June 1923, Clemson’s sixth president, Walter M. Riggs, presented the idea of designating a private burial ground at cemetery hill for Clemson officials, longstanding faculty, and their wives (CBoT, 1923). Six months after Riggs suddenly died, the CBoT unanimously approved Riggs’s proposal at their regular July 1924 meeting (CBoT, 1924). Riggs was the first person and first Clemson president interred on January 25th at WC after a military-style memorial on campus (“President W M Riggs,” 1924).
A few decades later, at their March 11, 1946, meeting, the Buildings and Grounds Committee unanimously voted to recommend “some type of permanent marker be established on Cemetery Hill to indicate this colored graveyard” (Clemson University-c, n.d.). The committee chair indicated their recommendation in a March 12, 1946, memorandum to Clemson’s seventh president, Dr. Robert F. Poole: “that a suitable marker be placed on Cemetery Hill commemorating the spot where certain slaves and convicts were buried.” (Clemson University-c, n.d.). The memo noted accurate information was needed to place on the marker. No evidence of a permanent marker from that time exists.
In the period between the 1940s and 1960s, the Memorial Stadium and US Army Corps of Engineers (ACoE) Hartwell Dam and Lake project significantly disturbed the AABG. Memorial Stadium, located north of and adjacent to WC and the AABG, was initially completed in 1942 with a capacity of 20,000 seats. With Clemson’s dedication to football, the stadium has expanded nearly every decade and seen the construction of additional roads and surface parking lots. The current seating capacity is 81,000 seats. Cowan-Ricks’s archival research on the 1960s period noted the lack of preservation efforts when remains of UBIAD were unearthed during the construction of the parking lot west of WC (Clemson University-c, n.d.).
After the Memorial Stadium was initially completed in 1942, the US ACoE contacted Clemson circa 1949 about their plans for the Savannah River watershed—a national initiative for hydroelectric power and flood management that was authorized by the 1950 Flood Control Act (Clemson Agricultural College, n.d.). This highly contested proposal involved the construction of the Hartwell Dam and Lake through the realignment of the Savannah, Tugaloo, and Seneca Rivers coursing through the states of Georgia and South Carolina, including the Clemson campus. Clemson’s assessment of the ACoE’s early proposals indicated the project would cause major flooding and inundation and especially damage the Memorial Stadium. After years of negotiations, the dam was built, followed by the lake circa 1955–1963 (Clemson Agricultural College, n. d.; CBoT, 1956). The combination of the US ACoE project and stadium expansion activities permanently altered Clemson’s natural and cultural resources—desecrating the AABG. The natural woodland habitat was destroyed and reduced the hill’s overall footprint to its current 17-acre spatial form. Analysis of the 1953 and 1963 aerial photographs (Figures 3a & 3b) illustrates this devastation—defilement of the AABG and significant loss of natural resources. The roads and surface parking lots significantly and legibly destroyed the southern and western slopes.
A 1953 aerial image above and 1963 aerial image below indicate significant impact to the AABG-WC and local natural resources from the ACoE’s Hartwell Dam & Lake project and Memorial Stadium expansion. Photographer unknown, courtesy of Clemson University Facilities.
Additional activities related to WC occurred during this same period and are worth highlighting. Clemson’s seventh President Poole initiated the establishment of the Camelia Test Garden (Figure 3a) circa 1951 in cooperation with the South Carolina and American Camellia Societies and located in WC’s southeast area (“Work Started,” 1951). It was part of a coordinated effort with other southern states to cultivate varieties resilient to cold weather (“Camellia Test Begun,” 1952). At their February 1953 meeting, the Buildings and Grounds Committee unanimously recommended renaming the test garden to the Judge Crawford Camellia Garden in “honor of the old colored gardener who worked for Clemson College for approximately 50 years.” (Clemson University-c, n.d.). No follow-up action was ever taken. By the late 1950s, hundreds of camellias were cultivated in the test area. In preparation for campus development and various construction activities, the majority of these camellia plants were transplanted to a nearby location now known as the South Carolina Botanical Garden.
Around the same time, the director of the physical plant sent a November 1957 memorandum to the director of auxiliary enterprises with recommendations for WC’s maintenance and security. He noted the need to enclose the “colored graveyard” area west of the Calhoun plot with a “securely constructed wire fence” (Clemson University-c, n.d.). No follow-up action took place at the time. However, an ad hoc committee was charged with studying WC’s current and future operations. A month later, their eight-page December 1957 report listed thirteen recommendations, with two worth mentioning. The first noted the continuation of providing plots for its “white” employees with adjacent areas further developed for additional plots. The sixth recommendation called for funding specific maintenance activities, including the designation of the “area of the colored graveyard” on WC maps (Clemson University-c, n.d.). Several unpublished maps noting the AABG were created by the Clemson campus planning office in the early 2000’s (R. Thomas, personal communications, January 10, 2023).
A few years later, for purposes of the “orderly and proper development of the campus,” Clemson filed a court petition in 1960 to relocate the UBIAD from WC’s western slope and reinter these remains to another location 300 feet away. This action was related to the Hartwell Dam and Lake project. A close reading of the August 22, 1960, petition sheds light on the limitations of community outreach at that time (Clemson University-c, n.d.). Item III of the petition notes the spatial location of the AABG as the “western slopes of Cemetery Hill … upon which unmarked field stones set in no regular pattern are thought by legend and ancient report to mark the graves of deceased Negro slaves or of prisoner laborers at one time employed in the construction of the works of the College.” Item VI noted Clemson’s immediate need for the area to be graded and excavated “to be suitable for its corporate purpose.” After the court-ordered ten-day public review period with no public testimony or written response, the court ruled in favor of Clemson. The “Court Order,” dated September 3, 1960, cited legal statutes about the requisite consent of next of kin to remove remains and their right to object; it noted, “Removal before flooding by water power pond is permitted by statute” (Clemson University-c, n.d.). Clemson subsequently exhumed, relocated, and reinterred the UBIAD to an area 300 feet away (Figure 4). It’s important to note that illiteracy rates at the time in South Carolina were estimated at 27%, or 87,000 in a state population of 2.38 million people (US Department of Commerce, 1963). Hence, it appears that public notice in newspapers during that time may not have been the most effective way to communicate to the local descendant community Clemson’s intentions to exhume and relocate burials.
The AABG and locations of 667 UBIAD; developmental history of WC and designated burial plots. Graphic by Xiwei Shen and based on various sources.
After a 30-year gap in the archival documents on the AABG, Carrel Cowan-Ricks was jointly appointed in 1991 as a visiting professor for the College of Architecture’s Visual Arts and History Department and as the historical archaeologist for the Department of Historic Houses. Clemson did not have an anthropology or archaeology department at the time, and Cowan-Ricks was hired for her expertise on African burial grounds. Her work on a three-month-long archaeological dig ended without conclusive evidence of UBIAD from the pre-emancipatory period (Clemson University-c, n.d.). However, her research noted the need to further investigate an area of unassigned burial plots west of the Calhoun family plot for preservation purposes (Figure 4). Her oral history research confirmed the AABG’s existence (Cowan-Ricks, 1992). Soon after Cowan-Ricks was down-sized and departed in 1993, WC’s first expansion took place with the addition of burial plots (Figure 4). Cowan-Ricks requested six years for her research but Clemson only allowed three (R. Thomas, personal communication, January 10, 2023). At their October 1997 meeting, the CBoT heard and discussed the proposal called the Cemetery Hill Development and Expansion Program. The discussion suggested the proposal was in response to market demand, given the waiting list for WC plots. Three proposed new niche walls containing 220 niche spaces were reviewed, and no action to approve the proposal was recorded (CBoT, 1997).
Dr. James Bostic Jr., a Legacy Council member who has visited the AABG-WC since the late 1980s, has recorded the decline in the visibility and number of the unmarked head and foot stones at the UBIAD in the AABG and has speculated on the practice by family members of reusing these head and foot stones as edging to define the WC plots of their loved ones (J. Bostic Jr., personal communication, June 29, 2022). This practice reinforces Clemson’s negligent attitude and its failure to act and preserve—adding to the cultural erasure of the AABG. Signage designating the AABG’s location and interpretative signage explaining the head and foot stones’ function as sacred markers may have stopped people from taking them from the AABG to use as ornamental edging material for their loved ones’ burial plots.
The institutional rhythm of the 20th century indicates a binary narrative of action and inaction. Clemson operations and facilities managers did their duty to responsibly and systematically take action by notifying various Clemson University Presidents about the AABG. Recommendations included marking the AABG location on maps for future reference, installing signage, and physically marking areas containing UBIAD. No follow-up action by the CBoT or Clemson University presidents occurred during the 20th century—only decades of negligence, desecration, and physical and cultural erasure of the AABG. Clemson’s 20th-century institutional priorities appeared to focus on football, related stadium expansion activities, and campus development.
21st-century proactive preservation. The 20th-century institutional narrative of action followed by inaction shifted soon after the election of James F. Barker, FAIA, as Clemson’s 14th president. He facilitated the establishment of the Woodland Cemetery Stewardship Committee (WCSC) in 2000. Its mission was to assist in the active support of WC as a resource for Clemson. The WCSC’s 2002–2015 work was archived in Clemson’s Special Collections, and a preliminary review indicates their commitment to WC. Their work acknowledged Cowan-Ricks’s research. They met regularly and updated the 1997 WC proposal mentioned earlier. This work involved Clemson Campus Planning Services and resulted in the October 2003 Woodland Cemetery Preservation & Development Plan (Clemson University-c, n.d.). Recommendations were organized around time horizons of 0–5 years and 5–10 years. Action items in the first time horizon centered on Cowan-Ricks’s recommendations for preserving the site and called for surveying an area of unassigned WC burial plots believed to contain unmarked pre-emancipatory graves (Figure 4). The development plan also recommended a sequence of actions: deploying GPR technology to survey the AABG and “erect a monument to unknown buried” and preserving and protecting the AABG (Clemson University-c, n.d.). Before increasing WC’s inventory of burial plots, WCSC facilitated the GPR survey in 2005. With no conclusive evidence of UBIAD from this 2005 survey, the CBoT approved WC’s second expansion with the addition of burial plots (Figure 4).
A key actor, Dr. Rhondda Thomas, now Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature, joined Clemson University in 2007 for postdoctoral studies. Around that time another effort for a campus-wide preservation master plan was initiated as part of then President Barker’s commitment to the stewardship of historic resources. Funded by the Getty Campus Heritage Grant program, the study was guided by two large advisory committees, including internal and external stakeholder members like President Barker, two CBoT members, faculty from various departments, campus facilities staff, and city officials. The Philadelphia-based consultant JMA, Incorporated was commissioned and wrote the 2009 “Clemson University Preservation Master Plan.” This plan dedicated four pages to WC and fell short in terms of measures to preserve the AABG. Its “Treatment Recommendations” (JMA, Inc., 2009) called for WC’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places along with five other action items centered on the preservation of the graves of Clemson’s historical figures. It mentioned the oral history of the AABG and Cowan-Ricks’s inconclusive findings. Moreover, this plan did not incorporate language to preserve the AABG. President Emeritus Barker returned to the School of Architecture faculty in 2014, and the WCSC was subsequently disbanded.
The 21st-century socio-political context and Clemson campus climate. The 2014–2016 activism among Clemson’s African American students and their allies was a response to various events that fueled the Black Lives Matter movement (Ward & Barnett, 2014; Cary, 2015; Vasilogambros, 2016). The author lived through this period and experienced the spirit of student activism, including sit-ins that began April 13, 2016. Clemson’s African American students and their allies were outraged by the defacing of new banner signage in the historic district of campus that commemorated African Americans at Fort Hill. They demanded institutional accountability for this visible act of racism given Clemson’s track record of social injustices. Their demands called for changing building names of known white supremacists and slaveholders. At a student rally, the author and colleagues stood in alliance with the African American students and their allies on the steps of Sikes Hall.
As the days of peaceful protest wore on, the campus climate was energized with numerous ad hoc discussions among faculty and students taking place in the building corridors and outdoor courtyards, as they also did in the author’s classroom. Some students raised the idea of reparations as a crucial aspect of restoring justice, and all were in agreement that the symbolism of removing the Tillman name from Clemson’s oldest building, once referred to as “Old Main,” would go a long way toward helping cool temperatures on campus. Clemson’s oldest building was named after Benjamin R. Tillman, a renowned champion of white supremacy who served as South Carolina’s governor from 1890–1894.
Immediately following the tragic domestic terrorist shooting and massacre of nine parishioners by a 20-year-old white supremacist at Charleston’s historic African Methodist Episcopal Church, former governor Nikki Haley joined with the State of South Carolina legislature to permanently remove the Confederate flag, a symbol of hatred and white supremacy, from the statehouse grounds at Columbia in summer 2015. Soon after, the CBoT created a special task force (known subsequently as the History Task Force) to study Clemson’s complete history (Clemson University-d, n.d.). The spirit of this task force was truth-telling about the land’s plantation history, slaveholding heritage, and legacy of exploitative labor practices. It also called for honest disclosure of Clemson’s history of segregation. Their charge included the development of a comprehensive plan that would develop ways to provide an accurate portrayal of Clemson’s complete history and explore appropriate recognition of historical figures (CBoT, 2015, July 17).
21st-century student activism/responsive activism and the recovery of the AABG. As noted earlier, the 2014–2016 period marked tremendous Clemson student activism caused by numerous local, state, and national events, with a student sit-in triggered by the defacing of newly installed banners on the history of African Americans on Clemson land. The CBoT’s appointment of the 2015 History Task Force and flurry of subsequent activities led to the formulation and release of the April 2017 Clemson University Interpretative Plan (Clemson University-d, n.d.). As with the 2009 preservation document, a consultant was hired to work on this plan and was guided by a large task force comprised of Clemson stakeholders, including Dr. Rhondda Thomas. This plan incorporated the African American experience and designated WC as one of Clemson’s seven “Notable Landscapes.” Recommendations for WC included site-specific media in the form of a printed map and a guide for self-guided tours and interpretative smartphone applications for noting the interred historical figures and burial sites of enslaved people and convicted laborers (Clemson University-d, n.d.).
Before the 2020 spring semester break, after which Clemson closed the campus and switched to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, a “Call My Name” (through the lens of the African American experience) tour of WC took place. Sarah Adams, then a junior in the Women’s Leadership Program, participated in the tour. Adams was deeply concerned about the unkempt and neglected nature of the AABG: struck by the lack of signage, broken fence, and lack of a memorial to honor those interred, Adams and her roommate, Morgan Molosso, expressed their dismay over the AABG’s poor maintenance (Nicholson, 2020). They relayed their concerns to Dr. Thomas, who in turn connected them with the university historian, Campus Facilities, and other entities. Adams and Molosso followed up, igniting a chain reaction that led to the field surveys and subsequent recovery of the AABG a few months later. Clemson’s Provost Office provided funds, and an internal team was mobilized to commission engineering and archaeological consultants to conduct field surveys using GPR technology. Areas previously designated by Cowan-Ricks and unmapped areas within WC were surveyed in the summer and fall months of 2020, and January 2021, when a total of 541 UBIAD were detected (see Figure 4).
Dr. Conyers, an expert archaeologist, noted that using GPR technology, a nonintrusive archaeological survey tool, is most effective when previous survey information is available. In this light, Cowan-Ricks’s 1991–1993 archaeological research became instrumental for the 2020–2021 survey work. Current software used to analyze GPR data is far more advanced than the older software used for previous GPR surveys that found no conclusive evidence of UBIAD in 2005 (L. Conyers, personal communication, May 17, 2022). Analysis of the 2020/2021 GPR data confirmed the reinterred remains from the 1960 court ruling. UBIAD were detected in areas previously unmapped and highlighted the size and scale of the AABG. Twelve UBIAD detected within the fenced Calhoun family plot unexpectedly indicated that the Calhoun family had “colonized” and desecrated the AABG (Figure 4).
While the 2020 surveys were underway, the CBoT held a special meeting and voted to unanimously change the name of the John C. Calhoun Honors College to the Clemson Honors College (CBoT, 2020). As an American politician, Calhoun had been a proponent of slavery, and changing this name exemplified CBoT’s responsive activism, four years after the 2016 peaceful sit-in and period of student activism following widely publicized killings of unarmed African Americans by police officers. At the same meeting, the CBoT unanimously requested that the South Carolina General Assembly grant an exception to the state’s Heritage Act to rename Tilman Hall (as noted earlier, named after the white supremacist and former governor Benjamin Tilman). Changes to the names of state buildings and monuments commemorating historical figures require the state legislature approval through a simple majority vote (CBoT, 2020).
Field observations. The author has visited the AABG-WC site several times (on ten self-guided and two guided tours) since the announcement of the GPR survey results. The author’s past ethnographic field experiences and the ongoing efforts to visually document vernacular and formal cemeteries nationally and internationally underlined the importance of learning more about the AABG’s recovery. The 541 UBIAD were marked with pink ribbons tied to small white flags, typically used in field surveying. A sobering scene is created by vast areas covered with fields of hundreds of white survey flags distributed throughout the hilly terrain (Figures 5 & 7). Some were situated among the tombstones containing names of Clemson University officials, faculty, and their families. Some were detected beneath existing asphalt paths and marked with painted circles and a survey pin at the center (Figure 6). These immersive experiences were emotionally disturbing, traumatizing, deeply provocative, and visually striking (Figures 5–7). It was tantamount to an ominous religious pilgrimage with white flags as haunting reminders of the land’s plantation history and slaveholding legacy, and also of the inhumane desecration of this sacred burial ground—institutional behavior that was both disrespectful and socially unjust. Coming to terms with the facts of erasure of the AABG despite long institutional knowledge of its existence continues to be intellectually challenging and anger-provoking.
Fields of white flags mark the recently detected UBIAD distributed among the tombstones of Clemson officials, faculty, and family members. Photograph by author.
Spray-painted circles mark the locations of recently detected UBIAD beneath the asphalt walkways. Photograph by author.
The fields of white flags encapsulate the hilly terrain and indicate the size and scale of the AABG. Photograph by author.
Recovery, preservation, and memorializing the AABG. Since the AABG’s recovery, the CBoT appears to be moving forward steadily, having established the Legacy Council, which appointed Dr. Thomas to assist in the next stages. The Community Engagement Council was also established for outreach to the local descendant community and comprised of community leaders in the four areas surrounding the Clemson core campus. Tailgating, or engaging in social gatherings at parked cars, especially for football events, was permanently halted at the AABG-WC after the detection of the 541 UBIAD in fall 2020. Additionally, Clemson has increased transparency and communication about the AABG and WC through various websites, social media pages, newsletters, and blogs.
The CBoT’s actions at three of their regularly scheduled 2022 meetings indicate progress in their efforts to manage WC’s operations and respectfully maintain all interments, including the AABG (CBoT, 2022). This involved adopting guiding principles for present and future interments in WC and an updated overall policy that replaced the 2013 WC Policy. Critical points in this updated policy included its purpose, “to provide for the protection, honor and respect of all those buried in areas of WC,” and its “Guiding Principles,” to preserve existing burials from all eras and to honor and respect interments from all eras, as well as details for future interments (“Updated Policy: Woodland Cemetery,” 2022, p. 2). At their July meeting, the CBoT unanimously approved WC maintenance and security activities, including the relocation of existing pedestrian paths, new ADA-accessible paths, and security cameras and lighting (Hamilton, 2022). Given the 2020/2021 surveys marked UBIAD along several segments of WC’s existing pedestrian paths (Figure 6), approvals of these maintenance and security activities appear to represent a respectful gesture by the CBoT.
In terms of the CBoT’s goal to develop an “appropriate preservation plan,” New South Associates, Inc. (NSAI) was commissioned and commenced its work on June 14th, 2022. NSAI’s scope of work is focused on the formulation of guidelines for a memorial and development of a master plan for WC and the AABG with input from the local descendant community (“Master Plan Kickoff Meeting Held,” 2022, p. 4). NSAI’s initial brainstorming sessions with the local descendent community were held in August 2022 and appear to have been productive. One group was interested in ways to incorporate visual and sound elements like light and wind to commemorate people of African descent, and the second group’s approach was to develop a spiritual and tranquil memorial by creating a peaceful place on campus to reflect (“Meeting with New South Associates,” 2022). NSAI has additional plans to continue meetings with the local descendant community and stakeholders as part of the process for developing a memorial for the AABG.
THEMES, DISRUPTION(S), AND SPECULATIONS: RETROSPECTIVE JUSTICE AND THE MAKING OF A RECONCILIATORY LANDSCAPE
Clemson will experience WC’s inaugural centennial founding in 2024. This case study provides an analytical narrative for the recovery of the AABG and reveals a long history of institutional negligence and cultural erasure. The land’s plantation history and Clemson’s history of exploitative labor practices are disturbing truths. Clemson enrolled only white students until Harvey Gantt’s successful lawsuit initiated Clemson’s desegregation in 1963 (Suggs, 2003; Thomas, 2018). Clemson’s history of segregation magnifies the institutional context for the physical and cultural erasure of the AABG during most of the 20th century. The AABG was purposefully hidden so that Clemson could meet market demands by increasing WC’s inventory of available burial plots and prioritizing expansion of the football stadium.
The detection of the 541 UBIAD and their spatial locations encircling and traversing WC’s hilly terrain (Figures 4, 5, & 7) and the Calhoun family plot magnified the physical size and scale of the AABG and deepened questions surrounding cultural erasure and hidden truths about systemic institutional racism. This erasure aligns with the position of literature on Black Landscapes and Black Geographies, that the unnamed individuals in the AABG are part of a long history of dishonor, inhumane treatment, systemic neglect, and the sustained formation of a racialized by-product (Hood, 2020; McKittrick & Woods, 2007). Boone (2020) points out ways that the gardens at Middleton Place, a former plantation, are often portrayed as the oldest American designed landscape situated within South Carolina, without acknowledgment of the skilled enslaved African labor that provided the knowledge of wet rice cultivation. Without this West African system of dikes and dams, the success of the wet rice cultivation and South Carolina’s plantation economy, foundational to America’s economy at the time, would not have transpired. The narrative of the AABG’s recovery reinforces its identity as a Black landscape and part of the Black geographies discourse. The narrative is indicative of Clemson’s disturbing legacy of erasure—no different than America’s sustained history of structural racism, especially as renewed by the twice-impeached former American president.
The year 2016 was the first public moment for the general campus population and visitors to learn about the African American experience and their contributions to the making of Clemson’s first buildings and their work on the antebellum plantation and postbellum farm. Permanent interpretative signs were erected at historic sites where enslaved individuals, freed men and women, and convict laborers lived, worked, and were buried (Figure 8). This signage was part of an earlier initiative by Dr. Thomas and Dr. Bostic Jr., and dovetailed with CBOT’s commitment to truth-telling—an institutional response to student activism. The spirit of student activism and leadership would continue when students acted on the AABG’s neglected appearance in the early spring of 2020. Otherwise, if it were not for student activism, the sacred Black landscape traversing the terrain of WC and the Calhoun family cemetery would have remained hidden.
In 2016 permanent interpretative signs were installed at historic sites throughout campus. Photograph by author.
The 21st century brought disruption to previous norms and provoked calls for “retrospective justice” and the necessity for creating a “reconciliatory landscape.” Retrospective justice, a concept from the human rights literature, is the idea of administering justice decades or centuries after a severe injustice or series of severe injustices has been committed against persons, communities, nations, or ethnic groups (Russell, 2003; Roth, 2004). In this context, Clemson’s 20th-century concealment and cultural erasure of the AABG are part of the American legacy of continued oppression, social inequities, and acts of humiliation targeting people of African descent, especially magnified in the Jim Crow South. A new type of memorial could create a place where an immersive visitor experience navigates or reconciles past inequities by Clemson and the Calhoun family while encountering a sense of social justice.
The need for the materialization of some notion to commemorate the lives of the mostly un-named people interred at the AABG site was extremely slow to ignite in the 20th century. The work by the historical archaeologist Cowan-Ricks in the late 20th century sparked the broader disruption of Clemson’s institutional norm of nonaction. Fast forward 30 years, and the 2020/2021 surveys called for in her archaeological research validated Cowan-Ricks’s working hypothesis of the existence of a pre-emancipation slave cemetery west of the Calhoun family plot. Moreover, illuminating the existence of this long-hidden sacred ground reinforces the argument that the AABG predates WC and was “colonized” and “appropriated” by the CBoT in 1924 as a private white cemetery for eligible members of the Clemson community. The AABG’s recovery and renewed cultural legibility to the public, especially to the local descendant community, assert the demand for the CBoT and Clemson’s leadership to reconcile their past transgressions and cultural erasure with a meaningful public gesture. A memorial that honors those who toiled in severe and difficult conditions on the land Clemson now occupies would be a step in the direction of restoring justice. The recent detection of the 541 UBIAD and recovery of the AABG on the site of an active private cemetery are extraordinary and significant. The history and future of this site therefore constitute an important topic of study for many disciplines.
New York’s African Burial Ground (NYABG). One point of comparison with the AABG is the National Historic Landmark and Monument NYABG. This sacred ground was uncovered in 1991 during excavations for a federal office building in lower Manhattan and considered a highly contested project. The disclosure and review of a 1775 survey-based map of New York City noted the excavation was taking place at the “Negros Buriel Ground” (Seeman, 2010). As the public learned, the memory of this sacred ground had been lost due to its physical erasure twice during Manhattan’s development: at the turn of the 19th century and again during the mid-20th century. Further research revealed its historic significance as the oldest colonial-era burial ground circa the late 17th century, with an estimate of 15,000 Africans interred there through the 1800s. Numerous local public meetings uncovered the seriousness and controversy surrounding the General Services Administration’s (GSA) responsibilities, perceived racial bias, and ability to manage “next steps.” Apparently, while the GSA complied with the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act and requisite cultural resources survey, they did not have a plan of action to deal with the excavated human remains of over 400 African American people (Mack & Blakey, 2004; US GSA, 2009).
Halting GSA’s excavation work was a result of public outrage, community meetings, and congressional hearings. The conclusion of the hearings called for the discontinuation of the GSA’s excavation activities and the requirement to fund a multi-phase plan involving research, the development of a memorial and interpretative center at the site, and the reinterment of the remains (US GSA, 2009). The remains were eventually analyzed by Howard University faculty and scientists and reinterred at the memorial site. The federal building was finally constructed over part of the excavation. This project incorporated a new visitor center and an adjacent new memorial dedicated to this sacred Black landscape. Sixteen years transpired before the public could visit the NYABG in 2007.
The NYABG memorial and visitor center represents the convergence of retrospective justice and reconciliatory landscape—a place where visitors can reflect on a severe past injustice of hundreds of years of cultural erasure while encountering a sense of social justice. The speculative notion of retrospective justice interwoven within the process and materialization of a reconciliatory landscape can readily be applied as a premise to commemorate the lives of those interred at the AABG. This would be a significant public gesture by the CBoT and Clemson University leaders to administer justice for 20th-century cultural erasure, the legacy of slaveholding, exploitation, segregation, and continued oppression of people of African descent.
NYABG/AABG. In comparison to New York City’s experience, the detection of the 541 UBIAD fostered the recovery of the AABG in an active private cemetery on the grounds of a public university and situated within the shadow of an 81,000-seat football venue. This detection did not involve the excavations of remains. The 2020/2021 GPR surveys revealed changes and voids in the soil indicative of historic burials (L. Conyers, personal communication, May 17, 2022). Lessons learned from the NYABG center on the importance of the process of transparency and engagement with expert preservationists and archaeologists, stakeholders, and especially with the descendant community. The community context for the AABG at Clemson is much smaller in comparison to New York City: Clemson’s surroundings are largely suburban and rural, and the state has a population of just over 5 million. The recovery and validation of the AABG’s existence, while a step in the right direction, is part of a longer ongoing community healing process. The CBoT’s updated WC policy has finally acknowledged the AABG and expressed goals to honor all lives of those interred on the coexistent sacred ground, and the local descendant community has been engaged in initial brainstorming sessions on ways to commemorate their ancestors with the consultants, NSAI.
Clemson’s core campus grounds are filled with Confederate monuments and buildings named for known racists and slaveholders. Disruptions to the normative typology of Clemson’s Confederate landscape have started to shift with the installation of historic markers describing the African American experience throughout campus. The eventuality and materialization of a meaningful memorial that reconciles Clemson’s past history of the AABG’s cultural erasure and exploitative labor practices could symbolize the CBoT’s goal and the Clemson administration’s proclamation to assert social justice and foster an inclusive learning environment. As Dr. Thomas has noted: “There are many universities struggling with how to confront an uncomfortable past, and Clemson University has the opportunity to become a national model for how to create a more inclusive history” (“Markers signal new effort,” 2016).
National reckoning in higher education for slaveholding heritage. Thematically, this case study contributes to the national reckoning among universities navigating justice for their slaveholding legacies, part of a tremendous ongoing complex effort since the ground-breaking report released by the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice in 2006 (Wilder, 2014; Harris, et al., 2019). During the 21st century, universities have disclosed their physical and cultural erasure of sacred burial sites containing unmarked graves of people of African descent (Wolfe, 2013; Morris, 2017; Associated Press, 2019). Like Clemson, some of these institutions were aware that these sacred burial sites existed, but still the institutions did nothing for many decades. Like Clemson, several higher education institutions, particularly in southern American states, utilized slave labor or leased convict laborers to construct their campus buildings. Some of these institutions have built memorials or are in discussions to consider them, and a few are considering reparations in the form of student scholarships for descendant community members. In this context, Clemson is not unique in terms of its exploitative labor practices during the construction of early campus buildings and concealing the knowledge of the sacred AABG.
However, to date, the recovery of the AABG as coexisting with WC is a major disruption to the norm, critically unique and extremely disturbing. It is the only known case where a private cemetery for university use was established on an existing sacred burial ground for people of African descent. Both WC and the Calhoun family plot remain active for interments. Essentially in the course of the 20th century, the CBoT inhumanely colonized, desecrated, and erased the AABG historically known to the local descendant community. The CBoT and Clemson leaders have taken nearly 100 years to reconcile the university’s disturbing past of social injustice. As efforts move toward the development of a preservation plan and a memorial to those interred at the AABG, this case study contributes to the national reckoning among public and private universities navigating the possibilities for restoring justice in light of their slaveholding heritage and past exploitative labor practices. The AABG’s identity as a historic sacred place encompassing WC and the Calhoun family plot with anticipated future interments makes it a unique case. Most African American burial sites were erased by campus building construction or discovered during campus construction activities with subsequent preservation efforts, and none of them coexisted with an active cemetery. Hence, as the AABG-WC case study shows through empirical evidence, this site is both significant and disturbingly unique.
CONCLUSION
Epistemologically, this case study research found answers to questions about Clemson’s knowledge of the AABG and the long delay before the university’s leaders took any action to preserve this sacred Black landscape. The study found the Clemson’s operations staff was aware of its existence while Clemson administration engaged in negligence, desecration, and decades of cultural erasure. As this research revealed, student activism in the 21st century played a significant role in raising awareness of the AABG and eliciting action from the university’s leadership. As a temporal benchmark for Clemson campus history, this study elucidated 21st century student activism against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter zeitgeist. By 2020, student consciousness appeared to evolve with the students from women’s leadership program who raised their humanitarian concerns about the physical neglect of the AABG, which stood in stark contrast to the manicured lawn at the nearby Calhoun family plot.
This case study research brings to light the push and pull toward eventual institutional change, consisting of 20th-century action/inaction, 21st-century student activism/institutional responsiveness, and (Clemson administration) activism and binary narrative of 20th-century erasure/21st century recovery. This study provokes the need to further interrogate the shifting balance in prioritization between Memorial Stadium and the AABG during the next stages of conceptualizing a memorial, and it especially raises questions about Clemson’s preservation priorities, the continued dominance of football fever and stadium expansions, and the possibilities of bringing the two into equilibrium.
Ontologically, this case study validates the AABG as a Black landscape. It introduced the human rights concept of retrospective justice and the related notion of a reconciliatory landscape as a new type of memorial that could shift and disrupt the campus norm of a cultural landscape dominated by reminders of its Confederate slaveholding legacy. This study touches on the convergence of these concepts and Black geographies and Black landscapes in the framing of South Carolina’s shifting cultural landscape through the lens of the American Experiment as an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary endeavor on the basis of which novel perspectives on landscape typologies can be derived.
Speculations on the process of making a reconciliatory landscape can potentially mitigate and provide some justice for the long duration of the AABG’s desecration, initiated by the Calhoun family cemetery and perpetuated in 1924 by the CBoT when the site was designated as a private cemetery for use by the university and prominent members of its community. This study reveals the disturbing uniqueness of the AABG-WC case study within the national reckoning of universities navigating justice for their history of slavery and exploitative labor practices. It stands out as the only sacred Black landscape appropriated initially in the antebellum era (by the Calhoun family) and reappropriated in the 20th century (by the CBoT) that remains active as a private cemetery for future interments. This study depicts the AABG and WC case as a vital socio-cultural and political phenomenon for navigating America’s complex historical African American narrative and its significance for understanding the local and national contributions of Black people. In this light, the site emerges as a sacred Black landscape that tells a big story.
Reconciliatory Landscapes in South Carolina. Within South Carolina’s public gaze, recent forms of reconciliatory landscapes have emerged. This new type of cultural landscape contributes to the multi-layered narrative of nation-building in America, with two especially worth noting. The Freedom Walkway in central Rock Hill, South Carolina, was completed circa 2015, and near the site of South Carolina’s first nonviolent civil rights sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in 1961 (groundworks Studio, n.d.). The project was a collaboration between the landscape architect Laurel Holtzapple and the public artist Juan Logan, with engagement by children from the local schools. The project commemorated nine African American male college students, the so-called Friendship Nine, as civil rights heroes. For their 1961 peaceful sit-in, they were charged with the misdemeanor crime of trespassing. Instead of paying the $100 fine, they chose to serve the 30-day prison time. Over 50 years later, a South Carolina judge cleared their records (Fausset, 2015). Holtzapple and Logan’s work on the Freedom Walkway commemorated these nine men as civil rights heroes through an immersive experience where visitors can publicly reflect on the past inequities of the nearby segregated lunch counter and retrospectively ponder social justice with the sacred oath from the Pledge of Allegiance, “Liberty and Justice For All” inscribed on the walkway’s brick wall (Figure 9). In the moment of renewed racial tensions of the time, the design team perceived the Freedom Walkway as a place for healing, reconciling the past, and coming together.
The Freedom Walkway in downtown Rock Hill, completed in 2015, is a type of reconciliatory landscape that commemorates the Friendship Nine as civil rights heroes. The project is located near the segregated lunch counter where in 1961 nine African American college students staged a peaceful sit-in and were arrested for trespassing. Photograph by author.
At the site of Charleston’s historic Gadsden’s Wharf, once the largest American port of disembarkation for tens of thousands of kidnapped Africans transported on cargo ships during the transatlantic slave trade, is Walter Hood’s African Ancestors Memorial Garden. The project, scheduled to open in 2023, spans the length of a football field underneath the International African American Museum. The museum building was intentionally elevated so it would not touch the hallowed ground of the historic wharf. Hood’s curated gardens incorporate interactive and interpretative features and places for sitting and contemplating the site’s history as a sacred ground where tens of thousands of Africans arrived in chains between 1670 and 1808 (Hood Design Studio, n.d.). Freedom Walkway created a place to ponder inequities and justice for the crime of trespassing at a segregated local lunch counter and celebrated the Friendship Nine as civil rights heroes. Hood’s design addresses America’s disturbing heritage of slavery while teaching visitors about the African diaspora, the African American multi-layered historical narrative, and the vital role of Black people in nation-building in America. These new forms of reconciliatory landscapes, along with the revelation of the AABG and its recovery, narrate South Carolina’s multivalent cultural landscape. The revelation of the AABG as a Black landscape in this study and speculative exploration and potential for transforming it into a reconciliatory landscape to commemorate the lives interred at the AABG could contribute to a novel type of cultural landscape emerging in South Carolina. Retrospective justice would need to be infused into a new type of memorial and reconciliatory landscape that deals head-on with ameliorating past inequities of nearly 100 years of cultural erasure.
Commemorative processes and expectations. The process of creating a memorial to commemorate the recovery of the AABG and celebrate the lives of the people interred there will hopefully demonstrate justice and carry through the spirit of 21st century activism. The consultants NSAI, Inc. are still under contract and have met twice with the descendant community on conceptualizing such a memorial. To encourage a collaborative approach for the memorial design, additional meetings with the descendant community will be held on campus and in the surrounding communities. The potential benefits of institutional truth-telling and transparency about Clemson’s social history of blatant racism and cultural erasure of the AABG remains to be seen. Fortunately, the Mellon Foundation saw the value of the AABG and the Black experience in the surrounding community landscape, and through their Monument Project initiative recently awarded Clemson a three-year grant in the amount of $3.4 million for the Black Heritage Trail, a campus-community project under the leadership of Dr. Rhondda Thomas with community partners, Shelby Henderson and Angela Agard. This Mellon-sponsored project involves the design and construction of interpretative paths that narrates the multi-layered history of Black people at the AABG, other campus sites, and in the surrounding communities (R. Thomas, personal communication, January 27, 2023). Clemson has begun construction of AABG’s new path system designed to avoid the UBIAD currently located beneath existing paths (Figure 6). The hope is that the ongoing work on the memorial and preservation plan by various key actors will help heal the trauma of erasure and elucidate the memory of people buried in this sacred landscape. The eventual realization of the memorial can hopefully illuminate the significance of the long-hidden AABG and demonstrate Clemson’s authenticity in its efforts at truth-telling, showing vision as a national leader fostering an inclusive learning environment and making positive contributions to the national reckoning in higher education surrounding legacies of slavery, segregation and discriminatory practices.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Charlene LeBleu and Rob Corry, who saw the value of this study and invited me to submit for this special issue. I acknowledge the peer reviewers whose instructive feedback allowed me to articulate clearly the meaning of racialized spaces, retrospective justice, and reconciliatory landscapes as disruptions to the normative typological studies of cultural landscapes. I am very grateful to: Dr. Rhondda Thomas and her research team for their generous support; Dr. James Bostic Jr. and President Emeritus James Barker, FAIA for their thoughtful discussions about the uniqueness of this coexistent sacred burial ground; and Jim LaGro Jr. and the LJ team for their genuine support, kindness, and patience throughout this process.
Footnotes
PEER REVIEW STATEMENT Landscape Journal uses a double-blind peer review process for original research manuscripts, systematic literature reviews, and other article types.
↵1. From this point onward, Clemson University and its inaugural name, Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina, are referred to as Clemson, with its founder, Thomas Green Clemson, John C. Calhoun’s son-in-law, as T. G. Clemson.
In this issue
Jump to section
Related Articles
Cited By...
- No citing articles found.