The Woodland Cemetery and African American Burial Ground Historic Preservation Project team and the Lemon Project team stand together in front of the Hearth: Memorial to the Enslaved at William & Mary in Virginia. Photo courtesy of the Lemon Project.
On October 30-November 2, 2022, the Woodland Cemetery and African American Burial Ground team traveled to the College of William & Mary (W&M) to meet with the Lemon Project team and their community partners for nearly a week’s exchange of ideas on both respective historic preservation projects. The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation works to reckon with the College of W&M’s more than 300-year- old past concerning African Americans, from the enslavement era to the contemporary university. The multifaceted project is named for Lemon, an enslaved man who was owned by W&M. According to their mission statement, “The Lemon Project builds bridges between William & Mary and African American communities through research, programming, and supporting students, faculty, and staff.”
Sign for Hearth: Memorial to the Enslaved at the College of William & Mary.
Upon arrival, the cemetery team met with community organizations and student researchers over dinner on campus to learn about the different ways of engagement they use to serve the public locally. Earlier the following day was a historical campus tour of W&M. The Clemson team visited the Wren Building (the nation’s oldest academic building), Hearth: Memorial to the Enslaved, and the Sankofa Seed statue dedicated to the first Black students to integrate the school. The focus later during the same day was on historic preservation as the cemetery team visited the Bray School, the First Baptist Church Archaeological site in Colonial Williamsburg, the Historically Black History exhibit at Bruton Heights School, and Oak Grove Baptist Church.
View of the Hearth Memorial at night.Close-up view of names of enslaved people memorialized at the Hearth: Memorial to the Enslaved, including Lemon.The “Sankofa Seed” statue created by Steve Prince to honor the first three African American students in residence at William and Mary.
A visit to special collections in the library occupied the first part of the final day. The cemetery team examined early African American artifacts about W&M, learned about oral history projects, and toured the “Strollin” exhibit, highlighting Black Greek Letter Organization history at the college. The Community Quilt Project capped off the second half of the last day, where members of the cemetery team contributed to the storied year-long endeavor. The Woodland Cemetery team would like to thank Dr. Jody Allen, Dr. Jajuan Johnson, and Dr. Sarah Thomas for hosting this fruitful exchange.
Dr. Mandi Barnard has been coordinating the Cemetery Team’s archival research objectives at Clemson Special Collections Library as we enter the preservation phase of our project. Dr. Barnard has identified collections and topics of interest to guide the Team’s summer research agenda. She has also been in the archives working through these materials to aid in the creation of a preservation plan for the cemetery.
Dr. Sara Collini, with the help of our Spring 2022 undergraduate research assistants Nolly Swan and Lucas DeBenedetti, has completed the visual history of the cemetery in ArcGIS. It will be publicly available soon. She has also been researching mentions of the cemetery in the collections of Student Affairs and the Athletic Department in the campus archives. She is investigating the full impact of Memorial Stadium construction projects on Cemetery Hill. Ground work, including grading and sloping of the land, occurred near the northern edge of the cemetery in the late 1950s, during a seating expansion project, and in the late 1970s for the construction of the south upper deck and new Press Road. In 1980, part of the eastern area of Cemetery Hill near the entrance on Williamson Road was leveled for a new IPTAY parking lot.
Dr. Rhondda Thomas has been investigating changes in the geographical landscape within Woodland Cemetery from the establishment of the college until the 1960s. She has also been researching the forced movement of Black wage workers into segregated neighborhoods on and off campus during this time. Dr. Thomas, Marjorie Campbell, project manager, and Shelby Henderson, member of the community engagement council, have also been interviewing candidates for a new genealogist position with the cemetery team who will help document family histories of people buried in modern graves in the cemetery and learn more about Black people who could be buried in unmarked graves in the African American Burial Ground.
In June, the cemetery team visited sites of historic plantations and cemeteries in the Experimental Forest on the Clemson University campus to learn more about the interconnected history of plantations in the area.
Community Engagement Update
Marquise Drayton will be joining the project team on July 11, 2022 as our new Community Engagement Assistant. Born and raised in Georgetown, SC, he’s coming here from Charlotte, NC. His research interests include slave narratives, the Civil Rights Movement, the post- 1865 South, and Black students’ integration efforts at primarily white higher education institutions, like Clemson. Drayton earned his BA in African American Studies from UNC- Chapel Hill and his MA in History from Clemson University. He enjoys traveling, going to the movies, and watching sports. The project team is excited about the experience and enthusiasm that Drayton will bring to the project. Dr. Brian Stack has stepped off the project to begin a new job as a community college history instructor in Washington State.
Representatives from the cemetery project’s research and community engagement teams, as well as from the Legacy Council, attended Juneteenth celebrations in Clemson, Seneca, and Anderson on Saturday, June 18, 2022. This was the first time that the cemetery project was represented in all three cities at the same time. We shared information about the cemetery project and joined our local communities in celebrating this important day. The team also donated cemetery brochures and copies of Dr. Rhondda Thomas’s book Call My Name, Clemson to the Juneteenth MegaFest in Greenville, South Carolina. We will be working with local communities to plan a program for Juneteenth on the Clemson University campus next year.
Dr. Rhondda Thomas and Sally Mauldin continue to give cemetery tours to small groups. Dr. Thomas also met with the Clemson University’s Statewide Gravesite Committee to discuss community engagement initiatives for all burial grounds located on land owned by Clemson. Additionally, the group will be exploring opportunities for collaboration with the South Carolina Department of Archives and History to develop cemetery preservation and memorialization resources for the public.
White flag with a gold ribbon denoting an unmarked grave in Woodland Cemetery.
The Woodland Cemetery and African American Burial Ground Historic Preservation Project seeks to tell the stories of the known and previously unknown burials located in Woodland Cemetery on the Clemson University campus. Through research and community engagement we intend to uncover as much as we can about this historic space and to properly commemorate all who are buried here. Monthly updates on research and community engagement, as well as the Cemetery History Series, are featured in our Project Newsletter.
Research Update for May 2022
Dr. Mandi Barnard is researching Andrew Pickens “A.P.” Calhoun using his manuscript collections from the South Caroliniana Archive and speeches he gave at commercial and agricultural society meetings in the 1850s. She is also working with an Alabama genealogist to track down deeds of sale for A.P.’s plantations there.
Dr. Sara Collini is working on the visual history of the cemetery with our undergraduate research assistants, Nolly Swan and Lucas DeBenedetti. We are using maps and photographs of the cemetery and surrounding landscape to show the history of the area and how it has changed from the 1700s to the present day. The visual history features several “Before and After” photographs at pivotal moments in the cemetery’s history, as well as interactive maps and image galleries. The visual history will be made available to the public along with our website re-design later in 2022.
(L) 1956 Aerial Photograph of Clemson Campus (R) 1963 Aerial Photograph of Clemson Campus | Clemson University Facilities
Marissa Davis, the Graduate Research Assistant for the project, is continuing her search for how those enslaved at Fort Hill gained access to the house. She wants to find out the original layout of the property. To do so, she will visit the Deeds Offices in Anderson, Oconee, and Pickens counties to search for the bill of sale between the Calhouns and the McElhennys. This document details the ownership changes for Clergy Hall, which was what the house was known as before it became Fort Hill. Other members of the team plan to go with her to the offices as their projects also are impacted by what might be found in the bill of sale.
Dr. Rhondda Thomas has been finalizing the application for the team’s oral history project with Clemson’s Institutional Review Board, meeting with the project’s preservation plan subcommitee as we move into the next phase of the cemetery project, and encouraging research collaborations between Clemson professors and community partners, including research for the African American local historical site database project that will include the African American Burial Ground in Woodland Cemetery. She also coordinated the development of the theme and format for the second annual research symposium to be held October 24-25 in the Hendrix Center at Clemson.
Community Engagement Update for May 2022
Dr. Brian Stack been volunteering with several organizations in the Upstate to promote Black history and the cemetery project. He volunteered at the 2022 Men of Color Summit in Greenville, South Carolina, is helping the city of Clemson plan its Juneteenth celebration, and has been attending events for “Save the Alley,” a grassroots effort to prevent the displacement of an African American community in Central, South Carolina.
A group on campus takes a tour of the African American Burial Ground and Woodland Cemetery.
The project team has also been continuing to give cemetery tours, which will run until mid-May. This semester we have had over 500 people attend tours and learn about the space. The tour was recently revamped to include new information discovered in the last year of research for this project. If you have not yet taken a cemetery tour, or if it has been a long time since you took one, please consider joining us.
A group walks to the Calhoun Family Plot on the tour of the African American Burial Ground and Woodland Cemetery.
Our undergraduate community engagement assistant, Aundrea Gibbons, has been expanding the reach of our Instagram account. She also created a story about Dr. Ayana Flewellen that will soon be featured on our Instagram. Dr. Flewellen gave the keynote lecture on Carrel Cowan-Ricks Recognition Day.
Dr. Rhondda Thomas joined Trustee David Dukes and Sally Mauldin in conducting informational sessions via Zoom about the cemetery for Clemson employees and retirees. She and Angela Agard, director of the Clemson Area African American Museum, are developing a presentation titled “Uncovering, Preserving, Sharing and Celebrating local African American History” for the International Town and Gown Conference that will be held at Clemson University on June 7-9, 2022. Their presentation will explore how to recover, preserve, and tell stories about the many contributions of African Americans in building Clemson University and local communities, including those who are believed to be buried in unmarked graves in the African American Burial Ground in Woodland Cemetery. More information about the conference can be found here.
