Category: Student Work

By Lucas DeBenedetti, Undergraduate Research Assistant

It’s difficult to put into words how much this project has meant to me over the past two years. As I prepare to graduate from Clemson on Friday, May 12, I have been reflecting on my time working for the Woodland Cemetery Project.

I joined the cemetery project in Fall 2021, taking part in the project’s first Creative Inquiry class. In that class, I learned about the history of Woodland Cemetery and Clemson University as a whole for the first time and was given the opportunity to research a historical topic that interested me pertaining to the cemetery’s history. My group and I studied how disease and death affected the enslaved population of Fort Hill Plantation. The Creative Inquiry project opened my eyes to the history around me and left me with the desire to help the project in any what that I could. When the opportunity to join the project as a research assistant became available in January 2022 I immediately rushed to apply. I was lucky enough to get the job and have enjoyed working on the project ever since.

Throughout my time as research assistant, I have taken part in some amazing projects. During the Spring of 2022, with Dr. Collini and Nolly Swan, my former coworker, I helped to create the “Visual History of Woodland Cemetery.” This was such an interesting project to research, and we discovered so much new information about the cemetery, particularly the destruction of the western half of the cemetery and how it is related to the construction of Lake Hartwell and Clemson’s dikes. By the end of the semester, we had created the StoryMaps project that is currently on the cemetery’s website.

In the fall of 2022, I went with the team on our trip to William and Mary to meet the Lemon Project and see their monument. This trip was so inspirational, and I was able to get closer to the rest of the team as well as learn how other universities deal with their history of slavery and racism. The trip gave me hope that one day Clemson will build a memorial to the enslaved men and women, convict laborers, and sharecroppers who have largely been ignored in the greater history of Clemson University.

This past semester I took part in Universities Studying Slavery, South Carolina Research Symposium where I presented on destruction of the western half of the cemetery and using digital history methods to present my findings to the public. I was also able to gain new skills in genealogy, with the help of genealogist Deborah Robinson, mapping, and research. I have loved all the projects I have worked on, all the trips we have taken as a team, and all the people I have gotten to meet through this experience. I only hope that I was able to make a positive impact on the project and Clemson history as a whole.

The Woodland Cemetery Project team has been extremely supportive of me throughout my entire time on the project. They have been an amazing community for me and have always looked out for me and helped me throughout the entirety of my time working on the project both inside of class and work as well as outside. Firstly, I want to thank Dr. Sara Collini who has been my main mentor throughout my time on the project. Dr. Collini has been incredibly supportive of all my endeavors both inside and outside the project. She has taught me skills that will help me during the rest of my academic and professional career as well as guiding me on how to be a proper historian. I would also like to thank Dr. Thomas for giving me this opportunity to work on this incredible project and always challenging me with new projects. Dr. Thomas has been such an inspirational figure to me and has inspired me to continue pursuing justice in my historical research. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Mandi Barnard, Deborah Robinson, and Marquise Drayton. Each of them has been there for me on different occasions and have been amazing to learn from and get to know them throughout my time on the project.

The Woodland Cemetery Project has furthered my love for history immensely and allowed me to discover my passion for justice. It inspired my senior honors thesis, as I combined my loves of World War II history and African American history and led to me writing a thesis on African American soldiers during World War II and how they have been perceived by the American media past and present.

I plan to continue to grow my passion for history and justice at grad school at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte where I will pursue a master’s in history. I will take all the lessons and information I have learned in this project to further the research I began with thesis as well as pursuing new research interests in civil rights history. One day I hope to become a history professor and potentially an expert historical witness in civil rights court cases.

The Woodland Cemetery Project has been the most rewarding and meaningful experience during my time at Clemson. I will miss working on this project and seeing my coworkers and mentors so much. The project provided me with a sense of community and purpose that I had been lacking at Clemson. Working on the project has been an unforgettable experience that will stick with me for the rest of my life and will impact how I study history and look at the world around me going forward. I am honored to have worked on project from the first Creative Inquiry class to the present. Though I am leaving the project, I will never forget the experiences I have had, the opportunities to learn and grow I have gained, and the people I have met. I look forward to seeing what the future holds for this project, and I will miss it so much.

This is a special post re-published from the April 2023 newsletter. Read the full April 2023 newsletter.

By Lucas DeBenedetti, Undergraduate Research Assistant

This past month Sue Hiott, curator of exhibits for Clemson University Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives, recovered new evidence, in the form of four color photographs, which adds more context to the destruction of the lower, western half of Cemetery Hill and how it connects to the construction of the upper and lower dikes around Clemson’s campus.

Previous editions of the history series have detailed the removal of the lower, western half of Woodland Cemetery and its relation to the construction of Lake Hartwell and the protective dikes around Clemson University’s campus.

For context, this removal occurred as a result of the construction of Lake Hartwell by the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the 1960 Court Order, in which Clemson College petitioned Oconee County in August 1960 for the right to disinter the remains of Black laborers they came across while grading and clearing the western slope.¹ The judge granted Clemson permission to do this and together with the Nello Teer Construction Company, Clemson made plans in September 1960 to proceed with the grading and clearing of the western slope.²

While the lower western half was being graded and cleared, the remains of at least five African American children were found and identified by their hair, teeth, coffin nails, and the size of their burial.³

Based on the evidence the project has collected thus far, the dirt taken from the lower. western half of the cemetery was used to build the dikes that currently protect Clemson University’s campus from being flooded by Lake Hartwell.

The photographs depict the lower western half of Woodland Cemetery during different stages of its destruction. Each image bears a small caption detailing the context behind each specific image.

The first image depicts a man staring at a number of field stones and bears the caption “Rotie looking at slave grave markers Cemetery Hill.”⁴ A black and white version of this photograph is also located in the Papers of Carrel Cowan- Ricks in Clemson’s archives. The name Salley was previously known in relation to these images, but the name ‘Rotie’ was unknown to the project. The man is standing in an unknown location on Cemetery.

The three other photographs in the series detail the lower western half of the cemetery in various stages of its destruction:

The second color image includes the caption “Cemetery Hill being cut for use in upper dike Oct. ’60” and shows construction equipment moving dirt from the lower western slope, which has been completely cleared of trees. This photograph appears to confirm that dirt from the lower western half of the cemetery was utilized in the construction of the upper dike near the Esso Station.⁵

The remaining third and fourth photographs found last month were both taken after October 1960. They bear the captions “Moving dirt from Cemetery Hill Nov ‘60”⁶ and “Cutting down Cemetery Hill.”⁷ Both images portray how the lower western section of the cemetery was completely cleared and leveled, demonstrating how the lower western slope was destroyed over the course of two months. Prior to the destruction of this section, the cemetery sloped all the way to the Seneca River and Perimeter Road, with a much greater elevation. The second image showcases this change in elevation, as the lower, western half is almost parallel to Perimeter Road as opposed to sloping into it.

These photographs were likely taken around the time of the 1960 Clemson homecoming football game on November 5, where an aerial image of the stadium and cemetery was taken showcasing the removal of dirt from the western slope. Today, the cleared area serves as a parking lot for Clemson University’s students.

These primary source photographs are the best evidence that the cemetery team has received and analyzed that confirm that the dirt from the lower, western half of the cemetery was used in the construction of the dikes to protect Clemson from the flooding of Lake Hartwell.

Despite the fact that the construction of the dikes around Clemson’s campus was ordered by the US Army Corps of Engineers and contracted by Clemson and the Nello Teer Construction Company, there is a scarcity of documentation, official or otherwise, pertaining to the use of the dirt from the lower, western half of Woodland Cemetery to build the dikes.

It is important to remember that these are not just photographs of dirt being moved or part of a hill being destroyed. They are images of the destruction of individuals’ gravesites, some of them children’s, whose names will likely never be known.

Citations

1. State of South Carolina, County of Oconee, Court of Common Pleas, Ex parte: The Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina, In Re: The Purported Cemetery of Unknown De- ceased Persons, Petition, 22 August 1960, Mss 366, Box 2, Folder 17, Papers of Carrel Cowan-Ricks, Special Collections and Archives, Clemson University Libraries.
2. Memorandum of Understanding between Clemson and Nello L. Teer Company, September 13, 1960, Mss 366, Papers of Carrel Cowan-Ricks, Special Collections and Archives, Clemson University Libraries.
3. Carrel Cowan-Ricks, Interview with Robert Ware, July 17, 1992, Series 613, Site History, 1895-2008, The Woodland Cemetery Stewardship Committee Records, Special Collections and Archives, Clemson University Libraries.
4. “Rotie looking at slave grave markers Cemetery Hill,” 1960, Unaccessioned Collection of Rotie Salley, Special Collections and Archives, Clemson University Libraries.
5. “Cemetery Hill being cut for use in upper dike Oct. ’60”, October 1960, Unaccessioned Collection of Rotie Salley, Special Collections and Archives, Clemson University Libraries.
6. “Moving dirt from Cemetery Hill Nov ’60,” November 1960, Unaccessioned Collection of Rotie Salley, Special Collections and Archives, Clemson University Libraries.
7. “Cutting down Cemetery Hill,” 1960, Unaccessioned Collection of Rotie Salley, Special Collections and Archives, Clemson University Libraries.

This is a special post re-published from the March 2023 newsletter. Read the full March 2023 newsletter. 

By Alleyia Bailey, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Carrel Cowan-Ricks began her journey in Historical Archaeology in 1980 when she enrolled at Wayne State University to study Anthropology. By 1990 Cowan-Ricks entered the Anthropology Ph.D. program at Wayne State with a desire to study African American cemeteries and burial customs. At this time, Cowan-Ricks was one of three African American women with a graduate degree in archaeology in the United States and very likely the world.

Clemson University hired Cowan- Ricks in 1991 to locate unmarked African American Burials in Woodland Cemetery. These burials include the enslaved peoples of the Fort Hill Plantation; sharecroppers, domestic workers, and tenant farmers who worked at Fort Hill during Reconstruction; and convicted laborers who constructed the early buildings on Clemson’s campus. To aid her in the search for unmarked burials, Cowan-Ricks recruited volunteers from the history, education, engineering, and architecture departments, along with African American high school and middle school students, and local community members.

During the fall of 1991, Cowan- Ricks and her team surveyed the entire west slope of Woodland Cemetery to locate evidence of burials. Her plan did not involve disinterring any possible graves but finding evidence of burial shafts. Cowan-Ricks noted that the purpose of the Cemetery Hill Archaeological Project was to memorialize, honor, and protect the enslaved and convict burials on Cemetery Hill. During these excavations, the team uncovered a number of artifacts, including indigenous projectile points and shell casings fired at military funerals.

During the 1991-1993 excavations Cowan-Ricks concluded the burial ground was much larger than anyone ever thought and that she would need to dig deeper to locate the graves; thus, she would need more time to locate the burials. However, in 1993, Cowan-Ricks was fired from Clemson University due to budget cuts. She would likely have found the graves if she had been granted more time. Between July 2020 and January 2022, more than 500 unmarked burials believed to be those of African Americans were located in the cemetery using ground penetrating radar.

In addition to locating the unmarked burials, Cowan-Ricks also aimed to reconstruct the population of the enslaved peoples during the Fort Hill period. She noted that census data at that time severely under counted the amount of enslaved individuals on the Fort Hill property and wanted an accurate representation of the population. Cowan-Ricks also researched the traditions and customs of the enslaved people of Fort Hill and gave a presentation entitled “African American Plantation Culture” that detailed the daily lives of enslaved people. She noted African American cultivation practices, pottery making and styles, ritual and worship, and day-to-day tasks they would have performed.

Cowan-Ricks continued to show her passion for archaeology after her time at Clemson University. She served on the Detroit Museum’s Black Historical sites committee and at the Society for Historical Archaeology. During her time at the Detroit Museum, she organized a symposium entitled “Is Historical Archaeology White? Prospects for Minority Contribution.” She continued to push the status quo of what traditional archaeology looked like in the United States at that time and advocated for more African American and women voices in the field. Cowan-Ricks also contributed to many archaeological projects, including the Center for Field Research in Watertown, Massachusetts. During this time, Cowan-Ricks’ battle with Lupus was growing stronger, and on January 11, 1997, she lost this battle with the disease.

Cowan-Ricks was a groundbreaking archaeologist who was rewriting what archaeology looked like during this time. Cowan-Ricks also represented a number of people while practicing in the field; she has given strength to aspiring archaeologists who are African American, women, and those who are battling a chronic condition.

One of her life missions was to add more African American and women voices into the archaeological narrative. With her work, we have the knowledge about Woodland Cemetery that we do today. Cowan-Ricks continues to inspire each and every one of us to protect the sacred space that is Cemetery Hill.

Currently, Dr. David Markus and I have been working on cataloging the artifacts recovered from the 1991-1993 excavations that Cowan-Ricks led. The artifacts had been uncleaned and not cataloged, only being stored in plastic bags that were not useful in protecting the artifacts. This process has included cleaning all of the artifacts and completing an inventory. Dr. Markus and I have also assigned the artifacts with field specimen numbers that will aid in finding a specific artifact. We have also upgraded all the artifact bags and assigned the artifacts with specific tags. Our hope for this project is to fully process the artifacts to better understand what was found during the excavations on Cemetery Hill.

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.

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.

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.

We have also been training additional cemetery tour guides. We would welcome more members of the community to help us give tours. You can sign up to become a tour guide using this application.

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.

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May 2022 Newsletter