Author Archives: battlemp

Guest Blog Post: The Denmark Vesey Monument in Charleston by Beth Gniewek

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Unveiling of Denmark Vesey Monument in Hampton Park, image by Mary Battle, February 2014, Charleston, South Carolina.

Unveiling of Denmark Vesey Monument in Hampton Park, image by Mary Battle, February 2014, Charleston, South Carolina.

Two weeks after the official unveiling of the Denmark Vesey monument in Charleston, South Carolina, the controversy surrounding the legacy of the insurrectionist freedman shows few signs of stopping.

The monument that now stands regally in Hampton Park proved to be a challenge for its planning committee, who found themselves enmeshed in negotiations that lasted almost two decades in order to bring about its completion. Yet, after eighteen years, a statue in commemoration of Denmark Vesey, the freedman who in 1822 allegedly plotted a slave insurrection that he paid for with his life, has finally been erected in the city. Ironically, Vesey’s likeness (or a representation thereof—since no drawing of him exists) has been placed within walking distance of the very institution that was founded to quell future slave rebellions: South Carolina’s lone “military college,” The Citadel.

One hundred and ninety two years after Vesey’s failed insurrection, this politically charged event continues to be met with accusations of Vesey’s alleged terrorism.

In 2010, a columnist for the Charleston City Paper, wrote a piece entitled “Denmark Vesey Was a Terrorist,” where he compared Denmark Vesey’s uprising to Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 attacks and Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb over Japanese cities. “Despite his bloodlust,” the author writes, “Vesey remains a hero to civil rights activists.”

An editorial in the February 24th edition of Charleston’s Post and Courier accused the local newspaper of “rewriting history” in its alleged bias in favor of Vesey and the new monument built in his honor. “Contrary to this slanted story,” the editorialist writes, “Vesey was no heroic figure battling for education and freedom, but was well-known in the community as a brutal and violent man obsessed with vengeance. In real life he got the monument he deserved—the hangman’s scaffold.”

The controversy has reached a national stage within recent weeks with historian Douglas R. Egerton writing an editorial piece in the New York Times on Vesey entitled “Abolitionist or Terrorist?” Calling Vesey a terrorist, Egerton argues, is a difficult judgment call to make in light of the horrors of the institution of slavery. “Critics of the Vesey statue,” he notes, “may not care for his methods (even though their city bristles with monuments and statues of men who picked up a gun to fight for slavery in 1861). But they need to acknowledge that his views were shaped by the whip.”

Nearly two hundred years after the death of Denmark Vesey, his legacy continues to divide South Carolinians, southerners, and Americans. Whether you believe Vesey is a heroic abolitionist or a brutal terrorist (or you are somewhere in between), it is clear that this contentious dialogue will not be ending any time soon. As long as the statue of John C. Calhoun in Charleston’s Marion Square is met with reverence, Denmark Vesey’s stand in Hampton Park will be met with equal disdain.

Beth Gniewek
M.A. Candidate
College of Charleston-Citadel Joint M.A. History Program

Upcoming CLAW/Avery Lecture: Nov. 15, 6:00 pm, “A Usable Past: Debating the Slave Rebellion of 1816 and the Politics of History in Barbados (An Anthropological Perspective),” Dr. Phil Scher, University of Oregon

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Avery Research Center, McKinley Washington AuditoriumDirections to Avery: http://avery.cofc.edu/visit/mapsdirections/

Dr. Phil Scher presents his research on the politics of heritage and cultural identity in Barbados. In early March of the year 2000, a very public debate erupted across Barbados’ national newspapers regarding the identity of a designated Barbadian national hero: Bussa. The issue of who Bussa was, was embedded in a more controversial inquiry: Did Bussa play a significant leadership role in Barbados’ most important and signal slave uprising in 1816? What was and is at stake in such debates is, of course, much more than historical accuracy, however that might be interpreted. The debate in question represents only a part of a much larger field of historical production — the effects of which are felt broadly in a society whose feelings about history itself are notoriously complex. This talk is about not only the contestation of a particular historical narrative, but the effect such narratives have beyond the academy to the construction of a post-colonial nationalist mythos of origins with its attendant political priorities.

Emancipation Statue, known as the "Bussa" statue, erected in Barbados in 1985 near Bridgetown, 169 years after Bussa led a slave revolt in Barbados in 1816.

Emancipation Statue, known as the “Bussa” statue, erected in Barbados in 1985 near Bridgetown, 169 years after Bussa led a slave revolt in Barbados in 1816.

Upcoming Event: Brown Bag Series: “Researching Slavery at the University of South Carolina and Presenting it to the Public: Building the ‘Slavery at South Carolina College’ Website,” Robert Weyeneth and Evan Kutzler, University of South Carolina, hosted by Avery and CLAW, Avery Research Center, 12:30-1:45 pm

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Over just a single semester in Spring 2011, nine history graduate students in the Public History Program’s “Historic Site Interpretation” class at the University of South Carolina researched and built a website entitled “Slavery at South Carolina College” (http://library.sc.edu/digital/slaveryscc/). Evan Kutzler, a PhD student from this course, and Dr. Robert Weyeneth discuss the challenges and opportunities they faced in telling the largely unknown story of how slaves and slavery were essential to the physical construction of South Carolina College (later renamed the University of South Carolina) and to the intellectual life of faculty and students at USC, from its founding in 1801 through the Civil War.

Avery Smart Classroom, 125 Bull Street, Charleston SC

Directions to Avery: http://avery.cofc.edu/visit/mapsdirections/

Gullah Geechee Corridor’s Management Plan Is Approved

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Press release from Michael Allen, NPS Community Partnership Specialist, on the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor:

May 10, 2013

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Management Plan has officially been approved by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior, making it an official document with which to begin implementation of projects and programs. The letter of notification is dated May 6, 2013.  The Commission will convene its quarterly meeting at 9 a.m., at Temple Missionary Baptist Church, 504 Church St., Conway, SC., with a management plan update from 10 – 10:30 a.m.

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, established by federal legislation in 2006, is the only one of 49 National Heritage Areas that promotes the living culture of an African American population.  It spans the coastal communities from Wilmington, North Carolina, through South Carolina and Georgia, to St. Augustine, Florida.

“Please accept my congratulations on the successful planning process that the heritage area partners have accomplished,” wrote signatory Rachel Jacobson, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks.  “I commend you for completing this well conceived plan, and for involving interested citizens and organizations in the planning process. I share your vision for the Corridor, in which we may jointly create an environment that celebrates the legacy and continuing contributions of the Gullah Geechee people.”

U.S. House Assistant Democratic Leader James E. Clyburn (D-SC), credits his efforts toward the creation of the Gullah Geechee Corridor as the most popular bill he has sponsored.  “I commend the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission for their four years of intensive work to create this management plan,” he said.  “Their efforts have already brought tremendous attention to the Gullah Geechee culture, and this plan will serve as a blueprint to not only educate people about the culture, but also to ensure its sustainability for future generations.  It is gratifying to see the vision I had for the Corridor coming to fruition, and I thank all of those involved who made this possible.”

Ronald Daise, Chairman of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, said, “We are overjoyed that the Gullah Geechee Corridor’s Management Plan finally has been approved!  It’s a day we’ve been awaiting for a very long time.  Commissioners are ready to partner with grassroots and civic organizations, state and local governments, businesses and individuals to implement programs that will empower and enlighten Gullah Geechee people to sustain the culture.”

Daise said his first thoughts upon receiving notification were to give thanks.  “Thanks to God and to Gullah Geechee ancestors and community members who live the culture.  Thanks for the Gullah Geechee Commission’s Management Plan Review Committee members who worked diligently to produce the plan’s documents and who provided almost endless edits and rewrites.  Thanks to Congressman James Clyburn for his vision and sponsorship of the legislation that created this unique four-state corridor.  And thanks to the National Park Service for its guidance and support throughout this journey.”

Martha Raymond, National Coordinator for Heritage Areas, said, “I wish to offer my heartfelt congratulations on the crafting, completion and approval of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Management Plan.  What an excellent example of grassroots public participation efforts, charting the way forward for the Corridor!”

The Gullah Geechee Commission began developing the management plan in 2008 and completed its production in 2012.  From information gathered during 21 public engagement meetings throughout the Gullah Geechee Corridor in 2009, commissioners formed the management plan’s approach and framework.

“In the words of an old spiritual, current and former Commissioners and NPS Community Specialist Michael Allen—who initially served as Gullah Geechee Coordinator—have been ‘workin on a buildin, wit a firm foundation’ for years now,” said Daise.  “The public has watched and waited.  Some grew weary, yet others remain filled with excitement and anticipation.  There’s a growing understanding and acceptance ‘dat Gullah Geechee mean a lot!’, that is, that Gullah Geechee culture and heritage are indeed significant to our American fabric.  There are many who stand ready ‘fa jine we,’ that is, join hands with us to develop programs and ideas that will promote education, documentation and preservation, and economic development among Gullah Geechee people and within Gullah Geechee communities.  These are the three areas in which prospective partners should strive to develop their partnership applications.

Partnership applications to the Gullah Geechee Commission are available online at the Corridor’s website, www.gullahgeecheecorridor.org, and in management plan documents at public libraries throughout the Corridor.  Applications may be submitted online or mailed to:  GGCHCC, 284-A King Street, Charleston, SC 29424.  The dates of the initial application review period will be announced at a time following the Gullah Geechee Commission’s November 2013 quarterly meeting.

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Foundation, a 501 (c) 3 and the Gullah Geechee Commission’s only fiscal partner, will begin receiving financial donations to assist the Commission to reach its goals and vision on July 1. At present, tax-deductible donations to the Gullah Geechee Commission may be made at the Corridor’s website.

Contact: Michael Allen, NPS Community Partnership Specialist
Phone number: (843) 881-5516 X 12

 

Upcoming English Diaspora Events, starting May 28th

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England Comes (Back) to Charleston!

Tuesday, May 28th:
3 pm, lecture by Dr. David Gleeson of Northumbria University, entitled “England and the Antebellum South” at the Charleston Library Society, 164 King Street, Charleston, SC, please visit Piccolo Spoleto for tickets

6 pm, Exhibition Opening, “England, the English, and English Culture in North America,” 3rd floor of Addlestone Library at the College of Charleston (up until June 10), featuring the Hexham Morris folk dancers and musicians, free and open to the public

Thursday, May 30th:
Hexham Morris folk dancers and musicians give free concert at 7 pm in Physicians Auditorium at the College of Charleston entitled, “Dance the Seasons Round:  A Celebration of Traditional English Dance and Song”

The forces of His Majesty’s Government left Charleston in 1782 at the end of the American Revolution, never to return.  Yet, the city retained a lot of its English character and culture including, among many other things, its King and Queen Streets. It also retained the oldest St. George’s Society in North America (founded in 1733) which is still active today.  In light of its continued Anglo affinities, the Locating the Hidden Diaspora Project at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, in conjunction with the Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World at the College of Charleston, the South Carolina Historical Society, and the Charleston Library Society, have organized a number of English cultural events to coincide with the 2013 Spoleto fortnight (or in American English two weeks!).  Events kick off on at 3 pm on May 28th with a lecture by Dr. David Gleeson of Northumbria, entitled “England and the Antebellum South”  which is part of the Charleston Library Society’s Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival.

Also on May 28th, at 6 pm, the project opens the exhibition “England, the English, and English Culture in North America” at the Addlestone Library at the College of Charleston.  The exhibition runs to June 10 but will be available permanently through the Lowcountry Digitial Library.  The opening will feature a performance by the Hexham Morris troupe, a group of 32 folk dancers and musicians from the Northeast of England.  As well as performing in the Piccolo Spoleto Arts Festival, they will also be giving a free concert on Thursday the 30th at 7 pm in Physicians Auditorium at the College of Charleston entitled, “Dance the Seasons Round:  A Celebration of Traditional English Dance and Song,” which will trace through the performance the 500 years of the England’s oldest surviving dance tradition.

For more information please see the English Diaspora Facebook page, English Diaspora, Hexham Morris, and Events and Programs at the Charleston Library Society. Or contact David Gleeson by email at david.gleeson@northumbria.ac.uk  or @englishdiaspora on twitter  If you plan to come to the exhibition opening please rsvp to David Gleeson by email or twitter @dgleesonhistory

 

Mark Auslander’s New Article: “Touching the Past”

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Check out Mark Auslander‘s new article “Touching the Past: Materializing Time in Traumatic “Living History” Reenactments” in the open access journal Signs and Society.


Auslander’s article includes a discussion of the reenacted slave auction in the March 22, 1865 Charleston emancipation procession.


Abstract:
Many living history reenactors speak of “touching the past” in their performances. In nearly all instances, these profound experiences of intimate traffic with previous epochs and persons are brought about not through physical contact with historical artifacts but through deployments of replicas and props, including recently produced adornment, weaponry, vehicles, and tools. This essay explores the roles and functions of material reproductions or substitutes of historic artifacts in reenactment performances, and how these object-oriented practices often bring about powerful sensations of historic authenticity on the part of reenactors and their audiences. Auslander gives particular attention to the use of physical objects by those who seek to reenact traumatic events and experiences related to American histories of racial injustice, including experiences of slavery and Jim Crow racial violence.

AWARD: Submit dissertation/manuscript by June 15 for CLAW’s 2013 Hines Prize

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The Hines Prize is awarded to the best first book relating to any aspect of the
Carolina Lowcountry and/or the Atlantic World. The prize carries a cash award of $1,000 and preferential consideration by the University of South Carolina Press for the CLAW Program’s book series.

EXTENDED DEADLINE: June 15, 2013

Send all submissions and inquiries to: Dr. Simon Lewis, lewiss@cofc.edu

 

Introductory Remarks from March 21st Ceremony at Brittlebank Ceremony to Honor the Middle Passage and struggles of African descendants

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For those who were not able to able to attend, please see the following introductory comments presented by Drs. Simon Lewis and Anthonia Kalu at the opening of the Commemorative Ceremony held at Brittlebank Park in Charleston, SC on March 20, 2013, to honor the victims of the Middle Passage and the struggles of African descendants throughout the world.

Introduction at Brittlebank Ceremony,

ALA Charleston –March 21, 2013

Thank you, Helen and Ann for those moving introductions to today’s ceremony honoring the dead of the Middle Passage and the under-acknowledged contributions of generations of Africans and African-descended peoples in the Americas. On behalf of the ALA, the Office of Multicultural Student Programs and Services at the College of Charleston, and the Jubilee Project, thank you all for joining us on this historic occasion, and,  “Welcome all of you!” on this beautiful and peaceful evening in this beautiful place. This visit to Charleston’s Brittlebank Park resonates with a similar visit the ALA made when our annual conference took place in Dakar, Senegal in March 1989. On that occasion we made a pilgrimage to Goree, the most westerly point of the continent infamous for being the site of the “Door of No Return” from which untold thousands were crowded onto European slave-trading vessels and transported to the New World. That profoundly moving pilgrimage prompted one of our members, the poet Niyi Osundare to write the poem, “Goree” that will be the first of our readings this evening.  Our presence in this space twenty-four years later draws attention to the fact that for all its current beauty, this too is a place of memory, and a site of trauma.

Historians estimate that 40% of all Africans kidnapped and landed as slaves in continental North America, landed in this very city of Charleston, and just a mile or so upriver from here at Ashley Ferry River was one of the many sites around the city where men, women and children were sold directly from the boat. Although historic sites in this area and around the nation have expanded and enhanced their presentation of previously invisible histories of the African-American experience, there is still a considerable “acknowledgment gap” in the general public understanding that fails to give due consideration to African contributions to the physical and economic landscape of the new worlds they helped to build.  This acknowledgment gap, which as we shall hear later was so poetically and powerfully described more than a century ago by W.E.B. Du Bois, shows itself ironically in absences: of public memorials, of statuary, of street- and place-names honoring Africans or African Americans; in the absence even, as Toni Morrison has remarked, of such a humble thing as a bench by the road. Despite the Emancipation Proclamation of 150 years ago and the desegregation of public education here in SC that the Jubilee Project is commemorating, the consequences of two centuries of slavery followed by another hundred years of officially-sanctioned segregation are still with us. We believe that humanities scholars have a vital role in laying this history to rest. We believe that humanities scholars should lay this history to rest, not because it should be forgotten, but in order to relate to it in a fuller knowledge both of its historical facts and its contemporary implications. It goes without saying that such a commemoration is extremely uncomfortable and fraught with potential for misunderstanding and pain. That is one of the reasons why the Jubilee Project and this conference are seizing on the anniversaries of emancipation and desegregation as a catalyst for a critical commemorative process: these anniversaries enable us to confront squarely the history of slavery, resistance and abolition as part of the literature of liberation and the law in the story of America and the world. The commemoration of the expansion of freedom is the keynote of that narrative, and of the foundational place of Africans and African-descended people in that narrative.

Peter Wood uses the image of the hour-glass to describe Charleston’s role in the African Diaspora.  In thinking of Charleston as the birthplace of African America, one may think of the narrow harbor entrance in terms of another, more graphic, more somatic image — as the birth canal of African America.  In tonight’s commemorative ceremony, we remember not only the acute pain of that birth but we also salute African America’s contributions to local, regional, national, and international history, and the courage of all our ancestors who, in the words of Kwame Dawes’s poem, “straightened their backs” and “shouldered their burden” in the long, uneven, and often dangerous struggle for freedom.

Anthonia Kalu and Simon Lewis

African Literature Association- Charleston

March 2013

Upcoming Event, March 21, 2013, 5:30-7pm: “I Have Known Rivers”: Ceremony to honor the Men, Women, and Children forced into the Middle Passage and the Struggles of Africans and African Descendants throughout the World

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The College of Charleston and the Jubilee Project are proud to welcome the 39th annual conference of the African Literature Association to Charleston, SC from March 20-24, 2013. This conference will include a public ceremony event on March 21, 2013, from 5:30-7 pm to simultaneously commemorate a number of significant anniversaries in the history of Africans and African descendants throughout the world. This ceremony will include poetry readings and musical performances, and is free and open to the public. It will be held at the north end of Brittlebank Park in Charleston, SC. Highlights include poetry readings and musical performances.

2013 and March 21st anniversary events to commemorate include:

On January 1st, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring enslaved people in Confederate-held territory to be “forever free,” came into effect. In January 1963, during the height of the twentieth century  U.S. Civil Rights movement, Charleston native Harvey Gantt became the first African American to be admitted to Clemson University. In August and September 1963, respectively, the University of South Carolina and Charleston County public schools admitted their first African American students since the end of Reconstruction. August 1963 saw two almost simultaneous events that show the length of African Americans’ struggle for full emancipation and the connection of that struggle with African liberation struggles: the march on Washington of August 28th which gave us Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech was preceded the day earlier by the death of W.E.B. Du Bois in Ghana. By that date, 32 of Africa’s nations were formally independent with more than 20 still under European colonial or settler control.

The date of this ceremony, March 21st, has similar local and global resonance. On March 21st, 1865, the first Emancipation Parade in Charleston occurred. The parade featured over 4,000 people, including in the words of the Charleston Courier “a company of school boys” proclaiming: ‘We know no masters but ourselves,’” as well as a carriage with a mock slave auction followed by a carriage decked out as a hearse carrying the coffin of slavery. The hearse bore the inscriptions: “Slavery is Dead,” “Who Owns Him? No One,” and “Sumter Dug his Grave on the 13th of April, 1861.” Thousands of miles away and nearly a hundred years later, on March 21st, 1963, police in Sharpeville, South Africa opened fire on a crowd protesting apartheid-era pass laws, killing 69 and wounding hundreds. The massacre was a watershed event in South African history heralding the darkest decades of the apartheid era but also inspiring the resistance that would eventually lead to apartheid’s formal demise.

What these dates indicate is that, while it is appropriate to commemorate  the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 50th anniversaries of key moments in the Civil Rights movement and the African liberation struggle, Emancipation is not an event but an ongoing process that must  be vigilantly defended and consolidated. In that spirit we will gather at the river on whose banks kidnapped Africans were once disembarked as chattel slaves, to commemorate the  Africans and African-descended people who have risen out of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, colonialism and apartheid, and, despite the manifold forms of racism, have survived, thrived. and enriched the world around them.

Simon Lewis

For more information, please contact Simon Lewis at lewiss@cofc.edu