Carolina Lowcountry & Atlantic World (CLAW) – Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston

Two Events with Dr. James O’Neil Spady

A bronze statue of Denmark Vesey The Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston will be hosting two upcoming events with the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW) program featuring Dr. James O’Neil Spady, Associate Professor of American History at Soka University in Aliso Viejo, California. Dr. Spady is the author of Education and the Racial Dynamics of Settler Colonialism in Early America: Georgia and South Carolina, ca. 1700 – ca. 1820, and editor and contributor of the book Fugitive Movements: Commemorating the Denmark Vesey Affair and Black Radical Antislavery in the Atlantic World.

On April 18th at 6pm EST Dr. Spady will be giving CSSC’s annual lecture entitled “A Movement, not a Conspiracy: A New Narrative of the 1822 Denmark Vesey ‘Affair.'” Attendees can join online via Zoom or in person in Room 101 at the Rita Liddy Hollings Science Center at 58 Coming Street, Charleston. Register for tickets on Eventbrite.

Dr. Spady will also be leading the seminar “Mapping a Movement: Archival and Digital Methods for Representing the Social and Spatial Connections of the 1822 Denmark Vesey ‘Affair'” on April 19th at 3:30pm EST in Room 360 of Addlestone Library. Addlestone Library currently requires a College of Charleston faculty or student ID for entrance.

“Bourne, Bound and Battered by the Common Wind”

In February, CSSC Director and Emeritus Professor of History, Dr. Bernard Powers, delivered a lecture entitled “Denmark Vesey, South Carolina and Haiti: Borne, Bound, and Battered by the Common Wind.” This was the keynote address for the first evening of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World’s academic conference, “The Vesey Conspiracy at 200: Black Antislavery in the Atlantic World.”

Find a copy of the conference’s program here.

Film Series Explores Link Between Gullah People, Sierra Leone

The Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW) program hosted a three-part film series exploring links between Gullah people and the country of Sierra Leone, Africa. Simon Lewis, CSSC Executive Board member and director of the CLAW program, organized the series and the discussions that followed, including one with author Edward Ball (Slaves in the Family) and Thomalinda Polite, whose film “Priscilla’s Legacy” documents her reconnecting with her ancestors in Sierra Leone. Priscilla is the name of a child Edward Ball encountered in his research for Slaves in the Family, and he managed to identify some of her living descendants, including Polite.

https://today.cofc.edu/2018/10/16/film-series-explores-links-between-gullah-communities-sierra-leone/