Exploring the Generations
Image of Susan Calhoun Clemson Richardson holding Byron Herlong (ca. 1895).
Source: Clemson University Libraries’ Special Collections & Archives.
Call My Name is organized into generations as a means of recognizing the way that people and families of African descent have been a part of Clemson’s history through many different periods and in many different roles.
The project has identified seven generations of African Americans throughout Clemson University’s history:
Generation One: Free and Enslaved Persons of African Descent
Generation Two: Sharecroppers, Tenant Farmers, and Domestics
Generation Three: Convicted Laborers
Generation Four: Wage Workers & Cooperative Extension Agents
Generation Five: Musicians
Generation Six: Desegregation: Students, Faculty, Staff, and Administrators
Generation Seven: Twenty-first Century Activists
These seven generations span over two centuries, beginning in West Africa in the 1700s with the births of the first free Africans who would be enslaved and forcibly brought to America to work at Fort Hill under the Calhouns and Clemsons and stretching to the present-day activism to challenge Clemson’s administration to deal with some problematic portrayals and treatment of African Americans in both the past and present.
