William Stanley Braithwaite (1878- 1962)
Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932)
Susanna Ashton, Kaniqua Robinson, Gregg Hecimovich & Rhondda R. Thomas as Directors for the 2023 NEH Summer Institute on “Reconstructing the Black Archive”
RESEARCH:
*Check out: A Plausible Man, the True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin - (NY: The New Press, 2024).
*Watch for: my newly edited reissue of 28 Years a Slave, or My Life on Three Continents by Thomas Lewis Johnson, forthcoming from Clemson University Press in 2025
*For more about my other research projects and publications, click here for links or scroll below for video of one of my talks.
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William Stanley Braithwaite(1878-1962) was a prominent editor, poet, literary critic, newspaper columnist, and publisher. He was also Black and had trained as a printer. Here is a link to recent scholarship in Printing History (January 2025): a study of Braithwaite’s training in type that allowed him to set a career that continually manipulated and challenged stereotypes. See “More Bookman than Bookerite. William Stanley Braithwaite and Poetic Stereotypes.” This article was written with the support of an award from the American Printing History Association Fellowship.
You can read here one of my recent academic articles — a study of how the history of stenography in the United States was entwined with Progressive and Anti-Slavery rhetoric and how that shaped the work of author Charles W. Chesnutt. See “Volumes: Charles W. Chesnutt and the Racial History of the Stenographic Imagination.” American Literary Realism 1 January 2024; 56 (2): 119–136.
Another recent publication can be found here with Southern Spaces: https: Ablaze: The 1849 White Supremacist Attack on the Pendleton Post Office
In 1849 a mob of white supremacists eager to seize anti-slavery mailings attacked the US Post Office in Pendleton, South Carolina. They burned leaflets and letters in a bonfire on the village green to make clear their stance against incendiary ideas. This essay explores the context of these events by considering an initial spate of mailings that happened in 1835. This examination includes: their author, William Brisbane; the Calhounist culture of Pendleton that fueled this demonstration; the sad fate of the young man, John Barrett, who was arrested for the distribution of such materials; and those held captive in the middle of it all, the enslaved African Americans of Pendleton.
Other recent activities include, along with three other scholars (Rhondda R. Thomas, Kaniqua Robinson, and Gregg Hecimovich), serving as a co-Director for an NEH Summer Institute “Reconstructing the Black Archive, South Carolina as Case Study 1739-1895” held in June and July of 2023.
Current Research Query: “Slave Passes” or “Slave Tickets”
I’m beginning a major project about the history and language of what people in the 19th century termed “Slave Tickets” and “Slave Passes.” These documents tend to be erratically catalogued by museums and libraries. If you come across any that are uncatalogued or in private collections, or which you think are of special interest or significance, please let me know. Over the next few years, I am analyzing these surveillance documents to understand this horrifying legacy of American writing and American policing