Current Projects
Penn Slavery Project
Joined March 2018
Presentations:
University of Pennsylvania - Monday, April 23, 2018
University of Pennsylvania - Thursday, May 3, 2018
I'm currently seeking descendants of enslaved Africans owned by Penn affiliates (alumni, trustees, faculty, etc.) and Penn alumni who descend from a Penn slave owner. If you would like to be interviewed, email pennslaverydocumentary@gmail.com.
Sumter, South Carolina Sankofa Project
I'm driven by the philosophy and Asante Adinkra symbol, Sankofa, which means "Go back and get it" in the Twi language from the Akan people of Ghana.
For the past four years, I’ve been doing extensive genealogical and historical investigations into my family and hometown of Sumter, South Carolina focusing on the African American community through which I’m currently:
- Tracing descendants to their enslaved African ancestors
- Researching plantations, slave owners, and enslaved populations, runaway African communities, resistance to slavery, repressive slave laws, founding and early members of historic Black churches, Rosenwald schools, and school desegregation.
- Conducting oral interviews with elders who lived under the systems of sharecropping and tenant farming
My research also includes the 18th century settler community, 19th century aristocratic plantation class, the plantation economy, historic religious institutions and their role in slave society, the West African and Haitian derived architecture style in residential homes and their connection to slave quarters and tenant housing, indigenous native populations, Reconstruction, and post-Reconstruction Black codes.