See The Stripes [A Poem By A.D. Carson] I attend Clemson University, which was founded on on lands donated by Thomas Green Clemson to the state of South Carolina. The land was previously the Fort Hill Plantation, and the main residence is open seven days a week, honoring Clemsons willed wish that it “shall always be open for the inspection of visitors.” Of course, I did not know there would be a plantation house operating as a museum at the university when Id accepted the offer to attend, but more troubling, I thought, was the way history is told through communications published by and created for the university, and the strange relationship between those versions of history and the dedication to the athletics programs, particularly football, and the universitys Solid Orange campaign. It seemed only logical to help create a better representation of those stories untold, from a historical perspective, and of the students who dont feel that Solid Orange properly represents the diversity that exists presently at Clemson with a program to help Clemson, the surrounding communities and the world See The Stripes. -------------------- [Full text of poem and more information about See The Stripes available at SeeStripesCU.org, and follow the program on Twitter @TigerStripesCU #SeeStripesCU and on Facebook at https://facebook/TigerStripesCU] -------------------- The site of “the most exciting 25 seconds in college football” was made possible by profits from the most shameful centuries in America’s history, but come to the campus of Clemson University, and you’d hardly be able to tell it from looking around. [i] Solid Orange, you’ll see. [ii] The grounds are perfectly manicured—alluring— and monuments to the greatness that creates such institutions stand as reminders from whence we came, and since we gain so much from what we see, we smile, proud of the great tradition of which we have the benefit of saying we are now a part. Solid Orange, we are. And it’s easy to buy in— it starts with “The Song that Shakes the Southland” and a sea of solid orange—‘Tiger Rags’ that kind of grab you and say, “You are now a member of this family! You are now a Clemson Tiger. Wear your orange proudly.” but it’s a pretty well known fact that tigers have stripes, and almost as well known is the reason they do, yet, Clemson University—home of the Tigers— doesn’t do much acknowledging of those dark marks it knows to be so integral a part of its existence. “Solid Orange,” we say… at this university that was once a plantation, slavery being “a positive good” according to Master Calhoun, whose house sits, still, on a plot atop a hill overlooking the football field —open seven days a week, and I can even enter through the front door. What I cannot do, however, is depend on the tour guide to give me the whole history of the foundations of my university, because— for some reason or another— it’s uncomfortable for some people to talk about slave owners, supremacists and segregationists on those terms, or it’s unknown to the individual responsible for the dissemination of that information about this place, but twenty score and many more years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent our forefathers and our foremothers and exploited them for hundreds of years, which led to our being conceived in captivity and “dedicated to the proposition” that history is a matter of telling the story that makes us look best. “Solid Orange,” I think, and that forces me to confront my active participation in not only the crime, but the cover-up— the whitewashing, with orange, of the dark parts of a history meant to be instructional, lest we repeat it, and I repeatedly walk past the Strom Thurmond Institute of Government and Public Affairs and wonder, “Was it there that our ancestors were whipped?” Because it happened. Slavery was big business, and being black meant you made profits to keep your master in the black, and if the master went into the red, he’d see red and you’d be likely to wear red stripes across your back— fact. And if that is an uncomfortable truth for the institution, so be it. These are the stripes we bear, so see them. Slavery, sharecropping and convict labor paved the streets and sidewalks of this “high seminary of learning,” and earning a degree from here tethers me to the legacy of that and John C. Calhoun, Strom Thurmond, Thomas Green Clemson and “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, who, with his henchmen, killed black members of a militia, never to be convicted, but elected to public office—Governor— to have statues and buildings erected in his honor, eventually. [iii] The one on this beautiful campus houses the Calhoun Honors College and the School of Education. So be it, if it’s uncomfortable to bear those stripes. See them, because it’s not uncomfortable to reap the benefits of the labor that went into building the buildings or tending the land, but very much so knowing the buildings and the land are stained with years upon years of the blood, sweat and tears of slaves and sharecroppers and so-called criminals who were lent to the institution to do the work that needed doing. “Solid Orange,” they say. And I say The Tiger cannot survive without its stripes. We cannot ignore the troubling history that brought us to this, our glorious institution, with its memorials and monuments to “honorable” men, and call ourselves a family. And we’re damned if we think we’re doing ourselves any favors coloring the history one hue. One you, one me, one he, one she, one them, won’t be one us ‘til we strive to see those stripes The Tiger cannot survive without them. The site of “the most exciting 25 seconds in college football” was made possible by profits from the most shameful centuries in America’s history. Those are the stripes we bear, and before you decide to wear that orange tee, or that painted paw, think, for a moment, about those stripes, think of the backs of the slaves, think about the strips of land, and the sharecroppers tied to it after so-called emancipation, think of the uniform of that 13 year old boy , a slave of the state, forced to help build the first buildings at this place, [iv] think of the dark matters that matter more than you know— the difference between willing ignorance and active participation, complicit denial and abject perpetuation— before you think “Solid Orange,” think of how ridiculous a Solid Orange Tiger would look. Think of seeing its stripes, think of being its stripes, and think of how terrible it is to not be seen, to not be acknowledged, think about never being doomed to repeat an atrocious history, and being better because of knowing better and doing better because as things are now, we are The Tigers, built on a legacy of slavery, sharecropping and convict labor, by slave owners, supremacists and segregationists, but come to the campus of Clemson University, and you’d hardly be able to tell it from looking around. And it’s a shame. We’d be a beautiful Tiger… if only we could see our stripes. -------------------- [i] Quote credited to ESPN and ABC broadcaster, Brent Musburger, in reference to the team’s pregame ritual of rubbing “Howard’s Rock” before running down The Hill onto Frank Howard Field. [ii] From the ‘Solid Orange’ page on Clemson’s website: “Solid Orange goes far beyond orange T-shirts. It’s thinking and acting like a winner, knowing that everything we do reflects on every other Tiger. It’s just part of what makes Clemson uniquely Clemson.” [iii] The Hamburg Massacre occurred July 4, 1876, and resulted in the deaths of seven men. [iv] The boy’s name is Wade Foster. More information on his and other stories about the “Convict Labor” at Clemson is available in Dr. Rhondda Thomas’s essay, ““Slaves of the State”: Convict Labor and Clemson University Land and Legacy” in The South Carolina Review, Volume 46, Number 2, Spring 2014. The picture used in the video is of 14-year-old George Stinney, Jr., who, in 1944 became the youngest person legally executed in the United States in the 20th century. He was executed by the state of South Carolina. -- [Full text of poem available at SeeStripesCU.org]
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 16:21:31 +0000
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