While a doctoral student in USC's history department, Jill Found searched the university's archives to find clues about enslaved people who worked on the campus of South Carolina College. Those efforts help tell the story of those who for decades were nameless and unrecognized.
Transcript
Welcome to Remembering the Days, a podcast about the history of the University of South Carolina.
I’m Evan Faulkenbury and I'm here with Chris Horn, and today we are talking with Jill Found, who just completed a dissertation at USC all about the history of enslavement at South Carolina College, from its chartering in 1801 all the way through the end of the Civil War in 1865.
Chris: Jill bring such a passion to this topic and the ability to give voice to people who are long gone. This is an interesting conversation. I think people are going to learn a lot about what life was like at South Carolina College, the precursor of the University of South Carolina in those antebellum years.
Evan: Let's face it head on. This is a tough history and Jill was brave to take it on. Jill found a lot of evidence that was hard to track down and made a lot of discoveries that are really important for the record and for us to know about now. It's a tough subject, but one that we can learn a lot from.
The university itself, back in 2017, placed two historic markers right on the Horseshoe. One is right in front of the President's House and the other one is more in front of the McKissick Museum. Both talk about the history of enslavement here, the university acknowledging those histories a bit more, and when visitors walk around, they can see these two markers and read a little bit about the history of enslavement here, but Jill has done the work to fill in the gaps, to enhance the story, to really understand the history of slavery at South Carolina College.
Chris Horn: “Jill, tell us how you got interested in history. Generally, you know, when that happened and how you ended up here at the University of South Carolina?”
Jill Found: “I was interested in it some as a little kid. I loved the Magic Treehouse books. I don't know if you guys are familiar with those where kids travel back in time in a magic treehouse. And like, we would always go to the Smithsonian.
“Growing up, I lived outside of DC. I loved the American History Museum, but when I went to college, I planned on studying English or philosophy, and it wasn't until I took a class, actually, on the literature of slavery that I got really interested in history. It was an English class, obviously, but I kind of tell people sometimes I got interested in enslavement before I got interested in history.
“I think the way that we kind of learn history prior to college is so rote and so just sort of about learning facts and to get to college and sort of see the discussion of ideas and arguments that really make up history blew my mind.”
Chris Horn: “What was it about enslavement that that just sort of magnetized your attention?”
Jill Found: “I think I'm a contrary person. And so if there are things that I've been told that feel like they've been hidden from me, I want to know more about them.
“The ideas of what does freedom mean? What does enslavement do to a human being's psyche were really compelling to me. What are the long term effects of that? So I think I got really interested in the human effects of enslavement before I got interested in kind of the broad history of of how enslavement affected, the history of the country, the world and all those things. So I think it was really through learning the stories of people who were enslaved or literature about enslaved people.”
Evan Faulkenbury: “How did you end up at the University of South Carolina?”
Jill Found: “I really wanted to get my PhD, and I liked South Carolina's emphasis on Southern history and public history, which I was really interested in. So it seemed like a good fit for me. They offered me the most money, and and I wanted to be in the South. I applied to some other schools in not the south. And, um, I feel pretty strongly about place-based history and the importance of the history of a place. And so I knew I wanted to do enslavement. And not that there isn't stories aren't stories of enslavement to be told in the North, there are many untold ones. But coming further south than Virginia felt like a good way to kind of understand the impacts of that history to an even greater degree.”
Evan Faulkenbury: "And so your interest in slavery and enslavement, your history, your interest in the University of South Carolina. Once you come here, how did the two start to blend together?”
Jill Found: “When I came here, I actually we take sort of an intro intro to the historical field class, our first year in grad school, and they're often professors who come in and talk about their work. And Dr. Bob Weyeneth came in and he talked about a lot of different aspects of his work, but that included his work about slavery on campus. And I came in 2016 and at that point there was really no ongoing work about slavery at the university. So that felt really naturally a place for me.”
Chris Horn: “As a historian, how do you find the bits and pieces to be able to put together a story about someone who was enslaved, someone who was completely disenfranchised? I mean, what evidence is there? Where did you go to find those stories?”
Jill Found: “The lucky thing about doing university history is that our archives are here. A lot of the material that helped me build this research is here on campus in Caroliniana. So I spent a lot of time sort of my first thing that I did was reading the faculty minutes and the Board of Trustees minutes, and I knew to do that because that's what I had done in undergrad. That had been my assignment. And so I knew that would be a great place to start and then I kind of think of my process as like pulling on strings on a sweater. When I find one thing, a person's name, a person doing something interesting, a type of work, whatever. If then I can kind of pull on that and try and follow that person or follow their experiences. That's sort of the path that I've taken. So that sounds really vague, but it ends up being things like I find a person named Jack who I've written a lot about, who had been written about before. I was just able to sort of relentlessly look for people who could have been him, people who could have been connected to him. And in doing that, finding sort of little morsels that I'm able to connect together. There are a lot of dead ends. I would spend days in the archive and find nothing of use. Sometimes I call it looking for a needle in a haystack of needles. But sometimes you find the right needle and you can, you know, build something really beautiful or really impactful from that one moment or one sort of appearance in the archive.
“These people, they existed. They were alive. People knew their stories. They were important to people during their life. And I try and think about it as they've just been ignored for a very long time and not only ignored, but intentionally erased, intentionally hidden. The stories are kind of there waiting to be found. You know, they're not straightforward. There's not, you know, long letters kind of detailing the stories of people's lives, but with creativity and thought and determination. I think that, you know, these stories exist. And, in some ways, as historians, we have a responsibility to tell them.
"I can try very hard to understand the stories of specific individuals and how that influenced a larger world. So I've obviously done a lot of research in this. It's been a massive part of my life for the past more than a decade, 15 years in some way. I've been studying slavery. And yeah, I feel a responsibility to share those stories.”
Evan: “Can you give us a sketch of the history of slavery at South Carolina College before it was the university?”
Jill: “It's very likely most of the college buildings, early college buildings, were built by enslaved laborers. It's hard to verify that. But the university did write into its earliest, you know, bylaws, stuff about hiring enslaved people, prohibiting students from bringing bringing enslaved people to campus. The founders of the college were very well aware that enslaved people would have an important role on campus.”
“Enslaved people did all kinds of labor on campus. They did things you might think of as traditional labor for enslaved people, things like cooking, cleaning. But that included cleaning and sweeping students rooms, chopping wood, starting fires in rooms, serving students at dining halls in what was called the Commons Hall. But there were people who worked in the chemistry lab throughout that period. Throughout the antebellum period. There were enslaved people who were hired by specific professors or by, for example, the president very often had an enslaved person who was assigned to him to run errands, do work he needed. Many professors brought enslaved people to campus with them. Those people were often doing domestic labor on campus because the professors were living on campus.”
“There were probably never more than a couple dozen enslaved people on campus at a time. Well, that's not true. A couple dozen enslaved people being hired or owned by the college. But then also there was a larger community of enslaved people who were owned or hired by professors who were also on campus. A lot of those people had connections to not just the Columbia community, but the broader Midlands community as well. So the enslaved community on campus was itself a community, but also had these these broader connections.
“That remained the case until the Civil War. When the university closed, many enslaved people remained on campus. Whether there were professors who remained on campus, enslaved people stayed with them, but there were also enslaved people very likely working in the Confederate hospital. So freedom really does come with the arrival of Union troops for people on campus. And it really wasn't until then that they saw sort of the fruits of things like the Emancipation Proclamation.”
Chris Horn: “What would you say to someone who questions, ‘What's the purpose? What's the value of knowing this whole backstory? I mean, that was a long time ago. Slavery's been abolished since 1865.”
Jill Found: “One, it's important to understand where we come from, no matter what. And at the University of South Carolina, one of the places we come from is a place of enslavement. And so understanding the history of slavery is vital for understanding what this institution is. I think we tend to think very positively of schools as places of learning, which they obviously are, but there are lots of other things as well. Right? At the University of South Carolina, it's a place of learning. It's a place where people live. It's a place where people work, an entertainment venue, an athletic facility, we're all kinds of things. And that has been true since the founding of the college. I think that understanding the school as more than just an institution of learning is vital for understanding the school today and its place in this community and in the state and the country.
“As an institution of learning, as an institution of growth, that that reckoning should be an important part of what we do.”
Evan: “Jill, you've kind of talked to us about some of these big ideas of enslavement here. Is there one or two people that you found in the records, or a couple of stories that you think are really emblematic of the actual people who were here?”
Jill: “My dissertation is built around what I call mini-biographies of enslaved people. So a lot of my work was trying to trace the stories of individuals. The first person who really brought me in to this work and thinking about this was a man named Jack. Jack was the first person purchased by the University of South Carolina. He worked in the chemistry laboratory. He was incredibly useful to the college. The college recognized that use, which is why they purchased him. I think he remained sort of in a more in a safer position on campus than a lot of other enslaved people who faced violence from students, for example. That changed when Thomas Cooper became the chemistry professor. Thomas Cooper did not like Jack, did not appreciate Jack's position on campus, and sought actively to have permission to physically punish Jack, meaning beat Jack. Jack, at the time of Thomas Cooper's arrival, tries to join the Presbyterian Church in Columbia. I see that as sort of an attempt to have another institution that he's a member of, right? To sort of have institutional membership was incredibly important in the 19th century. He's denied membership to that institution, in part on the words of the officers of the college, who I assume to mean, very likely Thomas Cooper or his representative. When Jack passes away, the university pays for him to be buried. It's worth noting that he passes away about a year after Thomas Cooper asks for permission to physically punish him, which is granted. But it's unclear what exactly Jack dies of.
"So Jack was the first person who really drew me into this work. His story is the one that I think about the most, probably. My dissertation is dedicated to him. But in some ways he's exceptional. He was the first person most enslaved people did not work in the chemistry lab. Someone who might have a more typical story was a woman named Betsy. Betsy wasn't owned by or hired by the college at any point, but she lived on campus for over 20 years. She was owned by Francis Lieber. He purchased her and her daughter Elsa in 1836, and Betsy lived here at least until 1863. She works as a cook for Lieber, but she also cooks for students. Apparently, she made a very popular boiled ham that the students loved. She would sort of do that on the side as sort of her own, a way to make money for herself and her family. Her daughter Elsa, who was 13 when they came to campus, dies as some result of complications of childbirth when she's 18 years old. Betsy prior to that had had a son named Henry with a man here in Columbia named James, who was owned by a family off campus, which I think is an interesting thing to think about of this woman who's on campus and how her family is in the community and not just the campus.
"Henry also remains on campus for a very long time. When the Liebers leave South Carolina, Betsy is sold to the professor who moves into their house. So Betsy stays in the same house even after her enslaved, even after she's been sold, even after her enslaver has left the state. She remains in the same place for an extended period of time. Longer than any student. Longer than most professors. When most of the Liebers leave South Carolina, one of the sons, Oscar, stays. Very interestingly, Francis Lieber — he works for the Union government. He writes what's called the Lieber Code. His son Oscar keeps Henry when the Liebers leave Columbia. And Oscar is a geologist who travels around the southeast and into Arkansas and further doing archaeological research. He goes to Labrador at one point. And on a number of these trips, he takes Henry with him. So the people who were enslaved on campus are moved around by these campus connections as well. So I think their family kind of shows both the consistency of some enslaved people on campus, but also the dangers of being displaced because of their connections to people on campus."
Chris: “Tell us a bit about what you're doing now. You're with the Center for Civil Rights History.”
Jill: “So I'm the chief historian at the center for Civil Rights History and Research, which means I get to research and write about civil rights history here in South Carolina. So, for example, I just completed an exhibit called 'Where Do We Go From Here?' Which is about what happens after what we think of as the civil rights movement, after 1965, where do we go from here? Which is the name of Dr. King's final book. So I'm working on that. I'm also continuing to work on my research and trying to keep telling these stories of enslaved people."
Evan Faulkenbury: “Thank you. Jill. Thanks for joining us.”
Jill Found: “Thanks for having me.”
Chris: Wow! I always enjoy talking with Jill. That passion about the people in the 1800s who were enslaved, who were atually owned by South Carolina College.
Evan: Jill has made an inaccessible history accessible by finding these stories, these bits and pieces hidden in the archives and bringing them to life a little bit. Jill has made the case for why it's important to know now and going forward.
Chris: On the next episode of Remembering the Days, we're going to be talking with one of the most well known professors in the history department, at least in modern times, Walter Edgar, who you might be familiar with from his book about the history of South Carolina. You might have had him for a course back in the day. You might have heard his podcast that is distributed by ETV Radio.
Evan: We had a good conversation with Walter. We sat around his table in his house and we kind of went down memory road with him a little bit about his life, his career, his reasearch and his love of South Carolina history.
Chris: That's next on Remembering the Days.