J. Brent Morris is an award-winning historian and scholar, with specializations in South Carolina history, the history of the American South, and African American history. At Clemson, he is Professor of History. Previously, he was Professor of History and founding director of the Institute for the Study of the Reconstruction Era at the University of South Carolina Beaufort.

Dr. Morris has served as consultant and/or board member for many public-facing projects including the International African American Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Park Service, and the South Carolina Historical Association. His scholarship, teaching, and service projects have been supported by over $1.8 million in grants and fellowships.

Brent was the 2010 recipient of the South Carolina Historical Society's Malcolm C. Clark Award, was named 2016 University of South Carolina Breakthrough Star for Research and Scholarship, and was awarded the 2018 Award of the Order of the South, the highest honor bestowed by the Southern Academy of Letters, Arts, and Sciences (previous awardees include Eudora Welty and James Dickey). From 2020-2022 he was a USC System Academic Leadership Fellow.

Great Dismal Swamp sprawls over 2,000 square miles and spills over parts of Virginia and North Carolina. From the early seventeenth century, the nearly impassable Dismal frustrated settlement. However, what may have been an impediment to the expansion of slave society became an essential sanctuary for many of those who sought to escape it. In the depths of the Dismal, thousands of maroons—people who had emancipated themselves from enslavement and settled beyond the reach of enslavers—established new lives of freedom in a landscape deemed worthless and inaccessible by whites.

Dismal Freedom unearths the stories of these maroons, their lives, and their struggles for liberation. Drawing from newly discovered primary sources and archeological evidence that suggests far more extensive maroon settlement than historians have previously imagined, award-winning author J. Brent Morris uncovers one of the most exciting yet neglected stories of American history. This is the story of resilient, proud, and determined people who made the Great Dismal Swamp their free home and sanctuary and who played an outsized role in undermining slavery through the Civil War.

http://www.jbrentmorris.com/home.html

Taylor Pie - musician, songwriter, performer, the subject of the new documentary, Nobody Famous.

Southern ReckoningBy Patricia FurnishJan 12, 2023