Locating Patterns and Stories in the Spatially Mapped Lives of Alumni of the University of South Carolina of the Reconstruction Era, 1873-1877

Mark Canavera, University of South Carolina

From the brief yet transformative period from 1873 to 1877, the University of South Carolina (USC) radically transformed the American university in creating a student and faculty body reflecting new ideals of free, multi-racial tertiary education. Aligned with critical reexamination of the promise embodied by Reconstruction, this paper takes an empirical approach asking how studying at the university–including undergraduate education, law studies, and teacher training–impacted the lives of approximately 200 USC alumni in their post-university careers in the late 1800s. Drawing upon new data sources that have emerged as USC examines this unique period in the university’s history, we spatially and temporally map the life trajectories of these alumni to explore how they applied fruits of their education both globally and in spaces closer to home. First, we note that–despite the relatively small number of alumni–no single narrative emerges. Spatial analyses reveal complexity: while some students went on to expansive careers that spanned Honolulu to Vladivostok, others applied their skills closer to home, remaining in South Carolina to teach, preach, farm, and lift up their largely African American communities. Second, we learn that interpersonal USC connections lasted well into alumni’s subsequent lives: the early experience of interracial education imbued professions from law to higher education, the latter being associated with historically black colleges and universities. Finally, we move beyond an easy conflation of mobility with “upward mobility” to consider strategic choices alumni made about using their skills in rural or otherwise under-served areas. Ultimately, spatial analyses illuminate how connections alumni made during their experience studying in this unprecedented Reconstruction environment opened possibilities across time and space–not only in the conceptual realm of “what could have been been” but also in the empirical historical realm of what events, as far as historians can tell, in fact happened.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 10. New Approaches to Public Spatial History