WHS Alum Writes Essay in New Slavery History Book

When Max Blanton, 24, graduated from Westfield High School in 2004, he never imagined he'd be a published writer just six years later.

The Clemson University graduate wrote one of several essays published in the book I Belong to South Carolina: South Carolina Slave Narratives, by Professor. Susanna Ashton, Ph.D., which was released today on www.amazon.com.

"It is exciting," said the self-proclaimed History "nerd."

And while he majored in History and minored in French, Blanton said he didn't necessarily have his sights set on being a writer. "I'm more of a speaker than a writer. I see myself being more of a teacher."

Right now, however, Blanton is on active duty with the United States Army for five years. He originally went to Clemson on an ROTC scholarship, but enlisted after graduation on his own and is now a specialist based in Monterey, California. 

"I tried looking for a job. I graduated in December of 2008. By then everything was pretty much gone," he said. "I gave it a couple of months, tried NYPD, related things and civilian things. There's only so far a history degree will get you in this economy."

And it was that love for history that got him involved in this book to begin with during his senior year.

"I had seen a flier," he said. "There's something called a 'Creative Inquiry' class …they're pretty frequent. Each major has its own kind. This one so happened to have enough meat on the subject to actually even warrant looking for a publishing deal."

He was one of seven team members to sign onto the project for college credit, after being interviewed and "hand-picked" by Ashton, associate professor of English and department chair.

Blanton recalled his interview with Ashton. "I think she was feeling us out just to see if this was just a passing fantasy just to make sure we actually had an interest not only in history and writing but the subject itself."

"You didn't just enroll and sign up," confirmed Dr. Ashton. It was an "elite group" who she knew would represent the University and the English Department in a "professional and sensitive manner" when doing research at historical societies, etc.

 "It's a sensational and exciting project," she said. "It's the first modern publication of a bunch of obscure and unknown slave narratives in South Carolina."

"What the team really helped with the most …was researching (the slaves') lives. They wrote essays, introductions, to explain their lives. Each team member wrote and published an essay in collaboration with me which introduces the longer life-narrative."

She continued, "it required a thoughtful essay. You can't disavow (the slaves) … some of these slave narratives are really surprising and very challenging."

She said the students had to write on the level of "peer reviewed scholarship. They had to pass the muster of real scholars."

"This was real writing which you almost never do in college," she said. "They're substantial, meaningful, hefty …scholarly introductions to each of these life stories."

Blanton said as a history major, he was "prepared" for the challenge. "Most of the papers that we wrote were in this format. We're pretty well trained …how to do this and how to do it correctly."

He added, "Dr. Ashton put a lot of her own editing time into it. If any credit is due it's because of her checking and making sure we used the right words."

The book features seven stories, according to the author. "Two are from escaped slaves. In both cases they got out by boat from Charleston and made their way north, hiding in bales of cotton."

"They hooked up with abolitionist groups who said 'hey, write your story and we'll use the money for the abolitionist cause.'"

She said some of the others were written post Civil-War, as the authors reflected on their lives.

Jacob Stroyer, for example, was a forced laborer who worked at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor throughout the war. "He survived and became a minister. Thirty years later he wrote the story of his life. In some ways he paints a very surprisingly funny view of slavery," said Ashton, adding that his perspective was "really hard to understand without the context." The team member who researched Stroyer took on that challenge of putting his story into perspective.

Ashton described Max as a "key member" of the team and "exemplary" in his work.  "He worked a great deal."

And Blanton agreed he did not take his work lightly. "Each of us had specific narratives that we covered and researched," he said, adding that there were several stories they were presented with that could not be substantiated or they learned were not first-hand accounts. "White abolitionists would actually write as a black person, pretending to be a slave, trying to gain sympathy for the white abolitionist movement."

Blanton's subject turned out to be Anonymous, Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave (A Slave narrative serialized in "The Emancipator" in 1838 …from the "Advocate of Freedom").  

"Following this person's story was mind blowing to me because he was put in so many situations that you couldn't fathom doing yourself. I would've given up ten days into his adventure."

Blanton said the unknowns were numerous. "So what was the Emancipator? What was the Advocate of Freedom? Who ran them? What ties did they have to the abolitionist movement?" were some of the many questions he had to answer. .

"Releasing an entire story over the course of a few weeks or months, as was done here, was not uncommon," said Blanton. But not being able to locate the original papers from 1838 made the answers difficult to come by. "We spent a lot of time on the phone with various historical societies from the Northeast as well as the Southeast in correlating and verifying this, and many other finer points, that were of great importance before being able to send anything to a publisher."

He said his passion for history fueled his research. "Each step along the way of his story, there's a little piece of history there. You can take one piece of his story and research it and say 'I didn't know that.' It led to so many historical things that I never even heard of."

"I remember one of the more challenging, yet thrilling, tasks was to verify the specific names and places mentioned in the piece. A few sentences provided us with key names and places with which to place our character."

This excerpt from the article is one example: "While my old mistress owned me she hired me out several times. The first master who hired me was Col. Billy Mallard. He lived on Dean Swamp. I worked for him about two years. His overseer, named Tom Galloway, was all the time cutting and slashing among us."

 "Using census records, deeds, wills, old railroad maps and records and 18th and 17th century landholding maps, I was able to place these names and locations to the story," said Blanton.  "Doing this 'dirty work' was probably my favorite part of the project."

Blanton said while he did get a basic education on slavery at WHS, his curiosity about the South went deeper because his father hails from there and he has family in South Carolina. "Southern history was something I was interested in. The more I learned about slavery, the more I became interested."

He said he took a personal interest in the stories. "You got to imagine how bad things were for somebody to have to go through something like that. I can't fathom it."

After spending so many months researching his subject, Blanton said he did get attached to his story. "We had to actually fight to keep our narrative in. We had to present the case and say why this person should be in the book. I had to fight tooth and nail to keep mine in there."

And while he is proud of his accomplishment, he has no "illusions of grandeur" about where it will lead. "We did it because we liked the subject."

He added, "It was just a fun thing to do." And, he admitted, "It's cool to go on Amazon and see your name on there."

As for the book's title, Ashton said it came from one of the narratives itself.

She recounted the story of John Andrew Jackson, who escaped from a plantation owner to Charleston in the 1840's.' "He stole a pony and followed a railroad track. His idea of escaping was to find a boat. Some white guy comes up to him and says 'who do you belong to?' He said 'I belong to South Carolina' …a really odd, ambiguous answer."

She explained the answer could have been technical, since slaves were "owned" by the state. Or, he could have meant "'it was no business of his who I belonged to. I belonged to myself.'" Either way, the man left and Jackson jumped the boat, hid in a hay bale and journeyed to Boston.

Ashton said when her student, Kelly Riddle, found the quote, and suggested it as the title …it was a no-brainer. "It's really powerful."

Ashton, a previously published author who specializes in 19th century American literature, said she's proud of this accomplishment. "This is the most historically important project we've ever done."

In fact, she said she was recently emailed by a woman who said she's the great granddaughter of an urban slave featured in the book, Sam Aleckson.

"She heard the story of her family was getting published. It was really exciting that this granddaughter got in touch with me."

Ashton said as an English professor, the slaves' writing was what "intrigued" her. The Brooklyn native said "it was an opportunity to learn more about where I am."

Blanton, too, is far away from his native Westfield and will eventually be stationed somewhere else. "The challenging thing is being in the Army and not being able to keep up with the vocabulary I had before."

But he said his brother, who is an English major at Clemson, is helping to keep his legacy alive. "He wants to be a writer."

And he said his family is wholeheartedly supporting his accomplishment. "I know my dad pre-ordered a book."

 I Belong to South Carolina: South Carolina Slave Narratives, published by University of South Carolina Press, is available in paperback on www.amazon.com

Ashton had previously published several books "on the topics of slavery studies and American literature." Among them, These 'Colored' United States, and African American Essays of the 1920's, co-edited with Tom Lutz.