Otiana (OT) Thompson

Contact
Department of History
Email: otianat@clemson.edu

Education
BA, Claflin

Research Interests
U.S. History; U.S. South; African American History; Civil Rights History; Labor Organizing; American Politics

Otiana “OT” Thompson is a second-year MA student and a research assistant for the Cemetery Project at Clemson University. Her master's thesis centers on the strategies and legacies of local South Carolina labor and community organizer Modjeska Monteith Simkins, as well as the historical implications of federal and state policies following the 1960s. She received her undergraduate degrees in History and Africana Studies from Claflin University in 2023. After graduation, she served as a long-term substitute teacher for eighth-grade students, instructing them on South Carolina history. She has leveraged her experiences as both an educator and a student of History to deepen her understanding of modern-day policies that directly impact state and local resistance efforts. This past summer, she conducted research at Cornell University as a Freedom on the Move Data Fellow, where she examined the political impact of the 1822 Negro Seamen’s Act on fugitivity and resistance efforts among freedom seekers in South Carolina. The works that have directly influenced her work include Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America and How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America by Manning Marable, Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism, Evelyn Higginbotham's Righteous Discontent, Julius S. Scott's The Common Wind, and He Shall Go Out Free by Douglas Egerton, among others.