Check out and follow my Ph.D. filming journey! Here is my first #BTS recap! Thanks to my team 🤞🏽
“My style original, pivotal, it’s goin’ digital.”
— @killermike , Science & Engineers
#BlackClemson’s: Neo Griot Dissertation Documentary 🧡🖤🩶 🎥🎬
#storyteller
#neogriot
#rhetoric
🎥 | @tannerrrhall , @brightbellcompany
PASSED MY DOCTORAL EXAMS 🏆
It's time to film this dissertation and have fun doing it.
Dr. Jaquial D. Durham is coming soon! One more lap 🏁
But, God! 🧡💜🤎 🙌🏽
🎥 | @fantasyimages
📸 | @brightbellcompany , @tannerrrhall
🎶 | @killermike , “Yes”, Michael (2023)
🎨 animation | @aesopego
🎨 animation costume design | @tftstyle
#blackclemson
#callmyame
#storyteller
#narrative
#rhetoric
#hiphop
#cinema
#joy
#BTS of @blackclemson 🎬🧡💜🤎🖤
We have wrapped up this last lap of the marathon.
This filming journey has relied on the trust of my family, friends, the neighborhood, and who believe in the importance of the story. This has not felt like your ordinary dissertation project. This dissertation feels like a degree for the entire community, not just me. This has been 3.5 years of reading, writing, processing my ideas, and filming.
Thankful for the team, everyone who stood on-set, those who worked quietly behind the scenes, and those who are just a listening ear, and hearing me vent about my vision. I am grateful to move into this next phase with more updates to share, including behind-the-scenes video content that will soon be released through @patreon .
This project is scary, but I know God got me. Tour dates coming soon 🏆🙏🏽
🎥 | @fantasyimages
📸 | @tannerrrhall , @brightbellcompany
#blackclemson
#cityofclemson
#dissertation
#storyteller
#narrative
#rhetoric
#hiphop
#cinema
#love
#Griot
#NeoGriot
#CallMyName
#SoundTheory
#TownofCentral
The hometown kid is now… Dr. Jaÿ 🎥🏆
Thanks to everyone who was on this flight with me and trusted me to land the plane. Now I can tell my children their father is a Black Rhetorican.
#neogriot
#blackclemson
#dreaminquietly
#sincerelydaniel
#fortheloveofcommunity
📸 | @tannerrrhall
🎥 | @adamwagnerdp
On Friday, I’ll be having a public-facing dissertation defense. During the dissertation defense, I will also be showcasing some of the @blackclemson documentary for viewing as well. To research and film/record family history, to spend years of your life having to consistently self-internalize, allowing versions of yourself to die and grow again, it's a calling, a feeling that you will get.
Last week, I learned that this is the first dissertation film submission at @clemsonuniversity , a film about how my ancestors built both Clemson University and the city of Clemson, and about my family, who still sustain both the university and the city—a film by a descendant of those people.
This project took years of filming, and since I came back ‘HOME’. I have seen and heard a lot, and I have some things to get off my chest. So, let me go ahead and find a soft place to land this plane, enough turbulence 🛬
And, God 🙏🏽🧡🖤🩶
#DrJaÿ
#NeoGriot
#BlackClemson
#fortheloveofcommunity
Okay, God…. it is just you and i, again.
On Saturday, we wrap up our Sincerely, Daniel Sports Exhibition. Now, we are going digital, and another episode of our “Loaded Bases Podcast” is coming soon.
& as that gets done, I am also getting these dissertation chapters done and also, editing the @blackclemson documentary. The plane is still in the air, a little turbulence, but to all those on this journey with me. I'm gon’ land us 🛬
In God, WE TRUST!! 🙏🏽🤞🏽
🎥 | @adamwagnerdp
📸 | @tannerrrhall , @brightbellcompany
#fortheloveofcommunity
#loadedbasespodcast
#sincerelydaniel
#blackclemson
#neogriot
A griot preserves memory. A #NeoGriot adapts that responsibility to the present.
In rhetoric and literacy studies, remix is a method and arrangement, the deliberate layering of voice, memory, and material. #BlackClemson composes history across platforms while remaining accountable to community memory. This work is archival practice and public scholarship.
Here are Mr. Bill Greenlee and Ms. Francis Dupree, both featured in The Messenger Newspaper, which was dedicated to the City of Seneca, Central, Clemson, LaFrance, Norris, Pendleton, and Six Mile. They were featured as two of the oldest people to have lived over 100 years. It is stated that Ms. Francis lived between the ages of 112 and 116. As for Mr. Bill Greenlee, he was known as Mr. Thomas Green Clemson's right-hand man, but essentially his caretaker. Today, you can talk to many people from Clemson who can tell you stories about either of these two.
Image Source: The Messenger, Vol. XVII–No. 17, December 17, 1970. Courtesy of the Dupree Family.
This is my dissertation, displaying it at my leisure.
#BlackClemson refers to the historic Black community of Clemson, South Carolina, as well as the Black students, staff, and faculty at Clemson University (@clemsonuniversity ) whose experiences intersect with the local community. It honors the multigenerational Black families who built and sustained the region, as well as the campus community members who continue to negotiate belonging within the institution.
This dissertation also uses #BlackClemson as the name for a multimedia digital archive that I created to document these stories. The archive collects oral histories, photographs, digital media, and film, serving as a space for preserving Black memory and cultural life in both the city and the University. It operates as a community platform and a scholarly method for illuminating voices that formal archives often overlook.
Welcome to #BlackClemson (@blackclemson )
Cover Art by @havenfrancestudio
#BTS of @blackclemson 🧡💜🤎🖤
Many people ask me what it feels like being back home in Clemson and being a student studying my family history connected to the university. For me, one of the best parts is that I feel safe. It gives me an immediate sense of safety whenever I see a cousin, someone from the neighborhood, or someone who has been part of my childhood long before I was a student.
What makes me proud today is seeing how some kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, nieces, and nephews have carved out new ways of labor on Clemson’s campus, whether in classrooms, administration buildings, or on athletic fields. For #BlackClemson, so many of our families share the same story: generations have labored at Clemson University or the City of Clemson, from great-grandparents, grandparents, to parents, etc. Nowadays, we are running into a cousin on campus, walking in the same direction, and heading to class. It not only provides safety, but it also makes me happy, because I know where we have come from.
At the same time, I think about how the work of Black families from the Clemson area continues to shape both the university and the city. Generationally, our story has always held this complexity. Even when our people labored in the hardest ways, they eventually found ways to celebrate.
Today, even while many of us still labor on the Clemson campus or for the City of Clemson in one form or another, we also cheer, celebrate, and claim Clemson as ours. That is the beauty and the tension of #BlackClemson, it is both work and joy. I could not appreciate the loved ones that I see, and who ensure that I am taken care of when on campus 🙏🏽
#blackclemson
#cityofclemson
#dissertation
#storyteller
#narrative
#rhetoric
#hiphop
#cinema
#love
#Griot
#NeoGriot
#CallMyName
#SoundTheory
#TownofCentral
As we approach the end of fall break, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the accomplishments of my students and me so far this semester. It is wild to think that I have spent more than half of my program developing and promoting the Sincerely, Daniel Sports Exhibition. Over the summer, I built a class from scratch to teach and lecture about the featured athletes, and curated events to continue spreading the message, essentially hustling, grinding, and thinking nonstop. However, I am genuinely proud of how this exhibition has evolved and am even more excited to showcase what my students have developed from it so far.
Just last week, a classmate called me, and she was really impressed by how hard I have been grinding and pushing my research, I laughed and told her, “Honestly, I look at my research like the drug business, I have a product that I want people to be aware of, and I view my research like it is a drug.” It has happened several times, and I have left two or three copies of the City of Clemson's “Community Connection” magazine in various Uber/Lyft rides in other areas/cities, in hopes that more people will discover the exhibit. That is just who I am, a natural hustler.
On the creative side, we have completed filming for @BlackClemson , and multiple chapters of my dissertation are now written. I am grateful that this journey is stretching my storytelling skills. I am constantly discussing ideas, refining my marketing/branding concepts, and pushing this project forward. What we have filmed is something real and immersive, and I cannot wait to share more from the #BlackClemson documentary soon 🧡💜🤎
#blackclemson
#cityofclemson
#storyteller
#narrative
#rhetoric
#hiphop
#cinema
#love
#Griot
#NeoGriot
#CallMyName
#SoundTheory
#townofcentral
