Southern Shepherds, Savage Wolves Author Talk with Otis Westbrook Pickett Sr. (Clemson - 2pm)

Oct 25, 2025 @ 2pm - 5pm | Location: Old Stone Church, 101 Stone Circle, Clemson, SC 29631

Oct 25, 2025 @ 2pm - 5pm
Location: Old Stone Church, 101 Stone Circle, Clemson, SC 29631
Hosted by: Old Stone Church

Join us for an author talk and book signing with Otis Westbrook Pickett Sr. and learn the history of nineteenth century Presbyterian missionaries who shaped slavery and Native American removal in the American South as detailed in his new book, Southern Shepherds, Savage Wolves.

In Southern Shepherds, Savage Wolves, Otis Westbrook Pickett Sr. examines Presbyterian missionaries' attempts to live up to their understood calling from their God to serve as shepherds for their congregations. These missionaries, Pickett finds, faltered in this duty when faced with the racial hierarchy of an enslaved society. He focuses on individual missionaries, most prominently John Lafayette Girardeau and T. C. Stuart, who attempted to integrate enslaved, and later freed, men and women into the church. By examining these missionaries and mission churches, Pickett sheds new light not only on the complicated role that religion played in shaping slavery and Native American removal in the US South but also the fate of these ideas in the crucible of the Civil War and its aftermath.

Otis Westbrook Pickett Sr. is university historian and clinical assistant professor in the College of Education at Clemson University. He holds an MA from Covenant Theological Seminary, an MA in history from College of Charleston, and a PhD in history from University of Mississippi.

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Hosted by Old Stone Church