graffiti

My first assignment for this semester's environmental humanities class at Wofford College may seem a little odd to the non-academic: inventory graffiti on the Glendale bridge and shoals.

Why graffiti? First, there's plenty of it at Glendale Shoals, and I'd once heard writer Alex Haley of ROOTS fame tell about how he moved his family around the South in the 1960s and always inventoried the graffiti in bathrooms. If the graffiti was overtly racist, he'd move his family on. He knew that town was rotten at the core.