Damon Fordham
Adjunct Professor
Damon Lamar Fordham was born in Spartanburg, SC on December 23, 1964 to Anne Montgomery and was adopted by Pearl and Abraham Fordham of Mt. Pleasant, SC the following year. He received his Master’s Degree in history from the College of Charleston and the Citadel, and his undergraduate degrees at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. He is currently an adjunct professor of World Civilizations, United States, and African-American History at The Citadel in Charleston, SC and has taught US History and African-American Studies at the College of Charleston. He was a weekly columnist for the Charleston Coastal Times from 1994 to 1998, as well as the author of Black Folktales and Chronicles of South Carolina (Charleston: History Press, 2025), The 1895 Segregation Fight in South Carolina (Charleston: History Press, 2022), Mr. Potts and Me (Charleston: Evening Post Books, 2012) Voices of Black South Carolina-Legend and Legacy (Charleston: History Press, 2009), True Stories of Black South Carolina (Charleston: History Press, 2008) and coauthor of Born to Serve-The Story of the WBEMC in South Carolina in 2006.
Research and articles by Mr. Fordham appear in the books Sweetgrass Baskets and the Gullah Tradition by Joyce Coakley, South of Main by Beatrice Hill and Brenda Lee, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African-American Folklore for the University of Missouri Press, Cecil Williams and Sonny DuBose’s Orangeburg 1968, and The Malcolm X Encyclopedia for the University of Southern Mississippi Press in 2001. He has also commented on history and storytelling at schools such as The University of Memphis in 1998, The G.L. Roberts School near Ontario, Toronto, Canada in 1999, and The University of California in Berkeley, California in 2013. Additionally, he appeared on numerous radio and television programs in the United States, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom. He has also appeared on the NBC LX News in 2022 and the New York Times article 36 Hours in Charleston in its September 14, 2023 edition. He conducts a walking tour called “The Lost Stories of Black Charleston,” He has also received a citation form the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2022 for his work in education, historical research, and human rights, and the Key to the City to Spartanburg in 2001. He was also on three educational fact finding visits to Egypt, Ghana Senegal, Togo. and Gambia, West Africa, where he toured the Slave Port at Goree Island and lectured to a class of students at the University of The Gambia in Banjul.
His motto is The more you learn, the more you learn there is to learn.