Dr. Otis Pickett

Dr. Otis W. Pickett is currently serving as the third University Historian at Clemson and is the first alumni of Clemson University to serve in this capacity in the institution’s history. He is an affiliated scholar in the Clemson Department of History and a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning with Clemson’s College of Education. Dr. Pickett was born in Charleston, SC and grew up in Mt. Pleasant and Sullivan’s Island where he loved studying and reading about American Revolutionary history. He attended Clemson University and earned a B.A. in History in 2003. Pickett then attended Covenant Seminary earning a M.A. in Theological Studies in 2006. Pickett then attended both the College of Charleston and The Citadel for his M.A. in History and graduated in 2008 after serving for two years as a graduate assistant at the Avery Center for African American History and Culture. In his time at the College of Charleston, Pickett was also one of the founders of the Graduate Student government and served as the first President of the Graduate Student Body from 2007-2008. Pickett went on to earn a Ph.D. in History at the University of Mississippi in Oxford where he studied with Dr. Charles Reagan Wilson and wrote about the history of southern religion and the cross-section of race, ecclesiastical polity and the lost cause from 1840-1877. Dr. Pickett then served as Clinical Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Mississippi (Tupelo) and later accepted a position as Assistant Professor of History and Director of Social Studies Education Programming at Mississippi College. Dr. Pickett earned tenure and promotion at Mississippi College in 2018. In his time in Mississippi, Dr. Pickett worked closely with Dr. Stuart Rockoff and the Mississippi Humanities Council in co-founding Mississippi’s first higher education in prison initiative in 2014. He and his co-founder (Dr. Patrick Alexander) taught course at Parchman and Central Mississippi Correctional Facility to incarcerated learners who earned tuition free college credit from the University of Mississippi and Mississippi College. The Mississippi Humanities Council is a significant partner in this program and in 2018 named the Prison to College Pipeline Program “Educators of the Year” for the Mississippi Humanities Council. Dr. Pickett also served in the MHC’s speaker series and gave lectures across the state of Mississippi on the history of mass incarceration and on the history of the state flag of Mississippi. Finally, Pickett is very happy to be back home in South Carolina and lives in Clemson with his wife Julie Thome Pickett of Aiken, South Carolina, his three children, Martha Jane, Otis, Jr. and Thomas and with his four-year-old Border Collie/Poodle mix, Marcel Ledbetter Pickett. Otis Pickett serves on the Grants and Program Committee of the SC Humanities Board.