Since 2002, the UNCW History Department has hosted an annual lecture series established to honor two life-long learners and friends of the department, Virginia and Derrick Sherman. Each year, a selection committee conducts a national competition to select the Sherman Emerging Scholar. The History Department hosts the Sherman Scholar on campus, during which time he or she visits UNCW classes, provides interviews to the local press, meets with faculty members, and presents a major lecture to which the entire Wilmington community is invited. The public lecture is followed the next day by a roundtable discussion of its themes featuring several eminent researchers. All lectures are published by the UNCW Publication Laboratory and distributed to UN Repository Libraries. In this year's Sherman Emerging Scholar Lecture, Dr. Anne Kerth will explore the Denmark Vesey Conspiracy in Charleston, South Carolina. In the summer of 1822, Charleston city officials claimed to have uncovered a planned revolt among enslaved and free Black Charlestonians, and arrests and executions soon followed. This talk will examine how the nature of urban slavery and Black labor in Charleston fostered an environment conducive to slave conspiracy. It will also explore the aftermath of the affair, focusing on the ways in which white Charlestonians maneuvered to mobilize the conspiracy to their own benefit. In doing so, the talk will offer a window into the complex racial and class politics of the antebellum American South, as well as into the productive and destructive power of secrecy. This event takes place via Zoom, please go to our website to register.