Thomas Erskine Clarke is a Professor Emeritus of American Religious History at Columbia Theological Seminary,[1][2] best known for his books Dwelling Place (Yale, 2005) and By the Rivers of Water (Basic, 2013).
The focus of the “downstairs” story is on the family of Lizzy Jones, who helped create a remarkable African–American community and struggled in a variety of ways against the deep oppression of slavery.
Clarke's book By the Rivers of Water (2013, Basic) is the story of a remarkable Southern couple who freed in the 1830s their inherited slaves and helped them settle in the African American colony at Cape Palmas, Liberia.
His book, Western Africa, was a careful and appreciative study of West African cultures and societies that sought to refute the claims of a rising scientific racism.
The Dallas Morning News called the book an "Engrossing, elegantly written history...a memorable book" and the Library Journal, Starred Review, said it is “Brimming with insights about interconnected individuals, peoples, and societies struggling with conscience and dignity to make moral choices amid clashing, if not collapsing, worlds, this work is required reading for anyone interested in a sympathetic understanding of early U.S. missionaries in West Africa, the perils of the U.S. colonization movement, Civil War tensions, or Atlantic world connections.”