In Honoring Enslaved Laborers, Colleges Seek to Blunt the Force of Their Pro-Slavery Icons

Images courtesy of Höweler+Yoon

The University of Virginia was founded, conceived, and designed by Thomas Jefferson. But he didn’t build it.

Virginia’s Board of Visitors unanimously approved plans this month for a memorial recognizing the enslaved people who built a university their children and grandchildren would not be allowed to attend.

Marcus Martin, vice president of the university and chief officer for diversity, helped choose a location for what some on campus are calling the Freedom Ring. They wanted it to be hard to miss: a palatial spot that students and visitors will pass as they attend football games, tour the campus, or celebrate graduations.

They settled on a grassy triangle right behind the university’s iconic rotunda.

This spot, at the head of Jefferson’s “academical village,” places the memorial in the midst of a university designed by a slave owner — purposeful representation of slavery’s role on the campus.

Slavery and Academe

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The memorial is the University of Virginia’s answer to the question many other colleges face: How should an academic institution reconcile its physical ties to slavery or the Confederacy with the desire to become a welcoming campus?

Administrators at some campuses have chosen to remove controversial monuments outright. The University of Virginia decided to endorse adding context to the campus’s symbolic celebration — through the addition of the new monument.

“We have not been removing statues here at the University of Virginia,” Mr. Martin said. “We’re actually placing in context that history from a deeper perspective that is more inclusive — a history that was perhaps scrubbed and whitewashed. It was kept out of people’s minds; it’s right in the forefront now.”

How successful a memorial to enslaved people is in changing a campus depends on the conversation each one sparks, said Kirk Savage, a University of Pittsburgh professor of the history of art and architecture. “The question in the end is what’s going to happen next?” Mr. Savage said. “What will be the outcome? Is it going to lead to any genuine discussion and grappling in the community? Ultimately, it should lead to change.”

At many universities, memorials hold positions of prominence in the landscape of the campus. Mr. Savage said the centrality of these symbols creates a larger narrative about the institution and what it values.

The University of Virginia’s narrative is dominated by Thomas Jefferson — his name, his statue, and his very architecture; it is a formidable symbolism for the memorial to enslaved laborers to overcome.

“What I can see happening is — even though it has this central location — it’s still fighting against this huge, dominant interpretation of the landscape,” Mr. Savage said. “To what extent can this slavery memorial meaningfully disrupt that larger narrative?”

The purpose of monuments has changed in society, Mr. Savage said. Whereas they were once used to primarily honor heroes, they are now also used to memorialize victims of trauma or hardship.

The memorial to enslaved laborers doesn’t fit into either category. They should not be considered as only victims or heroes, Mr. Savage said, but as people. “It’s about recognizing the lives of these people who had been invisible in history and bringing them into the public sphere. The whole point of slavery was to make them invisible.”

Mr. Martin said understanding the legacies of Thomas Jefferson and slavery on a campus like the University of Virginia is a matter of honesty. “I don’t think we’ll ever have a complete balance related to that history, but all we can do is continue to bring it forward,” he said. “We’re bringing out the full and honest history.”

Where Bygones Aren’t Gone

The University of Virginia isn’t the first university to erect memorials to enslaved laborers. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the push to recognize the contributions of enslaved people on the campus came from the students.

The graduating class of 2002 voted to make its senior class gift a memorial honoring the “Unsung Founders” of the university. The monument was approved by then-chancellor James Moeser.

“I love the fact that Carolina students had the idea to do this,” Mr. Moeser said. “They were very sensitive to the fact that slaves who couldn’t attend this university — who couldn’t even walk on the campus except as servants — built it. They wanted to honor their labor.”

The memorial stands in sight of Silent Sam, a statue of a Confederate soldier. It has been a controversial figure on the North Carolina campus for years; Mr. Moeser said the “historic part of the campus is dominated by a monument to the Sons of the Confederacy.”

The memorial has not stopped students from protesting the Confederate statue. Some students say the 20-foot-tall statue “overshadows” the memorial for enslaved people, which is designed as a table where students and visitors can sit between classes.

Mr. Moeser said “Unsung Founders” was designed to be interactive, to draw students to it, and to encourage conversation about slavery and its influence on the campus.

He said he spoke to the sculptor years ago, and the intent was “the table would be used in a very utilitarian way.”

Mr. Moeser said there is a current effort on campus to further contextualize the university’s historic McCorkle Place, the area where “Unsung Founders” and Silent Sam stand.

McCorkle Place is the second contextualization project of the Chancellor’s Task Force on UNC-Chapel Hill History, just behind the 2015 renaming of what was previously Saunders Hall, which honored a Ku Klux Klan leader. Because it is still early in the McCorkle project, there are as yet no definitive plans for Silent Sam.

Some universities have removed their Confederate iconography — like the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Louisville, whose statues were moved to a museum and a public park, respectively.

Alfred Brophy, a professor of law at the University of North Carolina, said universities should understand why a monument was erected, who had a say in its construction, and what contribution it brings to a campus before considering its removal.

“When universities are at our best, we get people to ask questions and think about and promote and disseminate ideas,” Mr. Brophy said. “What is so important is this continuing discussion about the past and its connection to the present.”

Symbolic Conversation

Charles Ross believes you don’t need a statue to have these conversations.

“You don’t have to walk by swastikas every day to understand what took place in Nazi Germany,” said Mr. Ross, director of African-American studies and a professor of history at the University of Mississippi.

A Confederate statue stands at the front doors of Ole Miss. When the administration placed a plaque at the foot of the statue in 2016, many people protested the language.

Mr. Ross, a member of the context committee charged with writing the plaque, said had it been possible, he would have preferred to remove the statue altogether. “That never really was an option given to us by the administration,” he said. “The monument should be moved. With what is taking place in many areas around the country, having a statue that was erected at a time when African-Americans were not full citizens in this society is very problematic.”

The plaque, placed below eye level, doesn’t offset the statue’s intentionally intimidating nature, he said.

“These monuments, they’re not two or three feet high,” Mr. Ross said. “In a lot of ways, you’re having to physically look up and digest the size and immenseness of it. It’s a psychological component. How is it supposed to make you feel?”

At the University of Virginia, removing Jefferson’s statue has never been part of the plan, but Mr. Savage said there is no right answer to fit all universities.

Some communities need more drastic measures than others. It’s possible, Mr. Savage said, for any path to recognizing a university’s past to succeed or fail in creating a meaningful dialogue between its constituents.

“Whatever action is taken should spark a dialogue about the issue and some kind of public reckoning about the issue,” Mr. Savage said. “However we get there.”