This past spring, Georgetown University students voted overwhelmingly to pay an annual $27.50 fee that would go into a fund to support the descendants of slaves once owned by the university. But now the university has decided not to impose a student fee and will raise an equivalent amount from donations.
After graduating in 1843, Bibb went on to become one of the first African American woman teachers on the continent. She opened several schools for Black children during a 23-year teaching career in Canada. The university will rename a residence hall in her honor.
Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey benefited from the slave economy, both through investments in Southern banks in the mid-19th century and from donors who profited from slavery. It is now taking several steps to repent for its past history.
The Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center in St. Augustine, Florida, is showcasing a new exhibit of the photographs of Richard Twine, showing life in the city’s African-American neighborhood of Lincolnville about a century ago.
The book explores the gradual advancement of Black people at the university along with information about the first undergraduate African-American students in residence, who arrived in 1967. Author Jacquelyn McLendon also tracks the history of African Americans among the faculty and administration.
Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has undertaken a major initiative to examine its ties to slavery. It recently established a website – The Slavery, Race and Memory Project – where it will present the results of research into the university’s past ties to slavery.
A half century ago, a group of Black students occupied Willard Straight Hall on the campus of Cornell University. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the protest, Cornell will place a permanent plaque on the building.
In October 1969, 14 Black students at the University of Wyoming were thrown off the university’s football team. Now 50 years later, the University of Wyoming has issued a formal apology to the 14 players. Only 11 are still alive.
The papers span over 40 years of Henderson’s career in higher education. The donation represents the largest gift by an African-American scholar, educator, and activist to the university’s archives.
Protestors have called on the University of Virginia to change the name of the Alderman Library. It is named after Edward Alderman, president of the university from 1905 to 1931. Alderman was a proponent of eugenics and White supremacy.
Income from the endowment fund for reparations will be put to use in a variety of ways, from encouraging more African American clergy in the Episcopal Church to directly serving the needs of any descendants of the enslaved Africans who worked at the seminary.
Now, like many of its peer institutions that had ties to the institution of slavery, the College of Charleston in South Carolina has begun to more fully examine its history. A documentary film with the title If These Walls Could Talk, is in production and is scheduled for release in the spring.
The new map highlights how Chicago’s Black residents were at risk of being victimized across much wider swaths of city than previously known.
In 1970, John Calvin Berry became the first African American faculty member at the university when he was named an instructor of student teaching. He retired from the university in 1985 as an associate professor of educational leadership and research.
The archive contains footage from the library of KTLA-TV in Los Angeles. It includes unedited news segments, never-before-seen footage, and news stories not seen publicly since originally broadcast.
William Marsh Rice was an oil and cotton tycoon, who when he died was said to be the richest man in Texas. He left the bulk of his estate to establish the Rice Institute for Literature. His will stipulated that only White students were allowed to enroll. The “Whites-only” policy remained in effect until 1965.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg has recently launched a new website that summarizes the findings and analysis of a group of students who researched the historical archives of a group of newspapers to examine African Americans’ sentiments towards Independence Day over the years.
At its peak, the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo was one of the largest and most influential West African states. It was established in roughly the 13th century, and is best known for its cavalries that would patrol the forested savannas and capture people to be sold to slave traders.
The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, was established to identify, acquire, preserve, record, and catalogue gospel music. Now the project is branching out to find and preserve recorded sermons of Black preachers.
In 1860, the ship Clotilda is believed to be the last vessel to import slaves into the United States, more than 50 years after the international slave trade had been abolished.
The Obama Foundation has selected the Columbia Center for Oral History Research to produce the official oral history of Barack Obama’s presidency. The University of Hawai’i and the University of Chicago will also serve as contributing partners for the project.
The university will change the name of James C. Furman Hall. The building is named after the university’s first president who was a slave owner and a strong opponent of abolition. The board of trustees also agreed to erect a statue on campus honoring the university’s first Black undergraduate student.
A local deliveryman and beverage distributor, Isiah Rice also was an amateur photographer who used small cameras to take pictures of everyday life in Asheville’s African American community during the post-World War II era.
Many of the nannies depicted in these images are anonymous. The backs of the photos often bear the child’s name, but not the caregivers. Most of the information about the relationship between these nannies and their charges comes from the White family’s perspective.
The Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln recently debuted an online database of more than 500 court cases in which enslaved persons had sued to gain their freedom.
Professor James E. Jones, a 1956 alumnus, joined the law school faculty in 1969, making him the first African-American faculty member. Professor Jones died in 2014.
The winning concept resembles a brick fireplace where the community can gather to honor the work of the enslaved, many of whom worked at a similar hearth.
The collection features the historic contributions of African-Americans to motion pictures, performing arts, music, radio, and television broadcasting in the United States between 1865 and 1970.
The acquired items that will make up the Elias B. McDaniel (Bo Diddley) Collection include musical instruments, stage costumes, posters, photographs, documents, and memorabilia.
The student body at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., overwhelmingly approval a measure that will add $27.20 to their tuiition bills each semester. The fee will be used to create a fund that will benefit the descendants of the 272 people who were enslaved by the university.
A group of faculty and students from Princeton Theological Seminary were a part of a colonization movement that aimed to send freed slaves back to Africa because they believed the former slaves could not co-exist with Whites.
The website houses detailed information on the slave trade from the 16th century to the 19th century The research team updated the site by adding 11,400 records on slave voyages within the Americas.
Amanda Gibson, a Ph.D student at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, has recently complied evidence that traces today’s predatory financial practices to economic victimization of free and enslaved African-Americans in the pre-emancipation South.
The marker’s establishment was part of the Lemon Project, a long-term research initiative at the college that seeks to explore the university’s involvement in slavery and segregation and its continued relationship with the African-American community.
The university learned last year that the property had previously been used as a burial ground. In response, the institution issued two sequences of field testing, which has recently conclusively confirmed the presence of graves.
A recently graduated master’s degree student and archivist at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has recently launched a website that highlights the contributions that Black communities in Arkansas made to the World War I effort.
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