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Introduction to Studying Slavery at Athens State University
In 2020, Athens State University joined Universities Studying Slavery (USS), an international consortium of learning institutions that are "all committed to research, acknowledgment, education, and atonement regarding institutional ties to the slave trade, to enslavement on campus or abroad, and to enduring racism in school history and practice".
Slavery, specifically, the chattel slavery system used in the United States, enabled schools, such as ours, to flourish. Chattel slavery was a "racialized system" that defined millions of Black people as property, "left the enslaved individual with no ability to refuse as they were forcibly sold or transferred," and "provided much of the foundation of generational wealth upon which America was built...".
The University Archives is dedicated to USS's goals and has begun its research into Athens State's institutional ties with slavery. We have created this guide to share our research findings with the public.
As we continue to study, share, and preserve this information, we will also seek ways to put this research into meaningful action.
This research guide contains 3 sections: 1) Slaveholding: Presidents, 2) Slaveholding: Board of Trustees, 3) Early Black Workers at Athens State.
Our research guide's style and format was heavily influenced by The Citadel's Slavery and Universities Libguide.
Impetus for This Research: or, Answers for "So What?" and "Who Cares?"
Essay by Amber P. Skantz, MA, MLIS, Assistant Archivist, Athens State University
10 July, 2024
American philanthropist David M. Rubenstein remarked upon the importance of building out the slave quarters at Monticello and Montpelier. Rubenstein felt it was key to highlight that while these were brilliant men, leaders of our country, they were not without fault. “We should learn the good and bad of American history with the theory of, If we learn the bad, maybe we can not do it again.”(1)
Why should universities study slavery?
Most institutions of higher learning in the United States and around the globe have a legacy that includes connections to the practice of chattel slavery. Buildings, campus grounds, human labor, and financial resources used in the operation of colleges and universities founded anywhere from 1619 to the emancipation proclamation may have connections with the enslavement, capture, and forced labor of individuals of African descent. These relationships are particularly troublesome and potentially traumatic for universities in n the American South, where symbolism and memorial practices may continue to unintentionally perpetuate a harmful legacy. Many institutions had been doing this work for years, but during the summer of 2020 even more joined in as a response to growing civil unrest. Athens State joined Universities Studying Slavery consortium in May 2020. The official University Press release from May 2020 is included in this Research Guide, as are links to the Universities Studying Slavery consortium page and other consortium institutions.
Why should Athens State study slavery?
In short, Athens State should study slavery because slavery happened at, in, and around the university.
Athens State, like most institutions of higher learning in the United States and abroad, has numerous and multifaceted ties to the practice of chattel slavery. Athens State has three specific reasons to study its institutional relationship to the practice of slavery. First, based on United States Census documents, it is verified that several presidents of the institution enslaved persons of African descent and profited from their forced labor. (3) Athens State is not unusual in this respect. Second, it is verified in legal documents available to the public in the Limestone County Archive that the land itself and the funds used in founding the original institution were donated by a family who participated in and profited from the enslavement and forced labor of persons of African descent.(4) Third, in a university yearbook from the early 1900s, a student interviewed a well-known campus domestic worker who is described as “the last of the old negro slaves” (2). As an institution, Athens State should work to honor the legacy of this worker who was brave enough to share her story with students so that others could learn from her. These are not the only three reasons for an institution to interrogate its connection, or even its complicity, in harmful practice, but these are cause enough to begin.
Why should the University Archive study slavery?
In short, the University Archive investigates, collects, preserves, and makes available material related to the university and those that it serves. This includes the institution’s relationship to the chattel slavery system.
Aside from the archivists’ professional ethical obligation to amplify the records of the oppressed, the University Archive should study slavery in the ways that any archivist for any institution would work to document an economic system in which the institution operated, such systems inevitably impact the records both valued and created by that institution. This is what archives and historians describe as context.
University Archives do not just investigate, collect, study, preserve, and make accessible the the financial, political or legal records created, but also seemingly mundane records created by an institution as it performs its function. These records also exist within the context of the chattel slavery economic system. This means that slavery’s impact can be likely contextualized among papers and manuscripts, the artifacts which are acquired, the terms and language in which persons, places and things are described, and ultimately the stories which are told. Preserving historically important documents requires understanding the context within which those documents were created. Archivists and librarians are committed to not only preserving these documents, but also making them accessible for researchers.
Enslavement and forced labor of persons of African descent were common practice at the time of our founding and for several decades later. As with any archival material related to the university and its institutional practices, we should investigate, collect, preserve, and make available these materials. Our earliest presidents and trustees were participants in the system of chattel slavery. As the university archive does with materials related to presidents and trustees and their relationship to the university, the archive should investigate, collect, preserve, and make available these materials as well.
Why should the university or the university archive talk, publish, or post about it?
For a university, it becomes important to look at who makes up the student body, who makes up the faculty and staff, who makes up the administration. Not only what they look like, but also what records are selected to do the speaking for those in the past. Is it only the voice of administration that we hear in the records, or do we hear from students? Do we hear from faculty? Which ones, just the men or the men and women? What groups do students create for themselves? Is there a sense of community?
When an institution reflects upon past practices, it can become better situated to serve prospective students, faculty, staff, and investors or donors particularly if it works to address historic wrongs. Reflection and honesty about past shortcomings can create goodwill and trust among current students, faculty, staff, and donors as well as the surrounding community.
At Athens State in particular, investigation into the legacy left by slavery and acknowledgement of its participation in harmful practice can repair relationships with communities of descendants that still exist. It is not an exaggeration to state that there are descendants who work alongside the spirits of their ancestors on this campus, nor is it an exaggeration to state that there are some in the community who have been irrevocably harmed by the university’s failure to even acknowledge basic facts about the institutional relationship to slavery. It would be naïve to believe that a message of acknowledgement -much less one of reconciliation-would not be met with vitriol from oppositional parties, but as an institution of higher learning committed to Enlightenment principles, we must do this work.
To return to Rubenstein's earlier thought, we must not shy away from the ugly parts of history. We must learn from them. In order to fully celebrate how far we --as an individual, as Americans, or as employees and representatives of an institution of higher learning--have come, we must reflect openly about our past. We (as individuals or as institutions) owe this honesty to the memory of those individuals who were harmed by our actions or failures to act, just as we owe this transparency to those that may be further harmed by silence. If we do not authentically tell our own story, history has proven time and again that someone else will tell it for us.
