The College of William & Mary recently announced the formation of a panel to study how the college’s history is tangled with African-American history. This announcement follows a resolution the college adopted last spring, acknowledging it owned slaves and exploited slave labor from 1693 until the Civil War and discriminated against African-Americans during the Jim Crow era.
The college also plans to preserve and make accessible the papers of Maggie Walker (first African-American woman to charter a bank) and organize a lecture series, conferences, courses and oral history projects related to this study. The Lemon Project Committee, named after a slave the college owned in the early 1700s, will also examine race relations.
William & Mary deserves praise for making this step — a move the vast majority of colleges should follow. I hope the uncovered data is incorporated fully into the college’s history. Also, I think each member of the William & Mary community should learn this history.
But this will only be a few small steps on the road to retribution — if that is the college’s purpose with the resolution and the research committee.
