A growing number of American colleges and universities, both large and small, have committed themselves to addressing the history and legacy of slavery on their campuses. Larger institutions with deeper pockets often receive more attention for this collective work. Consider, for example, the attention that institutions like Brown, Princeton, William & Mary, and the University of Virginia have received for their efforts to repair legacies of slavery by erecting new monuments to the enslaved.
The institutional members of the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) are typically smaller and less resourced than the public and private universities listed above. But CIC members have also been adding to the monumental landscape with memorials to the lives of enslaved people, brave abolitionists, and the Underground Railroad. Here are just a few examples (not a definitive list!). Please let us know about similar monuments on other CIC campuses with an email to legaciesproject@cic.edu.
Baylor University (Waco, TX)
In February 2023, Baylor University released the first renderings of a new “Monument to the Unknown Enslaved.” The limestone structure is meant to represent a portion of Baylor’s original campus in Independence, Texas, which was built largely by enslaved workers. The monument will have three separate components: honoring the unknown workers, acknowledging the gaps in Baylor’s institutional history, and reckoning with the institution’s slaveholding founder, Judge R.E.B. Baylor (1793-1874). An engraved map will feature images of slavery from the early years of the institution.
Brenau University (Gainesville, GA)
Jane DeDecker is a Colorado-based sculptor known especially for her bronze statues of notable women. Her statue on the campus of Brenau University (which was founded as a women’s college in 1878) depicts the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who is shown with a walking stick in one hand and the hand of small boy in the other, traveling a road to freedom. Erected in 1997, this was “the first instance of an institution, public or private, in the part of the United States once known as the Old South to honor Tubman in so visible a fashion.”
The inscription on the back reads: “Children if you are tired, keep going. If you’re hungry, keep going. If you’re scared, keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.” — Harriet Tubman
Hillsdale College (Hillsdale, MI)
Bruce Wolfe was commissioned by Hillsdale College in 2017 to create a seven-foot-tall, bronze and granite likeness of the famed abolitionist, Frederick Douglass. The statue commemorates Douglass’s visit to the campus in 1863, where he delivered an address on “Popular Error and Unpopular Truth.” The photo of Douglass above was the model for Wolfe’s statue.
The inscription on the front of the statue quotes from Douglass’s 1894 speech on “Blessings of Liberty and Education”: “Neither law, learning, nor religion, is addressed to any man’s color or race. Science, education, the Word of God, and all the virtues known among men, are recommended to us, not as races, but as men. We are not recommended to love or hate any particular variety of the human family more than any other. Not as Ethiopians; not as Caucasians; not as Mongolians; not as Afro-Americans, or Anglo-Americans, are we addressed, but as men. God and nature speak to our manhood, and to our manhood alone. Here all ideas of duty and moral obligation are predicated.”
Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH)
In 1977, an Oberlin College senior, Cameron Armstrong, constructed an environmental sculpture to commemorate Oberlin’s role as a major stop on the Underground Railroad. Railroad tracks burst from the ground, straining upward as a symbol of the extraordinary efforts of abolitionists and the enslaved people they helped escape to freedom. Designed as a class art project, Armstrong’s fellow graduates of the class of 1977 donated funds to allow the institution to preserve his work as a permanent installation.
Roanoke College (Salem, VA)
In 2021, Roanoke College announced that it would commission a campus “memorial to recognize and honor the role of enslaved people in the history of Roanoke College and greater Southwest Virginia.” In early 2023, the college received proposals from six artists, which are now under consideration. The memorial project is being led by Roanoke’s Center for Studying Structures of Race as part of a comprehensive plan to document the history and impact of slavery on the college and community. (Roanoke College is an Institutional Affiliate of the Legacies of American Slavery network.)
Scripps College (Claremont, CA)
Scripps College in Southern California also has a memorial to Harriet Tubman, sculpted by Scripps alumna Alison Saar. Harlem, New York, is home to a larger version of the statue, which depicts Tubman as “an unstoppable force of the Underground Railway.”