Uncovering Connections to Slavery on a Florida Campus

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Guest contributors: Claire Strom and Rachel Walton*

Two images of Rollins College, from 1901 and today
Rollins College (Winter Park, Florida) c. 1901 and today. Source: Rollins College (left image, right image).

The Locating Slavery’s Legacies database (LSLdb) has been developed by Sewanee: The University of the South as part of the Legacies of American Slavery initiative. The objective of the project is “to collect information about monuments and memorials linked to slavery, the Civil War, and the Confederacy on American college campuses.” LSLdb is an inter-institutional collaboration involving students and faculty members from nearly two dozen colleges and universities, including Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.

Rollins College (founded 1885) is the oldest college in the former Confederate state of Florida. Nonetheless, it stands out among the other institutions currently involved in the Locating Slavery’s Legacies database project thanks to a history of civil rights activism by high level administrators as early as the 1920s. 

Rollins’s eighth president, Hamilton Holt (1872–1951), was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and brought his ideas about racial diversity to campus when he became president in 1925. Hesitant to desegregate a college in the Deep South, Holt moved cautiously, but during his 24-year tenure at Rollins, the college staged a play by Zora Neale Hurston, awarded a Rollins Decoration of Honor to Susie Wesley (an African American housemaid at the college), and, in 1949, awarded an honorary doctorate in the humanities to Mary McLeod Bethune—the first such degree bestowed on an African American woman in the United States.

Given this history, when we embarked on the LSLdb project we assumed that most of our entries (perhaps with a few exceptions) would be on the side of the angels. Imagine our surprise, then, when one of our students, Liam King, uncovered the legacy of a memorial stone bench that was rededicated by the school in 2023!

A black-and-white photograph of two young women sitting on a decorative bench.
The coquina bench memorial on campus, prominently dedicated to Francis Philip Fatio (1724–1811), was installed in the early 1940s by the National Society of Colonial Dames and removed during a construction project in the 1980s. It was reinstalled in 2023.

The coquina bench memorial on our campus, prominently dedicated to Francis Philip Fatio (1724–1811), was installed in 1935 by the National Society of Colonial Dames and removed during a construction project in the 1980s. Betty Elmore Gilleland, a descendant of Fatio’s and friend of former Rollins president Rita Bornstein, advocated for its recovery; in 2023, it was reinstalled in a small courtyard. During a private ceremony with the head of Archives and Special Collections and the college president, Gilleland spoke about Fatio’s significant contribution to the early Florida environmental conservation movement. 

Indeed, the Swiss emigrant was very concerned about conserving the natural resource of his adopted home, especially the forests. He was also a large landowner in the province of East Florida (now the northeast portion of the state), with some plots of land over 10,000 acres in size. He made his money from plantation agriculture: i.e., enslaved labor. 

The bronze plaque reads: “Francis Philip Fatio (1724-1811), first advocate of conservation of Florida’s forests, and Lina L’Engle Barnett (1859-1934), a colonial dame who kept alive the doctrine of conservation in Florida and the ideals of her distinguished ancestor. Erected by the National Society, Colonial Dames of America in Florida, December 14, 1935.”

King was livid when he discovered Fatio’s history. He quickly lodged an official complaint with the college president’s office (undermining any chance of us keeping our work on the LSLdb project under the administration’s radar!). He also wrote to the student newspaper about the issue and set up a meeting with the Office of Campus Inclusion to talk about, in his words, “immediate steps that can be taken to rectify this injustice.” The college is in the process of determining the best next steps regarding the bench and the memorial plaque.

Despite some apprehension, we are unswervingly proud of King and his urgency to reckon with the past. His story shows the power of history, research, and archives to move institutions in the right direction. We need to encourage and empower our students to share the fruits of their research widely and openly without worrying about what it will mean for the college’s reputation. We need to foster, inform, be at the center of difficult discussions about the legacy of racism in our communities and bring that into our teaching and collections work.

*Claire Strom is professor of history and Rapetti-Trunzo Chair of the history department at Rollins College. Rachel Walton is an associate professor and the head of Library Digital Strategies and Scholarly Communication at Rollins College. The views expressed here are their own, not necessarily those of Rollins College or the Council of Independent Colleges.

This post was updated on 11/6/2024.