Legacies Links for February 17, 2025: Memory and Preservation

A photograph of Frederick Douglass in old age.
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895): abolitionist, author, and orator, pictured here in 1879. Douglass died 130 years ago this week. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Happy Presidents’ Day! A good time to remember that 12 U.S. presidents owned slaves at some point in their lives and that one president fought a war to free slaves. As always, we encourage you to share this post. A link does not necessarily imply agreement or endorsement by the Council of Independent Colleges.

Memory and Preservation:

  • Adam Mahoney, “A Black Family Now Owns the Site of America’s Largest Slave Revolt,” Capital B News (February 12, 2025): LINK. Jo and Joy Banner, who run the Descendants Project, have purchased the Woodland Plantation in LaPlace, Louisiana—where nearly 500 enslaved men and women fought for freedom in January 1811.
  • Brendan Kirby, “Highlighting overlooked history with Rhode Island Slave History Medallions,” WPRI (February 12, 2025): LINK. An interview with Charles Roberts, founder and executive director of the Rhode Island Slave History Medallion project. Roberts participated in a summer workshop and the final conference sponsored by the CIC Legacies initiative.
  • Michael Hemphill, “With Bedford County farm, slave owner’s descendant finds a chance to restore forest and help heal wounds from history,” Cardinal News (February 12, 2025): LINK. A white landowner in Virginia, descended from slaveholders, sees the “ecological degradation of his Bedford County farm [as] part and parcel with the human enslavement that once happened there as well.” He is working to repair both legacies.
  • Alexandria Russell, “Memory Crafters Preserve Black Women’s History,” Yes Magazine (February 10, 2025): LINK. Discusses the “evolution of African American women’s memorialization, or the process of commemoration. Its origins in the United States date back to the early 19th century, when free Black communities in the North organized festivals and parades to celebrate emancipation, promote abolitionism, and disseminate Black history.”
  • Kristin Braswell, “These Black neighborhoods shaped America. Here are their lasting legacies.” National Geographic (February 7, 2025): LINK. “Uncover the nearly erased, but not forgotten, histories of these Black communities and their testament to resilience, from New Orleans’ Treme to Wisconsin’s Bronzeville neighborhood.”

Other Links:

  • Rachel Hunter Himes, “Past and Future: The Art and Automatons of Kara Walker,” The Nation (March 2025): LINK. New artwork by Kara Walker, installed in the heart of Silicon Valley, features “eight Black automatons [that] invite us to reflect on the human and nonhuman histories of radicalized labor, offering a cryptic message about our own liberation.”
  • Matthew Wills, “Hoe History: Complex and Knotted,” JSTOR Daily (February 15, 2025): LINK. Wills argues that the plantation hoe has been ignored historically, but the unassuming farm implement was essential to the cultivation of tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton; it was the signature tool of enslaved Africans who worked on plantations.
  • Hannah Kliger, “The story of two Brooklyn sisters who forged a family of firsts,” CBS News (February 13, 2025): LINK. Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward (1847-1918) was the first Black woman to practice medicine in New York state, while her older sister Sarah Garnet (1831-1911) became the first Black female principal of a New York City public school. Dr. McKinney Steward’s great-granddaughter (Ellen Holly) also went on to become the nation’s first Black soap opera star.
  • Mia Lawson, “MLK Day Sees Move the Monument March,” The Megaphone (Southwestern University) (February 13, 2025): LINK. At CIC member institution Southwestern University (Georgetown, TX), faculty and students joined a “Move the Monument” protest on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to protest a Confederate statue at the local courthouse.
  • Quintessa Williams, “Ringing the Alarm for Civil Rights Data in Schools,” Word in Black (February 13, 2025): LINK. In 1968, the U.S. Department of Education launched the Civil Rights Data Collection, which was designed to track disparities in educational access. The data is now under threat of removal, which would hinder the enforcement of civil rights laws and limit the ability of local schools to address segregation.
  • Frank E. Crump, “Can Compassionate Lending Bridge the Racial Wealth Divide?” Nonprofit Quarterly (February 12, 2025): LINK. The head of a community-based nonprofit lender discusses how “redlining, subprime mortgages, and predatory lending…have helped perpetuate the racial wealth divide. One alternative is “community development financial institutions (CDFIs) [which] lend to underserved populations…. [But] I’m an advocate for something a little more ambitiouswhat I call compassionate lending—a strategy that combines a CDFI with an on-the-ground community or faith-based partner to achieve transformative community results.”
  • Ben Railton, “Considering History: Langston Hughes and the Patriotism of Black History Month,” The Saturday Evening Post (February 10, 2025): LINK. Using the works of the great Harlem Renaissance poet, Railton argues that Black history is a source of the most patriotic material in American history.