This is a partial timeline of activities supported by CIC’s Legacies of American Slavery initiative. The timeline does not include many of the campus-based or regional activities undertaken by the Regional Collaboration Partners, Institutional Affiliates, other CIC member institutions, or community-based organizations that were part of the extended Legacies network.
For additional details about the work of the Regional Collaboration Partners, including reflections from the key team members at each institution, visit this series of posts:
October 2019
CIC Receives Funding
CIC receives a grant from the Mellon Foundation to develop “a national initiative that will explore, deepen public understanding of, and seek to address the legacies of slavery and their impact on American life and culture.”
Spring 2020
Call for Applicants
CIC opens applications for member colleges and universities to become Regional Collaboration Partners (“Partners”). The selection process is delayed by the covid-19 pandemic.
August–October 2020
Selection of Regional Collaboration Partners
CIC and the Gilder Lehrman Center (GLC) host a series of online workshops with project teams from prospective Partners. Seven Partners and 12 Institutional Affiliates are announced in December 2020. Several prominent scholars were invited to participate in the workshops, including Carol Anderson (Emory University), Christy Coleman (Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation), and William Sturkey (UNC–Chapel Hill).
2021
Program Planning
The Regional Collaboration Partners develop institutional and regional programming. CIC and the GLC support this work with a series of virtual workshops featuring national experts on the history and afterlives of American slavery, including Leslie Harris (Northwestern University), Daniel HoSang (Yale University), Rhondda Robinson Thomas (Clemson University), Fitz Brundage (UNC–Chapel Hill), and Gretchen Long (Williams College).
May/August 2021
Austin College Pilots Pedagogy Workshop on “Race and Resistance”
The 2021 workshop is open to faculty members at Austin College who are “interested in revising or creating courses” that reckon with local history. Subsequent workshops in 2022, 2023, and 2024 are open to faculty members from other colleges and universities in the region, with an additional workshop for local K–12 teachers in spring 2024.
October 12, 2021
Huston-Tillotson University Hosts Annual Building Green Justice Forum
The theme of this year’s Forum is “Repair, Regeneration, and Reparations,” which reflects HTU’s focus on race, health, and medicine as part of the Legacies network.
February 22, 2022
Dillard University’s Virtual Lecture Series Comes with a Playlist!
As part of an ongoing series of livestreamed lectures and recorded documentaries devoted to the cultural legacies of slavery, Dillard offers a conversation between Zella Palmer and DJ Lynnée Denise that includes a curated playlist of 101 songs tracing the legacies of slavery in music.
April 5–7, 2022
National Virtual Symposium
CIC hosts a virtual symposium on the Legacies of Slavery: Past, Present & Future. The opening panel features three leading scholars of race and slavery in the public culture of the United States: historians David Blight (Yale University) and Edward Ayers (president emeritus of the University of Richmond) and legal scholar Elizabeth Hinton (Yale Law School). Other sessions highlight the work of the Regional Collaboration Partners. The closing session explores the challenge of teaching about slavery and race relations in the face of public resistance, with featured speakers Kevin Gannon (Grand View University) and Sonya Douglass Horsford (Teachers College, Columbia University).
June 19–23, 2022
Faculty Seminar at Yale University
Seventeen faculty members from CIC member institutions gather at Yale University in New Haven, CT, for an intensive seminar on the legacies of slavery. The seminar is designed primarily for faculty members whose training and research have not focused on slavery and its legacies, but who want to engage these topics more thoughtfully in the classroom. Participants were selected through a competitive application process and represented a range of academic disciplines from history and religion to biology. Several faculty members conduct individual research in the Yale libraries following the seminar.
July 31–August 5, 2022
Public History Institute
Representatives from the seven Regional Collaboration Partners and representatives from some of their community-based partners gather at Yale University to “explore the deep connections between past and present as interpreted in public spaces.” The goal of the Institute: to bring “together academic and community members … [to] learn from each other about effective strategies for sustaining public interpretations of local histories rooted in the legacies of the enslavement.” The Institute is directed by noted public historian Cynthia Copeland and includes a field trip to the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan (with a personal tour of the memorial site by architect Rodney Leon, pictured above).
August 2022
Launch of the Legacies of American Slavery Blog and Resource Database
The new blog includes weekly digests of news items and resources related to the legacies of slavery; video clips of scholars and public intellectuals; updates on recent and forthcoming events; commissioned reflections on the afterlives of slavery; and a database of resources. The database is designed to highlight the efforts of CIC member institutions to reckon with the legacies of slavery and includes searchable links to curricular materials, research publications, archives, digital exhibitions, podcasts, and other forms of student and public engagement.
Fall 2022
Centenary College Develops a Walking Tour and Exhibit about Healthcare and Race
In preparation for a regional conference in November, faculty members, students, and the college archivist at Centenary College of Louisiana develop a walking tour and exhibit devoted to “pioneering Black health care practitioners in Shreveport.” Subsequent versions of the tour will be offered to Centenary students and to medical students and staff from Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport.
September 2022
Partners Host Regional Conferences
- Meredith College (September 9–10, 2022): Voices of Change: Contested Citizenship (watch the keynote address)
- Austin College (September 23–24, 2022): Confronting Racial Violence and Resistance (image above)
October 2022
Partners Host Regional Conferences
- Sewanee: University of the South (October 6–8, 2022): Memory Works: A Symposium on Remembering and Reckoning with Slavery’s Legacies
- Lewis University (October 21–22, 2022): Confines of Place: The Intersections of Race, Place, Migration and Mass Incarceration as Legacies of American Slavery
- Dillard University (October 28–29): Rising from the Depths of Slavery: Legacies of Cultural Expression
November 2022
Partners Host Regional Conferences
- Centenary College of Louisiana and Huston-Tillotson University (November 11–12, 2022): Legacies of American Slavery and Resistance: Race, Health, and Medicine
2022–2023
Centenary College Launches a Teaching Circle
Starting this academic year, Centenary College of Louisiana hosts a monthly (virtual) Race and Medicine Teaching Circle for faculty members at Centenary and other colleges in the region and beyond.
2022–2024
Lewis University Collaborates with Rebirth of Sound at Stateville Prison
A research team from Lewis collaborates with The Rebirth of Sound—a local arts organization supported by Chicago rapper/actor Common—and incarcerated men at Stateville Correctional Center to develop a video documentary and an oral history/interview-based research project relating to their experiences of mass incarceration. The prison is closed by state authorities in October 2024.
April 6–7, 2023
Sewanee Workshop at the Atlanta History Center
The Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation at Sewanee: The University of the South hosts Monumental Opportunities: A Teach-In Event Introducing the Locating Slavery’s Legacies Database at the Atlanta History Center. This is the formal launch of the Locating Slavery’s Legacies database, a digital humanities project and online repository designed to help faculty members, archivists, and students investigate and share information about memorials on their respective campuses—in particular, memorials that were built to support (or occasionally refute) the Confederacy and the “Lost Cause.” The opening session of the workshop features a public conversation between David Blight and former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey.
May–June 2023
Annual “Voices of Change” Political Institute at Meredith College
This program, supported by the Legacies grant from 2021–2024, was “designed to give women of color the knowledge and skills necessary to seek political office [despite historic barriers].” Participants in the 2023 Institute included college students from across North Carolina.
June 18–22, 2023
Faculty Seminar at Yale University
Faculty members from 20 CIC member institutions join David Blight and a series of guest speakers for an intensive research- and teaching-focused seminar. Guest speakers include Yale scholars Daniel HoSang, Carolyn Roberts, and James Forman, Jr. (who discussed crime, race, and mass incarceration).
July 30–August 4, 2023
Public History Institute
Teams from seven colleges and universities gather for a Public History Institute focusing on public interpretation(s) of American slavery and the legacies of slavery, with the goal of supporting public-facing projects in each community. Each team includes two campus representatives (usually a faculty member or administrator and a librarian) plus a representative from a community-based nonprofit organization. Participating institutions were selected through a competitive process and brought to the Institute specific projects to engage their campus and community members. The Institute is directed again by public historian Cynthia Copeland.
October 2023
Locating Slavery’s Legacies Database Opens to the Public
Sewanee: The University of the South launches the public-facing website of the Locating Slavery’s Legacies Database (LSLdb). The project has grown from a pilot phase of eight participating colleges to 17 public and private institutions across the South.
August 2024
Black History Murals Unveiled in Sherman, TX
A series of six murals depicting significant moments and figures in local black history is unveiled at the Sherman Public Library. Faculty members and students from Austin College “provided the foundational history and context for this project” and installation of the murals was supported by funds from Austin’s Legacies grant.
September 2024
Meredith College Oral History Archive Opens to the Public
Faculty and students from Meredith College began to collect oral histories from pioneering Black female politicians and activists in the summer of 2021 as part of the “Voices of Change” project. By 2024, the initiative had expanded to included research teams from six other CIC member institutions: Guilford College, Johnson C. Smith University, and Shaw University in North Carolina; Tuskegee University in Alabama; Benedict College in South Carolina; and Flagler College in Florida.
September 19–21, 2024
Closing National Conference
As the culmination of the Legacies initiative, CIC hosts a conference on Independent Colleges and the Legacies of Slavery at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN. Participants include representatives from the Regional Collaboration Partners, faculty and administrators from other CIC member institutions, leaders of community-based organizations, public intellectuals, and leaders in the national conversation about reparations for slavery. A short video snapshot of the conference, a copy of the program, and recordings of three sessions that were also livestreamed are available.