The following CIC member institutions serve as Regional Collaboration Partners—the coordinating hubs for a growing national network of other CIC members and community-based organizations. Each Partner focuses primarily on one or two legacy themes, while working closely with other institutions in its home region and across the country.
| partner | legacy Theme(s) |
|---|---|
| Austin College (Sherman, TX) | Racial Violence and Resistance |
| Centenary College of Louisiana (Shreveport, LA) and Huston-Tillotson University (Austin, TX), in partnership | Race, Health, and Medicine |
| Dillard University (New Orleans, LA) | Cultural Creativity |
| Lewis University (Romeoville, IL) | Race, Place, and Migration; also Mass Incarceration |
| Meredith College (Raleigh, NC) | Contested Citizenship; also Economic Disparities |
| Sewanee: The University of the South (Sewanee, TN) | Commemoration and Memory |
RACIAL VIOLENCE AND RESISTANCE
Histories of racial violence and resistance have too often been associated primarily, if not purely, with the Deep South, and that history has, as a result, been denied and suppressed elsewhere. Austin College has committed to take a leadership role in the Texoma region on the Legacies of American Slavery theme of Racial Violence and Resistance in order to highlight a past that has frequently been neglected or actively hidden. Located in Sherman, Texas, a city that is both home to the oldest Confederate monument in Texas and the site of a 1930 lynching and riot that destroyed the flourishing Black business district and sparked a series of other lynchings across the region, this region has also been home to the greatest concentration of Freedmen’s towns in the United States.
Austin College is working to shine a light on these complex and difficult histories by engaging their community and partner institutions in the challenging conversations that lead us toward reconciliation and understanding. They believe that this work is needed not just for highlighting the history of their region, but also to build toward widespread public recognition of the fact that this is a legacy that needs to be examined and discussed on a broad national level.
RACE, HEALTH, AND MEDICINE
The Mississippi Delta region is often cited as a landscape of poor health outcomes. During the past three decades, Louisiana has placed at or near-last in the United Health Foundation’s statewide rankings. From infant mortality to life expectancy, Blacks are disproportionately affected compared to their white counterparts. Centenary College has chosen to lead and investigate this Legacies of American Slavery theme of Race, Health, and Medicine in Louisiana.
Centenary College is looking to uncover the origins of pseudo-scientific attitudes and assumptions about the Black body that became the zeitgeist across Louisiana’s 300-year-long history of enslavement. They acknowledge that such knowledge was used to justify the cause of slavery and are actively working to develop methods that will better prepare their students to be patients, healthcare providers, and citizens. As an institution with strong pre-med and allied health programs, they are committed to improving healthcare outcomes for all African Americans.
In central Texas, I-35 bisects the capital city of Austin. Located east of the interstate, in one of the most overtly gentrified ZIP codes in the country and located in a once racially segregated sector, Huston-Tillotson University, a historically Black university, is dedicating its resources to conversations surrounding the health and wellness of African Americans in the central Texas region. Alongside fellow CIC partner, Centenary College, Huston-Tillotson University has chosen to explore the Legacies of American Slavery theme of Race, Health, and Medicine in order to understand and develop resources surrounding the compromised and layered deficiencies in environmental justice and social determinants of health.
CULTURAL CREATIVITY
Often, the material culture of African Americans is forgotten or in danger of erasure, especially as it intersects with a myriad of cultures who have benefited from slavery over three centuries. In New Orleans, Louisiana, Dillard University is at the center of conversations and histories surrounding cultural memory, traditions, and practices. With a central focus on food, music, and tourism, Dillard University, with its location in the heart of the city, has chosen to explore the Legacies of American Slavery theme of Cultural Creativity across the once largest city in the American South in the Antebellum era.
RACE, PLACE, AND MIGRATION & MASS INCARCERATION
Little attention has been paid to the histories and contemporary experiences of race, place, migration, mass incarceration and their intersections in smaller towns, cities, and suburbs. At Lewis University, located 35 miles southwest of Chicago, enduring legacies of enslavement are present in policies and practices that create and sustain racial exclusion through sundown towns, segregation, redlining, criminalization, and incarceration that disproportionally affect African American communities near and within the nation’s third largest city.
Lewis University has chosen to examine the Legacies of American Slavery theme of Race, Place, and Migration, with Mass Incarceration as a secondary theme of equal importance. Located within just five miles of two of the nation’s most notorious prison sites, Lewis University recognizes the important example of how small cities and suburban areas have long struggled with the racial injustices that continue to plague the nation.
CONTESTED CITIZENSHIP
In North Carolina, civic participation by African Americans has a long, enduring legacy. Meredith College, in Raleigh, North Carolina, has elected to address the Legacies of American Slavery theme of Contested Citizenship. Reflecting its tradition as a women’s college, Meredith has launched an oral history project to showcase and preserve the stories of politically active Black women and women of color. Meredith’s Political Institute draws on this history to encourage change in the present by providing Black women and women of color with the essential foundations for pursuing elected or appointed office successfully. Such an initiative is designed to help fulfill a vision of more equitable access to political power not just in North Carolina, but the nation as a whole.
COMMEMORATION AND MEMORY
Institutions in the South have long been challenged to reckon with their racist histories and other public monuments in support of the Lost Cause ideology. Sewanee: The University of the South has chosen to publicly reckon with the ways its campuses commemorate and remember slavery, the Civil War, emancipation, and segregation. Sewanee has committed to a critical examination of less visible but no less influential repositories of memory that have reinforced structures of white supremacy. They have chosen to explore the Legacies of American Slavery theme of Commemoration and Memory and are developing multiple projects and programming that involve student research, curricular innovation, collaboration with surrounding communities, and intercollegiate partnership.