CIC’s multiyear Legacies of American Slavery: Reckoning with the Past initiative culminated with a national conference on September 19–21, 2024, in Memphis, Tennessee. The Legacies initiative was designed to help independent colleges, their students, and their communities grapple with the history, afterlives, and continuing effects of American slavery. The conference was an opportunity to reflect on important work that has been accomplished already while exploring the unfinished work that independent colleges still must do to reckon with and repair the legacies of slavery.
The in-person conference was by invitation only. However, three of the most exciting sessions were streamed live. Recordings of these sessions are available below.
Session 1: “The Unsteady Legacies of American Slavery”
Thursday, September 19, 2024
What is a legacy of slavery? How did we — not just the organizers of the CIC Legacies initiative but the nation as a whole — conceive the various legacies of slavery back in 2018-19? How do we think about them now, after five eventful years? How do we reckon with daunting issues of memory, history, and inequality?
- David Blight, Sterling Professor of History and Director, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University; Pulitzer-prize winning biographer of Frederick Douglass
- Jamelle Bouie, Columnist, New York Times
- Christy S. Coleman, Executive Director, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation
Session 2: “The Work of Reckoning and Repair”
Saturday, September 21, 2024
Any reckoning with the legacies of slavery must entail issues of repair and perhaps restitution. But what does that mean in practice? This session considers issues of public policy (including monetary reparations by cities and states), religious and ethical perspectives, the voices of descendant communities, and the work of both large universities and small colleges to move beyond reckoning to repair.
- Cynthia Copeland, Public Historian and Co-chair, Reparations Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of New York
- Andre Perry, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
- Yolanda Pierce, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair and Professor of Religion and Literature, Vanderbilt Divinity School
- Richard Cellini, Founding Director, Georgetown Memory Project; 10 Million Names Project; Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program
Session 3: “The Distinctive Role of Independent Colleges in Reckoning with Slavery”
Saturday, September 21, 2024
What strengths and constraints do smaller private colleges bring to the work of reckoning with slavery, as individual institutions or in combination with others? How can (or should) independent colleges support honest research and teaching about the history of slavery and the continuing impact of slavery on American life? How can (or should) they engage their communities on these issues, even in the face of public resistance? How should they acknowledge their own institutional legacies, as sites of enslaved labor or racial struggle?
- Marjorie Hass, President, Council of Independent Colleges
- Elizabeth Davis, President, Furman University
- Cheryl Moore-Thomas, Provost, Loyola University Maryland
- Brandi Simpson Miller, Assistant Professor of History and Assistant Director, Lane Center for Social and Racial Equity, Wesleyan College (GA)
For more information about the virtual conference sessions or any other aspect of the Legacies initiative, contact Philip M. Katz at pkatz@cic.edu.
The Independent Colleges and the Legacies of Slavery conference was organized by the Council of Independent Colleges in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. We are grateful for generous support from the Mellon Foundation.
