Overview of Reparation Efforts on College Campuses

Truth and reconciliation as well as reparation efforts have emerged as a way to atone for
universities’ participation in slavery. The legacy of slavery is deeply embedded in the roots of
many universities in multi-faceted ways. As universities are uncovering the depths of their
history, they are simultaneously tasked with understanding the moral implications of how they
use this knowledge and move forward.

Most colleges founded before the civil war relied heavily on the slave economy to fund their
universities. One example is that Georgetown University and Maryland Jesuits sold 272 men,
women, and children to a plantation in Louisiana for roughly $115,000 or $3.3 million today,
which saved their university from bankruptcy. Further, other universities used slave labor to
actually build their campuses. Additionally, there is ample evidence that slaves were often
present on early college campuses, such as Harvard, The College of New Jersey, University
North Carolina, and Washington and Lee University. Slaves served university presidents, other
personnel, and students, who often harassed or tortured them (https://time.com/4492871/slavery-
history-college-campuses/).

Racial reparations became a focal conversation in the United States after Ta-Nehisi Coates
published his essay, The Case for Reparations. In his essay, Coates argues that America’s
economic prosperity is tied to its history of racism, including slavery. The economic prosperity
has been systematically granted to white Americans while disadvantaging African Americans
through slavery and other racist practices like redlining. Therefore, America must rectify this
history through reparations, primarily in the form of financial compensation. In a panel with the
presidents of Harvard and Georgetown University regarding racial reparations on college
campuses, Coates highlighted the permanence of this legacy and the urgency to address it in
higher education through a financial commitment to those who have been harmed
(https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/09/universities-history-slavery/502310/).

Many universities have already begun a journey of reparations. In 2003, Brown University
became the first university to publicly acknowledge this history. The university created a
Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, which documented the history of the university
founders’ engagement with slavery and offered action plans for reparations, such as scholarship
funds and orientation programs committed to acknowledging their history. However, Brown
University failed to offer an institutional apology or commit to a plan for reparations
(https://www.chronicle.com/article/Brown-U-Documents-Ties-to/33318). Georgetown
University was another institution that publicly committed to atonement and reparations. They
founded the Georgetown Memory Project to locate the ancestors of the slaves who were sold by
the university. After these people were identified, Georgetown excluded the descendants from
participating on the official Working Group on Slavery. These efforts have been heavily
criticized as they were largely unsatisfactory to the communities who were impacted or
illegitimate as those communities’ voices were excluded from the conversations about
reparations.

After public outcry about these attempts at reparations, slavery scholars have agreed upon
several key components of that represent best practices in these efforts: independence, inclusion,
transparency, coordination, proportionality, and justice (https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-
Universities-Can-Respond/245517).

Georgetown University has since taken further action to rectify their history with input from the
descendants, such as building a campus research center dedicated to studying slavery and its
legacy, collaborating with the descendant community to a create a memorial, giving descendants
of the enslaved people legacy status for admission, and adding a symbolic $27.20 fee for
students to fund these efforts. Another example of reparation efforts is the University of Virginia
where they are working to acknowledge their history. Their efforts include creating a walking
tour of slavery on campus, building a prominent stone memorial to recognize the enslaved
people who helped build their campus, and running a week-long summer camp about the history
of slavery (https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/09/04/shackled-legacy).

Truth and reconciliation efforts are imperative for universities to atone and rectify their active
engagement in slavery and other racist practices. These efforts must move beyond shallow
efforts such as changing names of buildings on campus or simply publishing histories to
acknowledge the past to more meaningful and transformative efforts that seek to rectify the harm
done by their active engagement in slavery. These efforts will undoubtedly take a lot of time and
resources, but it is important for universities to prioritize as if they aim to prepare students to be
ethical participants in society, the institutions must also model ethical practices themselves.