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Amani Kiruga

Dr. Horn

HONR 291

22 May 2021

UD and Enslavement, A Digital Library

Statement

The time has come for us to come to terms with the racially divided history that is the

heritage of UD. Specifically, there is an obligation to explore our historic and present-day

connection to enslavement, racial discrimination, segregation, and other kinds of racial injustice;

to make an account of the harmful legacy that was left behind that has affected many of our

community, especially the African American community. Whatever we discover will

undoubtedly inform our ongoing discussion on quelling remaining forms of racial oppression or

discrimination at UD today.

There are undoubtedly many ways to begin documenting the connection between the

enslaved or segregated African American community of the past and the University of Delaware.

I, however, propose for us to build a digital library that will combine and describe all the major

efforts that the University of Delaware as an institution, and its stakeholders, have and continue

to make in uncovering the historical connection the university has with the institution of

enslavement and ongoing institutional racism toward African Americans. In particular, the

library, hosted as a publicly facing website by the university, will contain a variety of both

historical and modern-day documents relating to racial injustice that is linked to the university.
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Importantly, the website will make available a pool of academic resources to both faculty and

students of the university who wish to contribute to the study of racial injustice. For example, all

historical primary sources of oppressed African Americans at the University of Delaware can be

digitized and hosted with permission on the library in its Stories section. Furthermore, any

significant studies conducted about enslavement or racial injustice at the university will be

compiled and featured there for the purpose of tracking the progress of our understanding of the

subject. Lastly, the digital library will act as a means of accountability for the university to the

public, in confronting its past and its connection with enslavement. This, in turn, will create the

opportunity for relevant and historically informed discourse that can lead to the formation of

actionable plans that address any remaining forms of racial injustice visible today at the

university.

Marked by its recent entrance into the Universities Studying Slavery (USS) Consortium,

the University of Delaware has become one of a number of institutions that are committed to

studying their historical ties to enslavement, segregation, and racism. In fact, there have been

multiple initiatives at the university that have tackled these questions including English courses

that have students learn and research enslavement, or the Anti-Racism initiative whose

subcommittee on the Legacies of Enslavement and Dispossession at UD has sought to further our

understanding of the role the university played in enslavement. Naturally, the different kinds of

work that are being completed in these separate initiatives are mutually exclusive from each

other. There is therefore much reason to explore overlapping research to make it a united effort.

The digital library offers the capabilities to accomplish this since it will be able to feature a
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compilation of all the existing research that is being done in the field of enslavement and racism

in relation to the university.

Indeed, such a website would not be the first of its kind to be made publicly available by

a university. The Princeton and Slavery Project hosted by Princeton University is a faculty and

student-run website that was created to explore “Princeton University’s historical ties to the

institution of slavery” (Sandweiss 1). The website currently features more than 360 primary

source documents and 80 interactive stories that are continually getting updated as new original

research is contributed. Admittedly, one of the more unique aspects of this project was that it

was originally created as part of an undergraduate research seminar and that it still remains to

this day to be run by the academic community under the auspice of Princeton University

Professor of History, Martha A. Sandweiss. This is tremendously advantageous as it gives

researchers more autonomy to research and present stories and narratives about enslavement and

racial injustice at Princeton, with a great emphasis on historical accuracy. The unfortunate reality,

however, is that historical accuracy reveals the university’s complacency and active involvement

in enslavement. Our digital library should also prioritize treating the subject matter of the

University of Delaware’s connection to enslavement with the same level of historical accuracy

and factual content.

There are several benefits to using the internet as a medium to present this information.

First and foremost, it signifies the developing and ever-changing nature of current-day research

into the institution of slavery and its legacy. This is because, in contrast to publishing books or

journals, the internet makes editing and adding new research an arguably organic process which

is essential for such a developing field of study like enslavement. In a similar fashion, the
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internet is also openly accessible to all members of the public and notably those who are

stakeholders of the university. These include but are not limited to students and their families,

alumni, faculty at the university as well as neighboring universities, and the larger community of

Delaware and the East Coast. It is worth mentioning that making readily available all ongoing

research and historical evidence to the public can also give the opportunity to raise additional

support for the particular research groups. This could be, for example, in form of research

funding. Lastly, the internet is also a very appealing medium in this day and age of technology

since it is convenient to be able to have access to so much important information from anywhere

around the world.

The digital library itself will have three different sections, namely, Research, Stories, and

News and Events. These sections are chosen in mind of the target audience of the digital library

which can be broadly categorized into two groups: the academic and non-academic audience.

Further, each section will also be designed for a specific purpose representing the different

connecting threads that piece together the larger narrative of enslavement. I believe that the most

important section will be the Research page which will house recent studies conducted by

students and faculty who may or may not be affiliated with the university. The focus of such

research would be on the legacy of racial discrimination and segregation left behind by the

University of Delaware. For example, a recent study into the names of buildings at the university

and their connection to racial division made by the Legacies of Enslavement and Dispossession

at UD research group is a relevant example of work that can be featured in the Research section.

The goal of such a page would be to inspire more researchers to study novel research areas that

work to better our understanding of enslavement. Moreover, it can also serve as a platform for
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healthy peer review by faculty and students to help to raise the bar of research as it relates to this

particular research field.

The Stories section, on the other hand, will contain both primary and secondary accounts

of the lives of African Americans or events in the relative past that are significant in telling the

story of racial injustice at the university. These would include first-hand accounts such as

memoirs, diaries excerpts, essays among other documents, and second-hand documents like

newspaper articles, biographies, among others. The incentive of having such a section is to be

able to include the vital and commonly lacking human element in academic discourse about the

institution of enslavement and racial injustice. It would serve to raise the awareness that

discrimination and racial segregation are not purely a thing of the past, but their legacy has

affected and continues to affect real people and real lives whose stories need to be heard. Finally,

it could also act as a compiled source of primary and secondary evidence that can be utilized by

researchers to support their research. This section can thus not only be used for historical

appreciation but also practically by the academic community.

Finally, the last section is News and Events which would be used to communicate

interventions like policy changes or building renamings that the University puts in place. It will

act as a medium of engagement for stakeholders to learn more about the university’s taken

actions to prevent racial discrimination which surely speak much louder than words.

Additionally, this section will allow for the African American community to be honored by

featuring events such as the Kwanzaa celebrations or showcasing creative projects such as plays

and different art forms that continually reinvent our approach to memorializing African

American history and culture. This is in response to a voiced concern about the general apathy
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expressed by the student population at the university toward celebrating and commemorating

African American culture. Such a page will allow the university to create a platform where it can

feature this rich culture to a global audience and combat cultural insensitivity. Thereby helping to

form cross-cultural awareness and relationships.

Although a digital library can be very valuable to all stakeholders at the university it can

also be easily exploited. For example, albeit the current development about the University of

Delaware joining the USS Consortium is a promising showcase of accountability and reflection

on the part of the university, the digital library can still be used to paint a false picture about

enslavement at UD that underplays the real damaging effects it had on the African American

community. Even more subtly, perhaps, is the danger of trivializing or abstracting away the real

state of racial injustice at the university by using language that has underlying rhetoric which

portrays the university in a certain light that is not historically accurate. Finally, given the nature

of academic resources, there may be a tendency to detach the commonly lacking human element

from the story making the content more focused on academic enrichment without regard for the

commemoration of the African American community. If this occurs, it would only serve to

undermine the focus of addressing today’s concerns of racial injustice that may be still present in

different forms at the university. Some ways to prevent such problems from occurring include

having, if at all possible, a committee composed of faculty, students, and even families of

alumni, oversee and approve what kind of content is published onto the website. Secondly, there

should be an emphasis on adopting a neutral tone in the language used on the website, especially

when explicitly detailing the connections of enslavement to the university. This will in turn help
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build trust between the university in addressing its racial legacy and the affected African

American community leading to meaningful, cross-cultural discourse.

Over this past semester, I have learned much more about the African American

community, its depiction in monuments and memorials, the hugely significant part it played in

the narrative of American history, and the struggles that it has had to endure, than I ever thought

I would. Admittedly, coming into the course I did not expect there would be such a rich story to

tell just by analyzing what was in my initial understanding a somewhat abstract art form:

monuments and memorials. Furthermore, my perspective has changed when considering the

importance of stakeholders to understanding what story the monument is portraying. On a more

fundamental level, I learned a great deal about the uses and types of monuments and memorials.

In particular, the idea behind counter memorials and monuments was at first confusing and quite

intriguing since they are monuments or memorials about other monuments or memorials. I now

understand the reasoning behind their creation as a means for a silent protest.

That said, by far the most intriguing aspect of the course was listening to the guest

lecturers. This was very well coordinated such that the theoretical aspects of the course were

shown to be applied through the work that the guest lecturers presented, or the varying fields that

they worked in. One of the guest lecturers who stood out to me was Dr. Phillip Troutman from

the George Washington University. He is not only extremely knowledgeable and passionate

about the study of enslavement and its ties to his university but is committed to uncovering the

truth in spite of the resistance he sometimes faced from the university’s administration. This is

very admirable and insightful about the nature of research in the particular field of uncovering

connections of enslavement and existing social structures.

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Specifically, what I learned is that the study of enslavement and racial discrimination

from an art history point of view is inextricably linked with society today; society’s views,

prejudices, and culture as well as numerous other factors. This means that research and analysis

do not only entail a thorough understanding of the artform or symbolism portrayed by

monuments but also understanding the stakeholders of the monuments. And sometimes, as in the

case of Dr. Troutman, it involves talking to people, navigating bureaucracy, or drawing a stroke

of luck! This idea becomes even more clear in my mind in light of some of the monuments that

we have analyzed as a class. For example, when studying iconoclasm, we discussed how

different groups of stakeholders had conflicting agendas pertaining to the highly contested King

George III monument resulting in its destruction and distribution of its parts in two or more

different spots across the globe.

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Works Cited

Morales, R. Isabela, Princeton & Slavery Project, slavery.princeton.edu. Accessed 23 May 2021.