Though the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice was expected to submit its report to President Ruth Simmons this spring, it is unclear when the report will be submitted or whether it will be released publicly before summer. In this, the fourth in a series on the committee and its work, The Herald examines the role of undergraduates in examining Brown's historical connections to slavery.
Colin Brown '08 spent most of last summer perusing hundreds of 18th-century business documents in the John Carter Brown Library, trying to find a connection between the business firm of Brown, Benson and Ives and the Atlantic slave trade. Nicholas Brown Jr., the University's namesake, was one of the firm's partners.
"It was a great process because I looked at documents that were hundreds of years old, documents that only a few pairs of eyes have seen," Brown said. Though he did not find any evidence that the firm was involved with the slave trade, Brown said looking at business records from the slave trade "definitely made my heart beat a little faster."
Brown is one of several students who have researched the University's relationship with slavery since the formation of the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice in 2003. When the committee's work was being outlined three years ago, student involvement was a high priority for the University, said James Campbell, chair of the committee and associate professor of history.
"The chief inspiration for including students came from (President) Ruth Simmons herself," Campbell said. "I can't speak for Ruth Simmons, but I imagine one of her motivations might have been her belief that we weren't adequately teaching students how to engage in rigorous and reasonable ways with extremely sensitive and controversial issues."
Students contributed research to the committee through a variety of methods, including Undergraduate Teaching and Research Assistantships, theses and classes. Two students are also currently on the committee: Seth Magaziner '06 and Vanessa Huang '06.
Magaziner said students were included because the University wanted a "full range of views." He added that being on the committee has forced him to challenge his own views about Brown's history and slavery. "I changed my mind at least a dozen times," Magaziner said.
Approaching the University's pastOne way the University has promoted student research on slavery is through the Group Research Project developed two years ago by Campbell and Seth Rockman, an assistant professor of history. The GRP's participants met as a seminar in the fall semester of each of the last two years, with students conducting independent research in the spring. The student group also meets with speakers brought in by the committee. Though the project is not formally connected with the slavery and justice committee, some of the research generated by the GRP will be used in the final report, Campbell said.
In the first year of the GRP, the students spent a lot of time "soul-searching" as to how the University could make sense of its ties to slavery, Rockman said. At the end of the year, the students in the GRP issued a series of recommendations to the committee in a 20-page report.
Campbell said though the recommendations given by the GRP have no binding effect on the committee, its members did read and deliberate over the recommendations.
Though the report was not originally part of the GRP, the students felt they could not justify their research on slavery without offering some concrete ways Brown could rectify its past, said GRP participant Sean Siperstein '05.
"We had something to say and we were going to bring it together and say it," he said.
The report called for increased representation of both black students and faculty at the University, a lecture series that would focus on issues of race and historical injustice and a public memorial to acknowledge the University's connection with slavery.
Delving into the historyJeremy Chase '06 said he decided to apply to join the Group Research Project because he was interested in working again with Rockman, whose first-year seminar HI 97 sec. 8: "Slavery and Historical Memory in the United States" he had taken two years before. "(Rockman's course) really shaped my course of study at Brown," Chase said.
Chase's research focused on the tenure of Francis Wayland, who was president of the University from 1827 to 1855, "right when the abolition movement was getting started," he said.
During that period, the University was geographically diverse, with one quarter of the student population coming from the Deep South. The presence of so many students from slaveholding states made slavery a prominent issue on campus. "There was constantly a debate on campus about what was going on," Chase said.
Other students, such as current GRP member Sara Damiano '08, are looking at the history of slavery in Rhode Island more broadly. Damiano's research explores a 1789 Rhode Island court case concerning a runaway slave who escaped a Virginia plantation and boarded a ship he thought would take him to fight for the British during the Revolutionary War. Instead, the ship's owner sold him to a Newport slaveholder. The slave ran away again, and then sued his former master in Newport for wages and mistreatment. The courts freed the slave but did not grant him any financial compensation.
Damiano said she stumbled across the case, looking for an "early reparations case" that would reveal the nature of slavery in New England. "It deals with different issues - reparations, slavery, race ... what the rights of free blacks were at that time," Damiano said.
She added that she hopes to create a Web site for high school students explaining the case and its context in Rhode Island history.
While Damiano's research kept her in Rhode Island, Siperstein traveled to Mississippi as part of the GRP to research the legacy of the civil rights movement. Siperstein was particularly interested in how crimes committed during the civil rights movement are addressed today.
In Mississippi, the group compiled oral histories from people who lived through the civil rights movement. They also met with members of the Philadelphia Coalition, an organization that spearheaded the 2005 legal campaign to convict Edgar Killen for the 1964 murder of three civil rights activists.
Opening up the discussionStudents who have researched the University's relationship said they don't see slavery as a campus-wide issue yet, but their research has allowed them to open up the issue to some other students.
"When I tell people I am involved in the project, a lot of people have questions about the slavery and justice committee," Damiano said.
Student research also provides a "critical perspective" for the committee as a whole to take into account, Siperstein said. He added that University discussion about slavery should be a "continual process, not just something Brown does for a couple of years" and that student involvement is key in ensuring that continuity.
Faculty and students say the real impact of the research will be felt when the committee releases its final report. Regardless of its conclusion, students involved so far agree the report will inevitably spark debate on campus.
"We hope this will not be the end of a conversation but the beginning of one," Campbell said.
