Okay. Great. So I think we're about at time, so I'm going to get us started here. Thanks, everybody for coming out. Good afternoon. My name is Dale Norwood. I'm an associate professor in the History Department, and I've been co teaching, along with my colleague, Professor Lar Helton, this seminar that you're hearing presentations from today, Hori. I have the privilege, obviously introducing the presentations today. Before we begin, I just want to cover some important logistical notes. This program is being recorded, and it will be sent to all registrants and later made available on UD space Morris Library's digital repository. That's in keeping with some of these presentations that we've done on these topics as before. Most of our program today will be student presentations, we will be saving the last 15 to 20 minutes or so for a Q&A session. We ask that you keep yourself muted throughout. If you have questions, please submit them using the Q&A feature, which should be at the bottom of your screen. Professor Helton and I will be monitoring the channel, and we will try to get as many questions in as we can at the end of the session. Before we get too far down the road here, I want to offer a special thanks to the Cast events team, pardon me, Kelly Ook Lauren Gilligan, and Joe Dombrowski, for organizing registration and handling the technical side of things. If anyone fils up, it's on us, their excellent tech side of things. As a first step in this presentation, we would like to offer a land acknowledgment. The University of Delaware occupies lands vital to the web of life for Lenny Lenape and Mantico who share their ancestry, history, and future in this region. UD has financially benefited from this regional occupation, as well as from indigenous territories that were expropriated through the United States land grant system. European colonizers and later the United States forced Nanticoke and Lenny Lenape Westward and Northward, where they formed nations in present day, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario, Canada. Others never left their homelands or returned from Exile when they could. We express our appreciation for ongoing indigenous stewardship of the ecologies and traditions of this region. While the while the harms to indigenous people and their homlands are beyond repair, we commit to building right relationships going forward by collaborating with tribal leadership on actionable institutional steps. So I'd like to introduce today's presentations today, which were created by students in history 460, a course named Race and Inequality in Delaware. That was a course first developed by the UD anti racism Initiative to investigate the history of racial inequalities in Delaware and the experiences of Black and Indigenous communities at large in the state. While that course can vary by specific topics semester by semester. For this edition, as in a prior edition that Professor Helton and I taught in 2021, we chose to focus the course on the era in which the University of Delaware was born as an institution. That is the era of slavery and emancipation, the early Republican antebellum period. We understand this work as part of a broader institutional commitment that UD has made. The University of Delaware is a member of the University studying Slavery consortium, a UVA based group of over 100 educational institutions that share best practices as they engage in truth telling projects that address past injustices and their ramifications, topics that official histories are usually silent on. Chronologically, this class has focused on the Antebellum Period, the decades before the US Civil War. Now, this was a critical period in National, but also in the university's history. 18 34 marks the formal founding of the chartered institutional body that became the University of Delaware. At its moment of incorporation, the school was known as New Art College, but that was soon changed to Delaware College, the name that we'll use to refer to for simplicity's sake, and what follows. F its origins, Delaware College was an all white all male institution with strong ties to the Presbyterian Church. Though legally distinct from New York Academy, the College shared trustees, faculty and students with that secondary school. The Antebellum Period, Delaware College was a small, struggling institution, short of funds and often short of students. The College closed its doors in 18 59 before gaining a new lease on life a decade later with federal land grant funds. For the purposes of this course, we were most interested in that early period between its founding and its first collapse. In keeping with similar projects at other universities, we did not examine the college or its community in isolation. We were as much concerned with happenings in Newark and the surrounding region as we were with what went on in college classrooms, we were particularly interested in investigating the college's relationship to neighboring African American communities. As it remains today, Delaware then was a border state, neither fully Southern nor fully Northern. But border doesn't mean halfway when it comes to slavery. Contrary to what many still believe. In Antebel Delaware, slavery was a living institution, critical to local and state politics, and deeply embedded in its economic life. That was true all over the state and Newark was no exception. Understanding how Delaware College was historically entangled with slavery requires challenging conventional wisdom. The idea that unfreedom was rare in Northern Delaware or that UD had no direct ties to slavery are not supported by the plentiful and publicly available sources. The 2021 edition of this class was focused on asking whether and what kinds of ties to slavery there were. We found many. Take, for example, the trustees identified in this 18 37 catalog for Delaware College. They comprised the typical mix of wealthy elites that the school sought to attract as overseers and patrons, businessmen, ministers, educators, doctors, and politicians, drawn from Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The majority of them, 18, highlighted here out of 28, were also slavers. One or more enslaved people are claimed on their census returns or identifiable as property in their probate files. Though it may come as a surprise to some today, it was no secret in this period that slavery was important to Delaware College. In fact, this accounting of the 18 37 trustees really only scratches the surface. If we counted men who benefited from slavery in less direct or obvious ways, then we would likely approach 100% trustee involvement in investment rather in human bondage. That's in part because in Delaware. There was a wide variety there a wide variety in kind of unfreedom. Some trustees held human beings as chattel slaves. Others manumitted their human property, but continued to hold them to a term of unpaid service, a practice known as term slavery. You'll hear that again later on. Others use the Apprentice system to bind Black children to servitude, and A trustees benefited from Delaware's vastly unequal laws, which limited the economic, civil and political rights of African Americans. Now, that is not to say that these trustees or by extension, the college, were simply men of their time. There was widespread opposition to slavery in this era among Black Americans, of course, but also among many White Americans, too, in Delaware, as elsewhere. But that's all a bit of background. I'll now pass things to my colleague, Professor Helton to frame this semester's work. Thank you. In this fall semester, this seminar, we built on the early findings of that first group of students three years ago, but we also went further. If slavery was unquestionably a part of life in, in Newark and at Delaware College, as we have found that it was, and in Northern Delaware more broadly? We wanted to know how did that system work for individuals, for families, and for the college. How is it bound up in other intellectual, legal and political structures in the state and region? How did slavery leave a mark on the campus and the town today, in the built environment, in the commemoration of building names and in our neighborhoods? How can we learn more about and honor the lives of those who were held in bondage on the land or in the buildings that are a part of UDs campus today? To that end, today you're going to hear presentations that discuss the highlighted buildings that are highlighted in red on this Newark and campus map. Some of the presentations are going to touch on the people behind the names found on campus buildings today, including Clayton Hall and the Russell Residents Complex. Other presentations will delve into the history of historic buildings or historic properties owned by the university now, including John Evans House, Elliott Hall, Alumni Hall, and others. We have not exhaustively researched buildings and building names on campus. That was not the totality of our work this semester, but we have begun to uncover histories that are not chronicled in UDs public facing information. To give you an outline of what you're about to hear, we're going to have five research presentations today, concluding with the students remarks on what they think this research calls for in action. Due to time constraints, not every student in the class will be speaking today. Rather they have used their individual research projects, which they've been working on all semester as a basis upon which to develop group presentations that will proceed through these topics. There's a representative for each group who's going to present. We're going to begin with a presentation on law and colonization, giving you an overview of the complexity of slavery in Delaware. It'll give you the legal political and political context around race and slavery in the state and the influence of several key state leaders who had deep ties to Delaware College. We're then going to hear a presentation on buildings and labor that focuses on how prominent New Workers familial wealth relied on unfree labor and how that wealth made the physical structures that compose today's campus. We're then going to hear presentation on wealth and the educational system in Newark, which will discuss how local white elites shaped the educational landscape for white students in Newark through three institutions, Delaware College, the Newark Academy, and the Newark Female Seminary. You'll hear how those institutions were premised on the exclusion of students. There will then be a presentation that focuses on campus life on the president's faculty and students at Delaware College in this period and looks at how these figures on campus were shaped by and helped to shape the policies and discourse around race and slavery in the state. Then going to hear a presentation on the Free Black community on New London Road that that looks at how the local Free Black community founded its own educational institutions while helping to build and maintain Delaware College and the resources that it took to build the infrastructure for Free Black life in Newark. Finally, in a conclusion, you'll hear what the students have put together as a call to action with recommendations about how the institution might grapple with the history that you're going to hear today in our own present moment. As Professor Morwod said, at the end, there will be time for Q&A, please submit your questions using the Q&A function, which is available at the bottom of your screen. And before we begin, I want to give several thanks to people who have enabled the work that we have all done together, the semester. First, we want to give our thanks to some of the previous historical research that paved the way for our work, including by local genealogist and historian Syl Wolford. We really could not do the research we're doing now without the research that he's been doing for many years. We also want to thank the Evans and Loper Family Descendant Group for sharing their family histories and research with us, especially Mattie Armstrong Price, Denise Haman, and Crystal Haman Sims. For supporting this class at UD, we want to thank the Department of History, the Department of English, Anthropology, Africana Studies, and Geography, the UD Faculty Senate Committee on Cultural Activities and Public events, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Material Culture Studies, the UD anti racism Initiative. The special collections staff at Morris Library and the staff of the UD University Archives. Thank you all so much for supporting this student research. With no further ado, I'm going to hand it off to our first student presenter Mariana Grill. Hello. As Professor Helton said, my name is Mariana. I am a master's student in history, and I am presenting on behalf of Braden Moore, Min Hershorn, and myself. The history of the search for freedom for African Americans in Delaware is one of the most enigmatic episodes in the Americas. When the Civil War broke out in 18 61, Delaware, a border slave state, refused to join the Confederacy and fought with the Union, even though a few Southern citizens deserted and joined the Confederate Army. However, Delaware also refused to ratify the 13th Amendment when it became law in 18 65. Ultimately, holding out until 1901 to approve it alongside the 14th and 15th Amendments. These were already the law of the land in 1901, but Delaware's insistence on denying their approval reveals this deeper relationship with the institution of slavery and the withholding of the rights of African Americans. Though Southern Delaware was home to the most enslaved people and strongest opposition to abolition, slavers throughout the state, maintain the institution until its end. In addition to free labor, the maintaining of legal slavery also helped facilitate the exclusion of free African Americans from Delaware's political life and preserve the state as a government of white men for the benefit of white men. In order to understand how Delaware's white elite embody the state's complex relationship with freedom and slavery, we will use John Clayton, Willard Hall, and fillet Gilbert as case studies. The White elite of Delaware often held positions of power at Delaware College, at the same time that they advanced the cause of slavery and white supremacy. Lawmakers such as John Clayton and Willard Hall were trustees of the early Delaware College, but also worked to preserve the practice of slavery in state and national law. Even those who pose limited criticisms of slavery, such as Delaware College President Alif Gilbert, often collaborated with enslavers and sought to end enslavement as a means of creating a racially pure sight. We will start by analyzing how John Clayton and Willard Hall shaped state policies regarding freedom and slavery. John Middleton Claytor, Clayton was a high profile lawyer, senator and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Delaware. The Claytons were a well known family with many of them serving as in Delaware's government and courts. John Clayton's political career began with his election to the Delaware State legislature in 18 24, and he was subsequently Secretary of State. His life of public service ended with his death in 18 56 during his fourth term in the US Senate. Looking at the cases he judged, we can get a deeper understanding of his thoughts and actions regarding slavery. One of his most interesting cases, the 18 38 case of Isaac Tyndall versus Daniel Hudson is about whether or not a free Black man can sell his own son into slavery. While declaring that free Black people couldn't own slaves and fathers couldn't enslave their children, his argument reflected Delaware's precarious position as a border state. He tried to maintain slavery's legal structure while acknowledging certain moral boundaries. Most revealing is how Clayton tried to reconcile slavery's brute brutality with human relationships. He prioritized paternal bonds over master slave relationships, ruling that father child ties were unbreakable. Yet he still defends slavery's broader existence. These intellectual gymnastics of trying to impose moral limits on an inherently immoral system mirrors Delaware's own ambivalence as a state straddling the Mason Dixon line. Neither fully embracing nor rejecting his laboring. Several other cases involving free and enslaved black Delawarians adjudicated while Clayton sat as chief justice, and they follow a similar pattern to the Tyndall case. Repeatedly, Clayton deployed convoluted logic to find freedom for specific individuals, while still upholding slavery as a system. His arguments read almost as if he is trying to convince himself of the system's moral rightness. Moving on to Willard Hall, Willard Hall was a prominent power broker in the State of Delaware. Another typical example of the States white elite. Originally from Massachusetts, Hall immigrated to Delaware in his early 20s, quickly climbing the social and power letter and becoming a shaper of the state's policies. Hall served as Secretary of the State of Delaware, was elected to Congress, was a member of the State Senate, and was judge of the United States District Court for 48 years. One of the criminal cases that came before Hall in 18 45 was of Harm Gray, who was sued for aiding and transportation of slaves from the coast of Africa. Gray was not a smuggler, but had stowed a brick ship to alleged smugglers in Brazil. Since the ship was formerly the property of a womenson merchant, the federal government charged Gray, who testified not knowing the purposes of the buyers when selling the boat. The jury believed him and found him not guilty. In 18 48, another trial presided by Hall concerned the role of two Delaware abolitionists, Thomas Garrett and John Hunt in assisting a Black family to escape from slavery. Samuel Hawkins, a free Black man, was married to Emen an enslaved woman, and their children were also enslaved. Hawkins had repeatedly asked to purchase their freedom, but was refused. In this way, the Hawkins family began their journey to freedom, stopping at John Hunt's house in Middletown, Delaware, a stop in the underground railroad. They were captured by a band of slave catchers and sent to jail in New Castle, but were released. With that, John Hunt contacted Thomas Garrett, who transported the Hawkins to freedom at the Pennsylvania border. Their enslavers sued John Hunt and Thomas Garrett, and the case was heard in a jury trial before Chief Justice Tony and Judge Hall. Due to being the senior judge, Tony was given the charge to the jury. He was a Maryland enslaver known for being the justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision of 18 57, which supported the rights of enslavers to keep enslaved individuals even in free US territories. The jury found Han and Garrett guilty and find them $2,500 and $5,400 respectively. The trial showcases how Hall had a role in deciding how freedom seekers and the people aiding them were legally treated in Delaware. Even though he was not the primary judge in the case, he was an authority in this controversial decision. Next, we will discuss the connections between Presbyterianism, the Wilmington Union Colonization Society and Delaware College, using a case studies, Elifla Gilbert, and once again, Willer Hall. Originally from Lebanon, New York, Reverend Aft Wheeler Gilbert moved to Delaware after graduating from Princeton Seminary in 18 17. He served as pastor of the second Presbyterian Church in Wilmington before becoming the first resident of Delaware College in 18 34, overseeing his first year of operations. He will resign from his post in 18 35 over the use of lotteries to fund the school, which conflicted with his Presbyterian beliefs. The other trustees of Delaware College eventually altered the lottery system to make peace with Gilbert, who returned to re establish firm presbyterian control of the College in 18 40. New School Presbyterianism was the theological school of thought to which Gilbert belonged. It was only vaguely anti slavery and not anti racist. Though Gilbert and other prominent Newcastle Presbyterians condemned slavery on moral grounds. They were not advocates of equal rights for Black Americans. This led them to frequently compromise on their supposedly anti slavery beliefs in their running of Delaware College. For example, among the board members who returned alongside Gilbert was Arnold Nadine, who was an enslaver. Gilbert and Willer Hall were among the new Castle Presbyterians involved in the Wilmington Union colonization Society, a local chapter of the American colonization Society. The society was founded by Presbyterian in 18 16, and the organization was an association of white citizens who defended the emancipation of enslaved people and their forced relocation to the African continent. Therefore, Gilbert, Hall, and others fashion themselves as anti slavery mainly as a pretext for colonization. This in turn would prevent race mixing and help achieve a pure white society. A quote from Robert Porter, another society member, demonstrates this belief that amalgamation, meaning race mixing, would demoralized society. Also deeply involved in the Presbyterian Church. Hall was an advocate for public education and was one of the key architects of Delaware College alongside Alif Gilbert. He was appointed chairman of the Board of Trustees first meeting and was also part of the committee that wrote the first by laws of the College. He also resigned from his position in 185 due to the lottery initiative. He was also heavily involved in the Wilmington Union colonization Society. According to a society document, Hall is cited stating that I am opposed to slavery Utter. I never held but two persons that could be called slaves. Each of these was entitled to freedom at the age of 21 years. It is now many years since I held any of them, I consider slavery a bane. The Philosophy of the colonization Society and Hall's showcase his position against slavery and pro emancipation, and simultaneous resistance to the idea of free Black people as citizens of the Republic, thus advocating for their removal from the country and relocation to Africa. By stating those three figures, we concluded that many early leaders of Delaware College were also personally involved in the maintenance of legal slavery in Delaware. Others voiced limited criticism of slavery, but were thoroughly entrenched in anti black institutions that upheld white supremacy throughout the state and sought to promote it throughout the nation. The main link between these three men was Delaware College, an institution that reflected their values and policies, specifically when it came to slavery and reaping its benefits. Our classmates, Lana and Caroline, will delve into the buildings and labor of Delaware College in the following presentation. I will now pass this on to my colleague, Caroline Elaine, whose group who will discuss how prominent workers familial wealth relied on unfree labor. They will also share some of the stories of those enslaved in the buildings and or areas that compose today's campus. Hi, everyone. My name is Caroline Elaine. I'm presenting on behalf of myself and my colleague Lana Swindle. The University of Delaware has established itself as a public institution committed to providing quality education and serving its community. Is campus has been recognized as picturesque with historic buildings prominent parts of campus. Students learn in, live in, and walk by these buildings daily. A quick visit to the University's website will provide the history of many of these buildings. Our research has shown, however, that many of these sites were home to wealthy families that benefited significantly from enslavement, even keeping enslaved people on the property now owned by the university. These families shaped the Town of Newark from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, while little attention is given to those they enslaved and how their labor shapes Newark as well. The presentation will visit the origins of two buildings on campus, Elliot Hall and Russell Complex to counter these incomplete histories of these buildings and provide glimpses into the lives of those enslaved in Newark in the late 18th and 19th centuries, their names, fates, and how they lived under unfreedom. We will start with Elliot Hall, which has been branded the oldest surviving building in Newark. It is on the National Registry of Historic Buildings along with the Old College District. Currently, it serves as the Center for Global Programs and Services for UD. Acquired by the University in 1915, the building has an extensive history before UD. Built in 17 65, it was the private home of the MacBeath Family from its purchase in the 1770s through its sale to the building's namesake John L Elliott in the 1850s. Be family was wealthy and owned land throughout the area, including what is now Klondike Kates, a plantation in Cecil County, and buildings in Philadelphia. Alexander and his wife, Katherine were early supporters of Newark Academy, sending their son John as a student, and housing John's Academy friends and their residents. The McBeeh family also sold the land where Old College was built to Newark Academy in 18 32, which makes a significant part of uti's Main Street building directly connected to the McBaths. The rules and probates of Alexander and his son John Mc Beth detail the names, approximate ages, and potential fates of those they enslaved. In Delaware, many enslavers chose to free free those they enslaved after the revolutionary war. While many factors contributed to this, it was primarily an economic decision, as Delaware's economy switched from tobacco to wheat, a less labor intensive crop. However, it was extremely rare for an enslaved person to be immediately freed. Often enslavers would use what has been called delayed manuion or term slavery, where an enslaved person would be freed after a pnumunt of time determined by their enslaver. They could be bought and sold during this term period and re enslaved for life if they behaved against the wishes of their enslavers. This type of delayed manumission complicates the idea of freedom in Delaware and points to a complex economic and political motivation as enslavers had been manumitting those they held in bondage. Alexander's will of 18 oh seven utilizes this loophole, manumitting foreig enslaved people through delayed manumission. Their names were Anthony, Sam, Joe, and Amy. He dictated that one older woman, Jenny, remained enslaved to be well taken care of until her death, pointing to a sentiment of paternalism over enslaved people held by enslavers. Alexander's will also highlights the control exerted over enslaved people even after the death of their enslavers and even in the seemingly positive process of manumission. The cruelty of his will is also shown in a court petition brought years after Alexander's death. Anthony, whose manumission was delayed in Alexander's will, had been purchased by another man. Anthony sought freedom before the end of his delayed manumission and was successful for three years until he was recaptured. His enslaver petitioned Anthony's delayed manumission be annulled and for Anthony to be re enslaved for life. The petition was granted and no other records of Anthony's life exist. The 18 16 probate of Alexander Macbeth's son John Macbeth also provides the first names of those he enslaved and their estimated financial value. Probates dealt with the property of the deceits, including debts and assets. John's listed all his valuable items and those indebted to him. Those enslaved who were named in the probate were Charles, Nathan, Michael, Jenny, Maria, and Thomas, in addition to three enslaved children named Perry, Harriet and Evelyn, who was just 3-years-old at the time. Their inclusion in John's probate reinforces the idea of enslaved people as property and objects and that enslavers were entitled to an enslaved person's financial value and labor. By 1810, the majority of white families in Delaware were not enslavers and that were enslaved two or three people at most. The fact that John enslaved at least nine people at the time of his death means he was well outside the norm and that a significant portion of his wealth came from their labor. The lives of people enslaved by the McBee are difficult to reconstruct, as all we have today are their first names. Alexander likely enslaved laborers on his plantation in Cecil County, Maryland, only 2 miles from Newark, where they grew peach and apple trees. The plantation was passed to his son, John and his will. It was also common for enslavers to house those they enslaved in their residents as the number of enslaved people per household was much smaller in Delaware in comparisons to states like Virginia. As such, it was extremely likely that enslaved people were housed in Elliot Hall while the Mc Beets lived there. It is abundantly clear that the Mac Beets were lifelong generational enslavers who built generational wealth through enslave slaor. The land was eventually sold in 18 32 by John Sun, also named Alexander, and became the old college. The history of enslavement has been scrubbed clean from Elliott Hall and the land once owned by the McBets, further erasing the experiences and dignity of those enslaved there. Unfortunately, Elliott Hall and the land owned and sold by the Mc Bees to the College are not unique circumstances. Indeed, much of the University of Delaware's Campus has direct ties to enslavement. Russell Complex, located at 270 Hayes Street Newark, Delaware, is named after Andrew Carr Russell, a free white man with immense social and political power in the early 19th century Newark. University describes its choice behind the name of a complex, two Remember Andrew Kerr Russell, who served as principal of Newark Academy 1811-1834 and was an advocate for the establishment of a college in Newark. The University commemorates Russell's institutional prominence, but forgets to call out his role and presence in Newark as a wealthy landholder and in slaver. As not only the principal of Newark Academy, he also held power as the leader of two Presbyterian congregations, head of Christina and White Clay Creek. Russell's educational and religious positions in early 19th century Newark were sustained by wealth generated by land ownership and crop cultivation. His dependence on unfree labor to maintain his land has been overlooked. From roughly 18 15 to 18 48, Russell owned land that began around 429 South College Avenue, where the Newark History Museum is located today, to land occupied and owned by the University of Delaware's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Russell's land holdings now owned primarily by the university were cultivated and maintained by enslaved and Black people. One of these was Mary. Mary's life gives us further insight into how enslaved people contended with land in the built environment. Mary probably entered Russell's household upon his marriage to Anne Whiteley in 18 15. Mary was likely expected to perform daily household tests for the newlywed, such as cooking, laundry, and and housekeeping. Such domestic responsibilities may have been performed in between or alongside tending to livestock and pitching on on growing wheat and corn. Her days would have gotten longer with the birth of Russell's children as Mary probably took care of their children amidst her other responsibilities. After years of unfreedom at the hands of Andrew Carr Russell, Mary suffered a severe punishment. On August 3, 18 19, Russell petitioned the Newcastle County Court to export and sell Mary. He suspected Mary of setting fire to his barn, stable, carriage house, and buildings. The petition describes the buildings as being consumed to ashes. In addition to the destruction of the buildings, the fire destroyed all of Russell's hay, grain, and a very valuable horse, hogs, et cetera. While the petition provides a snapshot of Russell's extensive grain crop business as early as 18 19, it fails to provide any biographical details about Mary. All we have is her name. Who is Mary is a hard question to answer. Yet asking questions about the people like Mary who appear and disappear in written records, help us learn about enslaved people's lives and experiences. The petition frames property as a site of contention and potentially for those who are enslaved, a possibility of resistance. The petition captures Mary as an agentic force capable of reducing Russell's property to Ash. At the same time, her lack of agency is expressed in Russell's exercise of power over Mary through his plea to remove her from the state. As property, Russell ensured he would receive a return on Mary through her export and sale. While we may never recover the story behind the fire, the petition documents the terms and conditions of Mary's enslavement. At the end of the 18th century, the state of Delaware placed a ban on the sale of enslaved people to buyers out of state. This ban was enacted in part to maintain the slave system at a time when manumissions were being granted. The Act outlawed the domestic slave trade to Delaware. Thus, Russell needed to appeal to the court to remove Mary from the state. This was not a casual transaction, but a highly public and unsettling ordeal. While we may not know the Court granted Russell's appeal, we may know that the court granted Russell's appeal, we do not know where Mary went next. D she went away, was she sold deeper south? Who was she forced to leave behind? Looking back at the origins of central buildings like Elliot Hall and the vast land holdings of Andrew Car Russell and the residents complex named after him today. We recover the names and lives of people who have previously gone unnoticed. Why have land and buildings now part of campus been portrayed as neutral spaces? What harm is done by not acknowledging the presence and existence of unfreedom in the university's early history? What does it mean that families that participated and benefited from enslavement shaped Newark Academy and the institutions that came after it. Extending beyond the Peas and Andrew Car Russell, the buildings and land connected to them. We find additional threads that connect to the university to unfreedom and enslavement in the 19th century Delaware. Next, our colleagues will explore the ways that white families in Newark used wealth from slavery to build educational institutions, further their interests, and perpetuate the institutions of slavery and racism? I will not pass things along to my colleague Lisa Tear. Hello. My name is Lisa Tepper, an undergraduate student. I am presenting on behalf of Abigail Christianson, Samantha Hurdle, and myself. Throughout their histories, Delaware College, and the local children's preparatory schools, the New York Academy, and the New York Female Seminary, benefited from partnerships with wealthy, powerful new Workers. Those New kers filled positions on Board of Trustees, served as principals, or made monetary donations to the institutions of learning. Because of the prominence of enslavement and systems of unfreedom common in 19th century Delaware, many of those new Workers also enjoyed direct and indirect ties to enslavement. They also led lives that upheld systems of racial subjugation and hierarchy. Because of these ties to racial subjugation, the history of wealthy new kers and the roles they played at Delaware College and similar institutions cannot be divorced from the history of enslavement in Delaware. Our historical research has uncovered both pervasive, lifelong, and seemingly inadvertent tangible ties to enslavement from three wealthy, influential new Okers. Although each of these historical figures hold different positions in this history, together, they paint a picture of the role wealth, power, and enslavement played in the history of Newark and its academic institutions. As members of the Board of Trustees, it was the duty of doctor Joseph Chamberlain and James L Miles to use their influence in the Newark Delaware community to promote the new College, advocating for development, reputation, and financial success. As a prominent physician and well connected businessman respectively. Doctor Chamberlain and Miles were strategically situated to perform that duty admirably. Doctor Chamberlain was present when the Act of Incorporation for Delaware College was passed in Dover in 18 33. As such, accepted his appointment to the Board of Trustees on day one. He attended nearly every meeting of the board and held positions on several committees, including the buildings Committee, the executive committee, and the Committee of Examination. As a wealthy landowner, he subscribed to fund raising schemes to benefit the college and enrolled to his sons in the college as soon as they were old enough to attend. James L Miles would join the board about ten years after doctor Chamberlain as both the secretary and treasurer. As Treasurer, Miles handled funds with trusted precision, frequently receiving reimbursements for purchases made on behalf of the college and overseeing the administration of scholarships and tuition payments. Together with other trustees, these men bolstered the reputation and finances of Delaware College. However, doctor Chamberlain and Miles exemplified other aspects common among the trustees of Delaware College. Both men enslaved individuals and use the wealth accumulated from Black labor to bolster their positions within Newark and its academic institutions. Enslavement in Delaware took on many forms. Perhaps the most familiar form was the lifelong chattel enslavement in which James L Miles participated. Outside of Miles' duty to Delaware College, he was busy building a 90 acre farm and amazing a relative amount of wealth through the use of hired, free, Black and enslaved labor. Tax assessments reveal that Miles enslaved two unnamed men and one unnamed woman, presumably Driila Green. Drilla Green was sold to James L Miles for $100 at the age of 12 by his neighbor, Elizabeth Thompson. Drsila was the daughter of Marinda Harmon an enslaved woman still owned by Elizabeth Thompson. Ten years later, we find silla now 24 with her own daughter, 1-year-old Elizabeth Green, still in Miles' household, showing the generational effects of enslavement on Black families and the tenuous nature of familial bonds that were so often ignored by enslavers. While many enslaved people, such as silla Green faced lifelong enslavement, there were also those deemed term slave. These men, women, and children were legally freed or manumitted for a future date. Oftentimes when they had reached the age of 21 for females and 28 for males. In the meantime, they could be sold, rented out, and otherwise treated as any other enslaved person. Additionally, any children born to a Black woman under term slave, were born into lifelong enslavement unless their enslavers decided to manumit them separately. T term slaves were recorded inconsistently in censuses. Sometimes they could be found on the slave schedule for that census, but it was just as possible that they would be listed under free inhabitants. Doctor Chamberlain enslaved at least three people during his lifetime and only ever manumented one man on record. Highland. In his will, doctor Chamberlain arranged for Highland to be granted a termed manumission, which would not actually free Highland until several months after the document was signed. These months may not have seemed terribly long to Highland, however, since many term slaves had to wait several years after manumission documents were signed for their freedom to become a reality. Around the same time that Highland received his freedom, a young African American boy named George was listed as enslaved in an inventory taken at the time of doctor Chamberlain's death. George was not mentioned in doctor Chamberlain's will and according to the ensuing estate sale record, remained with doctor Chamberlain's widow, Elizabeth. It is possible that he was considered as belonging to her. George appears once more in the 18 50 Census, still with Elizabeth Chamberlain, but among the free inhabitants, rather than on the slave schedule and having the surname Black. By the 18 60 census, George Black is no longer found in the Chamberlain households and all traces of him disappear in Newark, Delaware. It is possible that George was granted a term manumission before the 18 50 census, explaining why he was not listed on the slave schedule. However, it is also possible that he was sold elsewhere in the state since there is no manumission record on file for him. Finally, while the importation and exportation of enslaved people had technically been abolished in Delaware by 17 87. It was still common practice for enslavers to make petitions to the state government requesting exceptions to that law. It was not unusual for such petitions to be granted. One such petition was made in 18 33 by Joseph Chamberlain, requesting to bring a 6-year-old girl named Amelia into Delaware from Cecil County, Maryland as a house slave. While the petition itself does not indicate whether or not it was granted, there is an enslaved woman listed in doctor Chamberlain's household by the 18 30. By 18 30 between the age of ten and 24. Since Emilia would have been 14 years at that time, she is likely the same person. It is perhaps interesting to note that all three Highland, George, and Amelia, enter the Chamberlain household as children without any record of parents, illustrating once again the tenuous ties of familial relationships for enslaved people. Joseph Chamberlain's younger brother, doctor Palmer Chamberlain, also served as a trustee of Delaware College and attained a place of prominence and influence within Newark. But although Joseph and Palmer had seemingly identical upbringings, they differed on the topic of enslavement. Census data shows that Palmer did not enslave individuals. Furthermore, Palmer signature on an 18 18 petition that employed the state government to enact harsher penalties on kidnappers of free African Americans, paints Palmer as more abolition minded than his younger brother. A sentiment he passed to his children. Palmer's eldest daughter, Hannah, dedicated her life to the education of young people in Newark and has had few direct ties to enslavement in her personal life. Census data shows that Hannah did not enslave individuals, nor did she employ Black labor in her household. All of the domestic servants listed in Hannah's house 1860-1880 were described as Irish or simply white. That is not to say definitely that she did not employ Black labor, but that is to say they did not appear in historical records. Hannah Chamberlain was principal of the New York Female Seminary, a preparatory school for young girls from the 1850s until the mid 1870s. Seminary consolidated students and staff with the Newark Academy, the Local Boys Preparatory School in 18 73. Young girls enrolled at the seminary were prepared for life and society, not a career in higher education. They enrolled in courses on English, branches of Latin, French, German, music, or drawing and painting. There's a dearth of knowledge relating to the seminary, but what is known supports the notion that the institution opened educational doors for young white women while perpetrating Black exclusion. All of the teachers listed on the right side of the slide in 18 72 Delaware College Catalog were white, as were all 40 of the students enrolled in the school that year. Some of the young women enrolled in the seminary hailed from local prominent families that were complicit in its lafment. Helen Roby, a 18 72 student from Maryland was the daughter of Rufus Roby, a farmer and former enslaver of two individuals. Even though enslavement had been abolished nearly a decade earlier in 18 65, The parents of a handful of the seminary students had greatly profited from the economic systems. Those profits were in turn used to financially support the New York female Seminary and Hannah Chamberlain's wages. Although Chamberlain may not have been directly complicit in enslavement or the use of Free Black labor in her personal life, her professional life and income cannot be separated from history of enslavement in and around Delaware. The Newark Female Seminary was not the only white dominated institution in New York to perpetrate Black exclusion. Both the New York Academy and Delaware College largely excluded Black students, faculty, and staff, and actively upheld systems of segregation in primary and higher education. The next group will continue the conversation on Black exclusion in white academic spaces. Investigating some of Delaware College's students and faculty and the roles they played in history. I'll now hand things over to my colleague, Brian Tomsk for the next presentation. I am Brian Tomsk presenting on behalf of myself, Kan Rosado, and Alex Wagenheim. The fourth portion of the symposium looks at the intellectual climate of Delaware College from the eyes of the students, the presidents, and the faculty. The presentation will show that the intellectual climate of Delaware College served to support the status quo of slavery and the suppression of abolitionist ideas in the state. It's 18 53. America is eight years away from the first shots fired at Fort Sumter, and it is a deeply divided nation. St. George's hundred Delaware, a tiny community about 21 miles south of Newark, is the place where the Cleaver family has lived for generations. The youngest son of the Cleavers at the time, Joseph Cleaver junior left his family farm to attend Delaware College. Joseph Clever junior was a fairly average student. He came from a pretty standard background for students attending Delaware College during this time, that of a wealthy land owning white family. During his time at Delaware College, Joseph Clever junior would be remembered as an excellent student, a skill debater, and a vice president of the Athenian Society, which was an elite debate society where students would talk about important issues of the time. Clever understood and felt passion around many of these issues. He enjoyed the camaraderie of his peers and earned a measure of respect from them. In his freshman year, the National Divide over slavery found its way to the small community of Delaware College in the form of a young freedom seeker. This event was described in the diary of Joseph Clever junior and gives historians insight into how the issue of slavery was handled by both the college and the students. On December 1, 18 53, Joseph Clever junior and his friends came upon the freedom seeker in need of a shelter during a storm. When they approached President Graham to ask about assisting the freedom seeker, Joseph Clever junior recorded that President Graham would not let him stay, saying that the college must not break the law, even when the law seems wrong. The law President Graham was referring to was the Fugitive Slave Act of 18 50, unmoved by President Graham's adherence to law over values, Joseph Clever junior and his friends proceeded to give aid and comfort to the freedom seeker. Joseph Clever junior's diary records that he gave his own boots to the freedom seeker and offered him shelter for the night. Four days after the freedom seeker left the college, on December 5, 18 53. Joseph Cleaver junior stated that he heard from another student named Duhamel, about a person that was most likely the freedom seeker he and his friends helped being taken in Wilmington. After hearing the news from Duhamel, Cleaver wrote in his diary. Now, a word about this language, Cleaver uses a set of derogatory slurs. One is the N word, which we have altered in the quote, and the other is Boy. Cleavers use of the term boy should not be understood to denote the freedom seekers age. Rather, it was a derogatory term used by whites for all male African Americans of whatever age. It was intended to strip Black men of their masculinity. With that context in mind, here's what Cleaver wrote in his diary. To Hamer heard in Wilmington of a black boy being taken, which sounds like boy, but not certain and did not dare ask details. Most of our boys are very sorry to hear of it, and we hope it is not the boy we helped, which seems to me not to be the matter, but that a black boy has been taken back from freedom to live all his life as a slave. The final part of this entry where Joseph Clever junior shows how much the news affected him demonstrates his empathy. Joseph Clever junior had a more humane view towards the plight of the freedom seeker in comparison to that of President Graham. While Joseph Clever junior should not be seen as a representation of all students at Delaware College during this time, his diary gives historians the clerest view into what the life of an average student looked like at Delaware College in the mid 1850s, especially when it came to how a student would act when staring down the barrel of unjust legislation. While Delaware College had specific views when it came to societal questions, students like Cleaver were just as likely to disagree with those views as they were to agree with them. It is clear to see through President Graham that at the time, the intellectual climate at Delaware College supported the status quo venation, which was to follow the law by stopping abolitionist or abolition leading movements. For all intents and purposes, President Graham was Delaware College. His response to Cleaver and his friends was clear. The College was to always align itself with the law, whereas Cleaver chose to align himself with what he thought the law should be. Graham, however, wasn't always the representative of Delaware College, for he at one point, was a student of the institution himself. To gain a better understanding of Graham and his family's historical ties to Delaware College and the state overall. I'm going to backtrack a little. Walter Scott Vine Graham or WS F Graham, was born into a historically Presbyterian family in the community of New London, located in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His father, Robert Graham was a prominent pastor of the New London Presbyterian Church and was widely influential in the overall development and structure of different academic institutions such as those within the New London community. As described in William Sloan Graham's memoir, there wasn't any place that he or his brother Walter could go throughout Pennsylvania or Delaware and not be known as the sons of Robert Graham, the man credited with building the Academy. I sifting through the archives, one is able to uncover that the Graham family, following the employment of Robert Graham to the Board of Trustees, consisting mostly of presbyterian ministers, many carried the Graham last name, and they were either serving as faculty or staff within leadership positions or either attending New York Academy or Delaware College as a student simultaneously. Now, one can infer in reading the archival material that this could be a clear case of nepotismal privilege? We witness occurrences like this in academic institutions throughout the Northeast as legacy emissions. Whereas those carrying the last name of those who previously attended are given a leg up at joining the same institution. Following his graduation in 18 38. Walter Scott Vinny Graham began to attain leadership positions as he extended to the presidency which he held 1854-1851 to 18 54. Archival records containing different types of mera and school catalogs show that Graham held positions such as head of moral philosophy. But interestingly enough, Walter Graham within his tenure as president of Delaware College, denied safe refuge to a man attempting to escape enslavement, as previously mentioned within the story of Joseph Lieber junior. He attempts to justify his morality of denial of safe refuge by drawing the connection to state law. There is irony in the fact that a bill crafted to prohibit Black movement throughout the state would later be seen as moral through the eyes of white men such as Graham. But to gain a further understanding of the magnitude of how influential the family was, we set our eyes on the conclave. The conclave, a social network headed by the Grahams, consisted of mostly New York's white male Presbyterian ministers. Although not its formal name, this elitist organization also involved various faculty members in which research conducted was presented at the House of the School President. Moreover, in addition to faculty attendance, members of the state legislature also attended. Let us think about the impact of an organization such as this. Think about how much a family, such as the Grahams, established in spearheaded an organization that consisted of the elite class, and how that shaped not only the academy, but the overall landscape of Newark and the state of Delaware. Members of the graham family were so influential and held in such high regard that Delaware College faculty members deemed it appropriate to draft a memoir that would tell the life of William Sloan Graham and the overall Graham family. Faculty members such as George Allen deemed it necessary to publish the story of William Sloan Graham in 18 49 following his passing due to consumption, an illness that almost all men in the Graham family died from. Now, George Allen, author of the memoir, he was a professor of ancient languages at Delaware College 1837-1845. Allen's story is particularly important because it shows how one's surroundings can influence their intellectual and spiritual development. Allen was born and raised in Milton, Vermont, the first state to abolish slavery back in 17 77. He came to Delaware College in 18 37, and his intellectual pursuits were trending towards transinentalism. James Marsh, Caleb, Henry Sprague and Ja Faldo Emerson were among the many transidentalists he networked with. The argument is that his time in New York Delaware took him on a different intellectual and spiritual path than that of his transidentalis peers. Had he stayed in Vermont George Allen would not have encountered any slavers, but at New York, he had no choice but to see the institution of slavery around him. Allen did not own any land. He rented a home from a trustee at Delaware College George Platt, a man who enslaved five African Americans according to the 18 40 census, and the same census records also show that many of Alan's neighbors, Jane Platt, John Miller, and Samuel Wilson, were slavers as well. Alan would have most certainly have seen enslaved African Americans living in Newark. Also, at the time George Allen was an Episcopalian, and he worked to found St. Thomas Episcopal Church in 18 42. The vestry of the church included names like Thomas Brandy, Benjamin Gibbs, and William Couch, all of whom were enslavers. In order to get the church built, they needed to rely on the money of enslavers like Ralph Mel Wilson and his brother William Wilson. Alan left Delaware College in 18 45 to teach the same subject at the University of Pennsylvania until he died in 18 76. What is important is that his trajectory bear off course from his transinalis peers, as many of them, like Emerson and Sprague, were beginning to support abolition and attack conservative institutions like the Catholic Church over its support of slavery. Alan, on the other hand, converted to Catholicism in 18 47, a move that was highly controversial. His conversion and silence on abolition point to a man who came to Delaware College as a New England transientalist, and left it a completely different scholar, a more conservative person, showing how an intellectual climate drenched in slavery, can change its faculty, preventing them from joining in the abolitionist movement. President Graham's quote, in reference to the fugitive slave law was very telling. The college must not break the law when the law seems wrong. Regardless of how its presidents, trustees, faculty, workers, and students may have felt about slavery. The intellectual climate at Delaware College during the Antiplaan period, enforced the status quo of slavery in the state. Many of the presentation today have focused on Delaware College as an institution and the story of white elites, as well as non elites. However, the next and final presentation inter Sypsium, led by Marie Pinkney, will look at how the Free Black community on New London Road in New York Delaware used the money earned working for the college to form their own communities, to create their own stories separate from the college. Greetings, my name is Marie Pinckney, a second year in the Masters of Africana Studies Department. I'm presenting on behalf of myself and Sasha Thompson and Anastasia Spicer. Our presentation focuses on the Free Black community of New London Road that existed parallel to the college. Toughout the 19th century, Delaware College relied on the labor of Free Black people who lived in and around Newark. As in many university towns, black communities formed in proximity to the college as a result of the economic support the institution provided. However, in an effort to understand the lives of the Free Black community in Newark, beyond their affiliation with the college, our research focuses on how those in the Free Black community on New London Road, the area circled to the left on the map. A center of thriving Black community in Newark. We are able to harness the I'm sorry, we're able to harness the economic advantage of working at the college highlighted to the right on the map to build lives and communities outside of the institution. Freedom for Black Delawareans during the 19th century was tenuous and incomplete. A series of laws known as the Black codes were put in place in the 18th century and strengthened throughout the 19th century to control and curtail the autonomy of Free Black people in the state. As this timeline shows, White Delawarians created laws that controlled how long Free Black people were able to leave the state, beginning in 18 oh seven, when fines were instated for leaving the state and intensifying over the ensuing decades. For example, by 18 49, out of state travel for Free Black people was only permitted for six days. Other laws allow children of Free Black people to be taken and put into indentures if their parents were deemed unfit to provide for them, and other laws that controlled the right to assemble and right to bear arms, particularly in 18 32, the year after Nat Turner's rebellion. These laws prevented Free Black people from seeking temporary employment in regional locales like Philadelphia, instead, making them reliant on the local economy for their financial stability. Despite the environment of vigilantism and control, the Black codes created for free Black people, sorry, Free Black people devise ways to support their families and help their communities thrive. Many Free Black people, including those who worked at Delaware College, did not have one income stream, but instead relied on multiple forms of employment to make ends meet. One form of employment Free Black people engaged in in the Newark area was at the brick yards run by George Evans. Evans was a prominent member of the White elite Newark community in the 19th century. He ran a dry good shop in Newark, which he had inherited from his father and served as the treasurer and Secretary on the Board of Trustees in Delaware College during the second half of the century. On this slide, you can see house George Evans had built for his family in 18 63, using the bricks from his brickyard, which is still in use by the University of Delaware today. At the Evans Brickyard, he employed both free Black and white men to make bricks. The bricks produced at Evans Brickyard were used in major buildings from churches to private homes across the town of Newark. Some of the Black men who worked on Evans' brickyard later went on to purchase land on New London Road. One such figure, Moses Bias, worked at the Brickyard in the 1840s and by 18 55, had saved enough to purchase land. Members of his extended family continued to reside on New London Road throughout the 19th century. Notably, Black men and white men who were performing the same tasks on the brickyard were paid the same wages. While Bias was one of the lowest tier of the pay grade, other free Black men, including William Glasgow and Ezekiel Smith were paid the higher wage of $0.80 per day, suggesting that they were performing more complicated tasks. Free Black laborers also purchased bricks from Evans Brickyard for construction projects. One person who did this was Nathan Wrench. Nathan Wrench was an employee of Delaware College. He worked as a janitor and caretaker, well known by the students at the time. Rynch was responsible for a number of tasks from making students beds to cleaning the college buildings to locking the dormitories at night after all of the students were inside. His wife, Mary Rynch was an occasional laborer and cleaner at the college 189-1854. Work at Delaware College served as a through line between many of the Black free families living in the New London Road community. Isaac Bacchus, another free Black man, also working at the College as an occasional laborer. He likely crossed paths there with Rath Mel Wilson, a trustee of Delaware College, who he purchased land on New London Road from. Eventually, he and Nathan Rynch became some of the earliest Black land owners in the area. They were founding members of the New London Road Community. A disproportionate number of Free Black people in Delaware held low wage jobs. Even though free Black people only made up 20% of the state's population, they were over half of the state's laborers. Isaac Bacchus, Nathan Wrench, and his wife, Mary Wrench, all worked as laborers at Delaware College. The college helped to uphold these institutions of unequal labor opportunities. On one hand, the college provided an opportunity for employment for Black Delawarians, while on the other hand, their economic opportunity was limited to low wage labor with little chance of employment growth. Therefore, Black Delawarians took their economic independence into their own hands. Nathan Wrench appears to have turned to underground employment opportunities. October 18 52nd entry in a student's diary recounts that Rynch may have transported alcohol into the campus for the students. We also know that Isaac Bacchus marketed his skills as a labor outside of the college, including joining dozens of men on July 27, 18 76 to help construct the Cool Springs Reservoir. As founders of what will become the thriving Free Black community of New London Road, Nathan Wrench, Isaac Bacchus, Griffin Saunders, and their families understood the importance of land ownership for Black Delawarians. Once they were able to obtain land, they continued to buy and sell it for years. They also saw the value of ensuring that the land near New London Road remained in the Black community, including the financial stability it provided. Once Black families were able to purchase land on New London Road, they were likely to remain on that land until their deaths. Even after land owners passed away, the land typically remained in the family or was sold to another Black family. Nathan Rynch owned multiple properties in the New London Road community, and he eventually began renting out property to other Black families, helping to ensure housing for Black Delawarians and keeping the community a Black enclave. While Griffin Saunders purchased land on New London Road from his relatives, William and Eliza Saunders, and if we go back even further, William and Eliza purchased that land from Isaac Bacchus. The opportunity of community extended I'm sorry, the importance of community extended beyond land ownership and housing. In 18 11, state law mandated that free Black parents must demonstrate their ability to raise their children. If they failed to provide evidence of income and stability, their children risk being bound to service until the ages of 21 for boys and 18 for girls. An amendment in 18 27 permitted families from arranging for friends to bid on behalf of their children, despite this being unlawful. Many Free Black families believed their children would fare better under the care of other Free Black households. Such as Anne M Williams, a young girl living on New London Road with Nathan and Mary Wrench. It is likely that other Free Black families sent their children to the Rynchs home for work opportunities due to the family's established presence. Similarly, Isaac Bacchus and his wife, Margaret, do not appear to have had any biological children of their own, yet there were children in and out of their homes for decades. These children range from ages eight to 19 and include Miigan Francis, Martha Barry, Nathan Morris, who worked as a porter in a store and Chez W Walker, who worked in a salon. The Free Black community that surrounded Delaware College was remarkable. They utilized the college to gain economic stability, but outside of the grips of the institution that they built their own lives. Together, they built a community that remained Black owned for generations. This community worked collectively to keep their families together and support one another economically. Men like Nathan Rynch, Moses Bias, and Isaac Bacchus, and their wives understood the importance of Black self reliance, and together, the New London Road community grew and maintained a thriving community beyond the bounds of Delaware College. Now, we will transition to talk about how the university can move forward in light of the research we have done with our final group. As we have seen, the University of Delaware has a storied past that is deeply involved with the legacies of enslaved and free Black communities. However, you will not find these legacies mentioned on a campus tour or the university's website. There are no commemorative plaques or memorials. Visit the George Evans House on campus and you will not find mention of his family's legacy of enslavement on the historic Plaque set up out front. No mention is even alluded to on the web page for Elliott Hall, despite direct quotes from primary sources, nor will you find any mention of the free Black laborers who have helped to build and sustain the university through the years? The University of Delaware has long been involved in the erasure of black history throughout the years, but it does not need to continue to do so. The University of Delaware can and must do better. Other universities such as the University of Virginia and Trinity College have also been researching and taking accountability for their connections to slavery, providing us with useful models for where the University of Delaware might take this work in the future. In this way, we present the following recommendations for acknowledgment and restitution. As a way to acknowledge the University of Delaware's history with enslavement, as well as recognizing the importance of Newark's Free Black community in the existence of the institution. We suggest some short term goals. Dedicating a space at the university's website to tell the stories not only of the people who were enslaved in the properties that the University of Delaware occupies now, but also of the New London Road Free Black community and their importance to the survival of the institution in its early days. Installing plaques on campus buildings owned by those who were complicit in systems of slavery and unfreedom, acknowledging and honoring the names of the people who were forced to labor at these places. Lastly, installing plaques on the buildings on campus that bear the names of enslavers and people who corroborated the perpetuation of the system of enslavement, such as Cesar Rodney, Andrew Russell, and the Evans family, acknowledging that even though they were important to the foundation and continuation of the institution, that they were also part of a system of oppression and White supremacy. In the long term, we suggest that the university build a memorial at a prominent site on campus, acknowledging and honoring the enslaved workers who lived and labored on the land where the university is located. For that goal, the University of Virginia Memorial to Enslaved laborers pictured here could serve as inspiration for D's Memorial. Meanwhile, organizations and individuals within New ark's African American community outside of the university have been carrying out the work of ensuring an ongoing conversation about enslavement, freedom, and the lives of the Black population of New ark. One example of this effort is the inauguration of the New London Avenue School Museum, organized by community members and scholars, including Crystal Haman Simms. It is time for the University of Delaware to join in these efforts. To this end, hosting an annual symposium focused on Black history in Delaware would be an important measure, joining efforts such as Harvard into the legacy of slavery symposium. There is a prevailing narrative that claims that Delaware was a free state despite its legal status as a slave state. This narrative is based on the official census counts which indicate lower percentages of enslavement pre 18 65 than those in surrounding states such as Maryland and Virginia. However, that narrative is false, and it masks a much more complicated history involving term slavery and other forms of labor exploitation. We have shown, the real history of Delaware is that it was heavily complicit in enslavement and unfreedom. It is important that active steps moving forward to acknowledge and recognize the real history of the University of Delaware in order to stop the erasure of Black history and give voice to those who have come before. The research that has gone into this symposium and our ensuing report is only the starting point. There is still a considerate amount of work to be done to uncover the stories of the University of Delaware's relationship with race, especially the stories of enslaved and apprenticed individuals. That work is challenging, requiring hours of meticulous research. But it is fundamental to understanding the university's place in history and to thereby the present. For this reason, it is imperative that udai's course on race and inequality in Delaware continue into the future. Thank you. Me. I hope you'll join me in thanking the students for these incredible presentations of research that they've been working on the entire semester and really, you're just getting a taste of all the work that they've done. We have some time now for questions, and there are some that have been gathering in the Q&A. You're welcome to type in questions or to raise your hand and we'll try to get to as many questions as we can. I wanted to start with a clarification question that Earl Smith posted. Maybe one of the students who wasn't presenting on behalf of a group might want to jump in and answer this question since many of you touched on this in your research. It's clarification on what it's meant to be manumitted, yet still enslaved. When we talk about delayed manumission or term slavery, what do we mean? How could you be emitted, but still be the property of an enslaver, getting at this complicated status of someone who's free, but not actually free. Anybody want to take that one on. Can I put a few of you on the spot here, Abi? Yeah. Do you want to Yeah, I can put it on the one. Yeah. So delayed denuion or term slavery was where they would be legally, so there would be a document drawn up, manumit that is freed for a future date. This was often when they were at an age that the enslaver felt they would no longer be useful. That was often the age of 28 for men and of 21 for women. It was illegal to manumit someone in the future after the age of 30 because having been worked their entire lives, they felt that they would then be a burden on the social systems. During the time while before that date that was set in the legal document, which could be a will or it could just be a normal manumission form. They would still be treated as any other enslaved person in Delaware. They could be bought, sold, rented out, separated from family, abused with absolutely no legal recourse. And as we saw in a couple of cases, they could have that manumission reversed. So there are definitely stories of individuals running away, even though they have a term manumission, Because if they were to, you know, fight back against the violence of their enslaver or to do something that they just decided was, you know, of taking away that minion that could happen at any moment. Hanks Hay go. I want to be with one quick correction. As Mary Torbe noted in the Q&A, the image earlier in the presentation that purported to be of Elliot Hall was actually of Alumni Hall. So Elliot Hall is, as she noted next door and former property of the McBee Family in Alumni Hall is the chamber. I just wanted to put that on the record on the reporting that the picture was of the Rg building. And our apologies for not catching that. I'm sorry. Research this semester touched on the history of both of those buildings. I want to put together two questions, which I think are related to each other from Kevin Godr and doctor Abdullah Muhammad asking big picture questions. What does the university owe the Black families who live in Newark and Delaware now? Or the Black employees who work at the university is one version of that question. The other one, how does this history dictate a ruling of what acquired wealth should be given for the benefit of descendants of the Black Newark community? That's something that we talked about over the course of this semester and we looked at other approaches on other campuses. Is there anybody who wants to address that question? I can address it. I'll start by addressing the first question. One of the things that we did enjoy looking at was the work of University of Virginia in regards to planning a public history memorial that acknowledges the contributions of enslaved labor and how the college was taking steps, at least at that time and addressing the history with guided tours done by students. We now know moving forward that the school has taken a backtrack at acknowledging the history with school tours. But we do think that the first step in acknowledging that history could be something like a public history memorial. Great. Thank you, Kean. There's so many great questions. We're going to try to get to as many as we can. Follow up to that question from our colleague, doctor Eve Buckley, thinking about the question of restitution, she asks, would it be meaningful for UD to waive tuition and fees for descendants of people whose labor as and slave persons sustain the institution in its early years? I realize that available documentation, particularly with regard to names, which is a challenge that everyone faced in their research this semester makes it difficult to establish those relationships, it could be challenging. But any thoughts about that or other, models that we talked about from other universities. Anybody want to jump in and I'll spotlight you if you do. I could say something really quick. On the tuition part of it, I think it could be a very good notion to point out that, yes, your family's ancestor provided and helped to uplift this university. On the other side of it, I think as you pointed out, the challenging part would be the proof of it, where you don't want people to take advantage of this type of thing, finding that type of evidence could be the hard part. But I think that attempting to give back in some way, intuition could be one of it. Also, just the recognition, as we said in the call to action on certain buildings, where you have the person's name, you could also put those who contributed to that building or contributed to certain work involving within certain buildings or parts of labor. T hanks. Definitely something that the state of Virginia actually has a state wide policy for each of several historically white institutions in the state to grant scholarships to members of descendant communities of those enslaved in the state. There's precedent for that kind of program. Someone else was about to jump in. Who was that? That was me, but you addressed it in terms of serving as a model for other institutions across the country. U. There's a question in the Q&A specifically for Marie, who's state senator, Marie Pinney from our colleague, doctor Fontet. Asking, I'm wondering, how can knowledge of free Blacks in the area contribute to the HB 198 bill requirement in K 12. We might want to say a little bit for those who don't know what that stands for, what it is. Specifically in the areas of teaching Black Joy and resistance. Do you want to jump in on that one? Absolutely. For those who aren't familiar, HB 198 is a bill that was passed by my colleague representative, Sherry Dorsey Walker. We passed the bill a couple of years ago now and it's in the implementation phase. It requires Black history and education be taught throughout Delaware schools and be implemented into curriculum for Delaware students. I think that's a great question about how the local issues can be put into that education because a lot of times we're learning about things on a national level, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there's something different about be knowing what happened right at home, knowing what happened where you grew up, there was so much of the history of Delaware that I learned through this research process that I didn't know and my family's been in Delaware for a while now, and there was still so much that I'd had no idea about, that there are still members and living relatives and descendants of some of the people that we researched. And I think particularly when we talk about the Free Block community, of New London Road that we discussed in talking about Black Joy, that presents an opportunity for Delaware students and then their families to learn about the ways in which Delaware ans resisted, the ways in which they continue to thrive alongside an institution that for many years, did not admit them and would only utilize their labor. And so I think studying that and allowing Delaware students to learn that history Creates a sense of pride. My family is actually from the Iron Hill community, which is another free black community in Delaware, and not until the last year or two, did I even come across just how historic that area was and so for Delaware students to be able to walk across the university campus, but understand whose back they stand on is powerful and not just for Black students, white students and students of all nationalities should understand all history because Black history is American history as well. If I could add just to that, there have been some efforts, but not as many as we would like to work with teachers directly about this research in Delaware schools. It's an ongoing interest but sharing this research. But yeah, that's a great concern. Thank you, Marie for addressing it. I wanted to point out a comment from Denise Hayman and the Q&A, going back to the question about restitution and scholarships. She says, One thought is for the University to broaden its efforts to increase the number of Black students matriculating at the institution, especially for Delawaans, and that's something that's come up in our conversations too, in addition to potential scholarship scholarships. There's also the question of of recruitment and building a climate for welcoming of Black students and broadening, as you say, the outreach and the admissions pipeline for students in the state. I think that's important to note. We've talked about questions around scholarships and also this question about K 12 education and sharing these local histories within the state. There's a question from our colleague, doctor and Green about speaking, what kinds of shifts can this research have on the collective cultural temperature at UD and throughout Newark's larger communities, which I think is a broader question. Anybody want to talk about that climate issues and the collective culture of UD in Newark. T. Difficult problem. Marie, sorry. Yeah. I jumped in before you. It's okay. I just I was thinking about the idea of I don't want to say gentrification, but essentially gentrification, right and that idea. I mean, we started off the presentation talking about what land we are standing on well, standing on, I don't think any of us are on campus right now, but, like, what land the college is built on. And I think the idea that is still happening. I saw miss Tammy in in the participants list, and I know miss Tammy's family has a long history on the new London Road area and talking with her and other families from that area for a different project. Many of those families talked about the displacement that they experienced at the hands of the university. And I think being honest about that climate is really, really important. Being honest about what it means to have a university that is growing continuously and a lot of really good and positive ways. But also be honest about what that growth means for the surrounding communities, I think is really, really important. And to doctor Green's question about the climate. I think when we're honest about that, it creates an opportunity for real dialogue and it creates an opportunity for the possibility of talking about what it means to grow in ways that don't necessarily harm the surrounding communities. Yeah. It's a really important point. Thank you for talking about that broader context. So we just have a few more minutes. So I I spotlighted you, Alex, if you wanted to very briefly answer the first question which is about the Cleaver family's relationship to slavery in this period. Do you want to jump in on that? Yeah, so it's to put it lightly, but the Cleaver family definitely employed Black people both in unfree ways and possibly free ways. It's hard to tell because of Some of the information is unclear, but we do have evidence of C leaver's father, Joseph Cleaver Senior using forms of unfreedom on his farm, and Joseph Cleaver also continuing to use some forms of unfreedom as well as most likely some forms of free labor as well. So yeah, he's connected through that matter. Great. Thank you. Were gets very complicated about these things. Sorry. Yes. I was just going to shout out Alex as one of our undergraduate researchers in the class who came in, calling themselves not historians and really stuck with it and did a tremendous amount of work. I'll answer a couple of quick questions in the Q&A. Frank Kilson asks about the percentage of faculty and staff who owned slaves, which I think is a great question and we don't have a clear answer to that yet. I think the research you heard today documents that high percentage of trustees of Delaware College were slavers. We don't have as clear information about the faculty. You did hear about George Allen, for example, and he like other faculty often came from other regions, and so had different relationships to slavery and to family wealth. That's something we're still looking into. And there was a question from Earl Smith who asks, other than placing the recording on the web page. Are there plans to publish this research? I'm glad you asked because, in fact, the Udai committee on Legacies of slavery and dispossession is going to be working with students to pull together the research from this semester as well as from the 2021 iteration of this class to put together a more formal written report that documents this research. So we'll be working on that in the year 2025. And look forward to sharing it with you and hearing feedback from folks on campus and off campus and throughout the state. With that, I think any other questions I didn't get to that we should get to Professor Norwood? Always more questions, but being respectful of time, I think we did the best we could. I know both of us are incredibly proud and grateful for the chance to have worked with this group of students who come from many disciplines across the campus and who are really ethically committed to this work and have done really meticulous work. So please join me in thanking them for their work and congratulating them. I know it's always silent clapping on Zoom. But trust that you are getting made from the crowd here. Thank you all so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. You will get a link to the recording when it's available, and feel free to reach out to Professor Norwood or to me, if you have more questions or thoughts you want to share with us. We'd love to be in dialogue with you. Thanks, everybody.