News
Posted on July 8, 2022 at: 8:10 am
Dear friends and colleagues:
I am pleased to announce that the new, public-facing website for the UDARI Legacies of Dispossession and Enslavement at UD committee is now live! https://sites.udel.edu/udari-legacies/
The site’s current feature is a suite of original blog posts authored by students from HIST 460/660: Race and Inequality in Delaware (Fall 2021). Building on the students’ Scholar in the Library presentation last December, these deeper dives include investigations into:
…and much, much more!
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Posted on March 6, 2022 at: 9:42 am
Dear UDARI supporters.
Applications are now open for undergraduate and graduate students for UDARI’s Summer Scholars Program.
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Posted on January 24, 2022 at: 10:19 am
Using materials from Special Collections and University Archives, students in the fall 2021 seminar Race and Inequality in Delaware investigated the history of the University of Delaware in the age of enslavement and emancipation.
Members of the University of Delaware and Newark community joined the seminar’s students and faculty as they shared their research on Delaware College’s ties to slavery, and its relationship to neighboring communities of indentured, enslaved and free people of color in the 1830s to 1850s.
Inspired by the UD Antiracism Initiative, Race and Inequality in Delaware was the first in a series of team-taught seminars that examine legacies of slavery and dispossession in Delaware’s past, and ask how to redress these histories in the present. Professors Laura E. Helton and Dael Norwood joined by their students for this presentation.
A recording of last month’s symposium on “Delaware College and Newark in the Era of Slavery, Indentured Labor and Abolition,” is now available on the UD Library site; details below.
“Delaware College and Newark in the Era of Slavery, Indentured Labor, and Abolition,” Scholar in the Library series, UD Library, December 7, 2021, https://library.artstor.org/public/31899789 (alt link: https://library.udel.edu/events/events/?id=408)
Posted on July 22, 2021 at: 10:21 am
This year’s Callahan fellows research was sponsored by the History Department, in partnership with the UD Anti-Racism Initiative, and was funded by the Ray Callahan Experiential Learning Fund. Fellows were charged with investigating the history and legacy of racial inequality at the University of Delaware and its predecessor institutions. They presented draft versions of their work at the inaugural workshop of the Legacies of Enslavement and Dispossession at UD subcommittee on June 21, 2021. The blog posts are a further public presentation of this work – and part of an ongoing series of examinations of UD’s history.
Collin Willard, “Beyond Its Limits: A Case Study in University Expansion and Gentrification in Newark, DE,” University of Delaware Anti-Racism Initiative (blog), July 13, 2021.
Edward Redmond, “The Presbyterian & The Politician: Uncovering and Comparing the History of Reverend Eliphalet Wheeler and Andrew Gray,” University of Delaware Anti-Racism Initiative (blog), July 13, 2021.
Posted on July 13, 2021 at: 3:05 pm
By Edward Redmond, Ray Callahan Experiential Learning Fund Fellow, Spring 2021

Was someone an enslaver? This is a deceptively simple question that took me a little less than half a year to answer regarding Reverend Eliphalet Wheeler Gilbert and Andrew Gray, two key figures in the University of Delaware’s early history. The research process was difficult and long but led to the uncovering of interesting information and opened avenues for further research. But, this all leads us to a simpler question: who were these men?
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