Legacies of Enslavement and Dispossession at UD
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2021-2022 UDARI Committee Grant Award Winner
The Legacies of Dispossession and Enslavement committee utilized UD Anti-Racism Initiative grant funding to employ two graduate research assistants. The research assistants designed and created a WordPress site to publicly host findings and sources generated by students in HIST460/660: Race and Inequality in Delaware. This course is also cross-listed with AFRA/ANTH/ENGL460, GEOG428, and with AFRA661, ANTH660, ENGL660, and GEOG628. The graduate research assistants were also responsible for completing two in-progress data collection projects: a spreadsheet of data entered from 19th and early 20th-century U.S. censuses schedules for Newark, Delaware and a spreadsheet listing all trustees, staff, faculty, and students associated with Delaware College. These spreadsheets enabled advanced research, including a demographic analysis of the populations associated with the Newark area and Delaware College, as well as biographical and genealogical research into particular families and individuals. These projects advanced the goals of UDARI by allowing for the products and sources of recent research to be publicly accessible through both the website and the spreadsheets. These materials are useful for a variety of future projects associated with the history of racial inequality at UD and the surrounding community.
Mission
To coordinate and promote interdisciplinary research into the history of enslavement, dispossession, segregation, and other forms of racial injustice and inequality at the University of Delaware and its precursor institutions; and to organize regular opportunities for public-facing discussion and dialogue about this history, its legacies, and the implications of these investigations.
Goals
- Conduct research on the legacies of enslavement and dispossession at UD, and make products and sources of that research accessible, as appropriate.
- Facilitate sharing new research on the legacies of enslavement and dispossession at UD.
- Learn from what other universities have done to acknowledge and remediate legacies of slavery and dispossession.
- Provide opportunities for undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, staff, and community members to learn about the legacies of enslavement and dispossession at UD.
Members
Co-chair: Rebecca Davis (History)
Co-chair: Dael Norwood (History)
- Kathryn Benjamin Golden (Africana Studies)
- Laura Helton (English and History)
- Margaret Hughes (History, Graduate Student)
- Paul Jackson (Geography and Environmental Studies)
- Jonathan Russ (History)
- Ellen Schenk (Biden School Public Policy-Graduate Student)
- Alan Parkes (History-Graduate Student)
- Jenn Van Horn (Art History and History)
Committee Highlights
Below are links to the final products of the Legacies of Enslavement and Dispossession at UD’s numerous projects.
History of Race, Racism & Discrimination in America
Names of Buildings and Locations Racial Divisions Remain Deep in Delaware Sept 2017