“This is just one of many projects the Anti-Racism Initiative is
involved in, but it’s an important one,” Parker said. “We think that, as
an institution, it’s essential to study and understand our own
history.”
The research involving UD’s history, like the larger initiative, is a
University-wide effort and commitment, she said. UD’s application to
join the USS consortium was made with the full and formal support of
President Dennis Assanis and Provost Robin Morgan.
“To join USS, the entire institution has to be committed to this work, and at UD, it is,” Parker said.
In announcing that UD has joined the consortium, USS said that being
part of the collaboration will help the University in its mission of
prioritizing racial justice and antiracism work and research. The
consortium “allows participating institutions to work together as they
address both historical and contemporary issues dealing with race and
inequality in higher education and in university communities,” USS
said. “Together, the growing movement of schools committed to this work
seeks to address the complicated legacies of slavery in the modern
world.”
At UD, from summer 2020 through this summer, 21 undergraduate and two
graduate students have worked or are continuing to work on uncovering
the school’s history. In fall 2021, a newly approved
undergraduate/graduate research course, team-taught and cross-listed in
several different departments, will allow more students to be involved.
Students in this recurring research seminar, “Race and Inequality in
Delaware,” will do their own research projects, at first focusing on the
UD’s historical ties to slaveholders who founded the University or sold
their land to the institution.
This fall, the course will be taught by Dael Norwood and Laura
Helton, both assistant professors of history, who will supervise
students as they conduct archival research, work with community
historians and publicly engage the UD and Newark communities in
conversations about the ramifications of past social injustice, Norwood
said.
Also in fall semester, Roger Horowitz, adjunct professor of history
and director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology and
Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, will lead a seminar training
students to use oral history interviews to document the historical
experiences of African American employees and students at UD, as well as
some key Newark community members. Horowitz is collaborating on this
project with the founding members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority at
UD.
“Joining Universities Studying Slavery will be helpful to our work,
as we look at the different models and approaches that others have taken
in their research,” Norwood said. “We want to move forward as quickly
as possible, because there’s a lot of enthusiasm for this work, and it’s
a big task.”
Research focused on UD is different from some other institutions,
particularly in the South where a school may have been literally built
by enslaved people, because Delaware’s history is different, Norwood
said. The state had a large number of people “in various forms of
bondage and indenture,” he said, and so archival records can be more
varied and difficult to search out.
Student researchers last spring and this summer “are casting a wide
net to see what we can find in preparation for the fall classes and
beyond,” he said. The work is attracting not only history majors but
students from other disciplines as well.
Research has been and continues to be conducted by students including
Callahan Fellows, undergraduates funded by the history department doing
independent research projects; Unequal Justice Public History Fellows, a
project in which UD is a partner with the Delaware Historical Society;
Anti-Racism Initiative undergraduate research assistant Elisa Davila,
who has been examining the Land Records files in University Archives;
and the initiative’s four undergraduate Summer Research Assistants, who
will be working throughout this summer.
In the Anti-Racism Initiative’s announcement of UD having joined USS,
the initiative’s co-chairs — K.C. Morrison, professor in the Biden
School of Public Policy and Administration; Lynnette Overby, professor
of theatre and deputy director of UD’s Community Engagement Initiative;
and Parker — noted the importance of research.
“UD recognizes that research universities play a major role in
fostering ongoing social change in society and must take the lead in
ensuring that we have a fair and equitable society free of racial
injustices and racism,” they said in a combined statement.
Article by Ann Manser; photos by Kathy F. Atkinson
Published June 30, 2021