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Thread ID: 13208 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2004-04-16
2004-04-16 22:15 | User Profile
Diversity initiatives
[url]http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040416/NEWS/404160349/1007/NEWS02[/url]
UA will recognize its role in slavery University holds memorial service for two slaves buried on campus
By Adam Jones Staff Writer April 16, 2004
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TUSCALOOSA | The University of Alabama will have an administrative unit devoted to the issue of diversity and will make efforts to recognize its role in slavery, President Robert Witt said Thursday.
The university also will place markers where it is believed two slaves are buried and at three buildings behind the President's Mansion that were probably slave quarters, Witt said.
Witt made the announcements during a press conference in the Rose Administration building alongside three black students from the Coalition for Change, a group that lobbied Witt and faculty to recognize the university's antebellum history.
Following the press conference, a memorial service was held to remember the two slaves that were buried on campus.
"UA remains governed by a/scultural memory and historical identity that does not include African-Americans and their contributions to the buildings of the Capstone," the coalition's proposal reads. "This has resulted in a painful and intolerable condition for many and must change."
Students formed the coalition in the past few weeks in response to recent research by law professor Alfred Brophy on pre-Civil War slavery at Alabama, coalition member Robert Turner said.
Basing his claims on information from four history books, research by several of his law students and documents such as diary entries of former UA President Basil Manly, Brophy claims that many faculty members owned slaves and advanced pro-slavery teachings in the classroom.
He presented his finding to the Faculty Senate on March 16, asking that the faculty pass an apology about the use of slaves. The resolution passed a Faculty Senate Committee on Tuesday and goes before the full faculty next Tuesday.
Witt did not offer an apology Thursday.
In a telephone interview after the meeting, Brophy said Witt's response to the new knowledge and the student's proposals are positive for Alabama.
"It's part of recovering the history of Alabama," he said. "It shows the university is acting to be inclusive in remembering the contributions of people who worked on this campus."
He said there is a better chance the faculty will approve of an apology now that Witt has supported the proposals.
Alabama isn't the first university to delve into its past with slavery. Research is underway at Brown and Yale universities, and Brophy said there is a thirst for this knowledge across higher education.
"Lots of schools are looking at this, and we can be the first to apologize," he said. "What a statement about progressive Alabama that would be."
Brophy's findings
Brophy's research reveals that the university is related to slavery in four ways. Alabama owned slaves, and records show trustees approved money to purchase them. It is unclear how many the university owned, he said.
The university also rented slaves, and many faculty owned slaves. Some students even brought slaves with them to school, Brophy said.
Manly, who served from 1837 to 1855, at one point owned 38 slaves who lived at his plantation on the Black Warrior River, he said.
Records are incomplete on exactly what slaves did at the university, but it is clear Alabama used slaves in brick-making and building construction and repair.
Slaves also served students in the dining hall, and Brophy said one student struck a slave who would not deliver coal to his room.
Brophy's research also revealed that Manly was a major proponent of slavery and that former president Landon Cabell Garland, who served from 1855 to 1870, also owned several slaves.
Faculty members should issue the apology because their predecessors benefited from slave labor, punished slaves and were advocates of the slave system, Brophy said.
Manly, who also taught at the small university, records in his diary that he had to discipline one slave in front of the faculty.
Welcomed proposals
Turner and other members drafted eight proposals that they contend will "help make the campus a more welcoming and culturally diverse institution."
They gave the proposals to Witt on Wednesday morning and demanded that he talk with them by Tuesday at 5 p.m.
Witt said he was going to announce similar proposals at Tuesday's Faculty Senate meeting but decided to do it early out of respect for the coalition.
He adopted almost verbatim all eight proposals.
One of the proposals, to create an office of multicultural affairs, had already been brought up by other student organizations. In January, Witt asked Margaret King, vice president of student affairs, to chair a task force that is studying how such an office can be established.
"The multicultural task force has been working hard to help us best define what that administrative unit should look like and where it should be," he said.
The task force's findings are due in May, and Witt said he would make a decision on how to implement the office within three months of their report.
Besides historical markers at the graves and quarters of slaves, Witt will re-submit a proposal to place a federal historical marker at Foster's Auditorium, the place where former Gov. George Wallace stood in the school house door to stop the entrance of the university's first two black students.
He had withdrawn a previous proposal because regulations on renovations are stricter for buildings on the federal historical registry.
A decision on what to do with the unused building will come within in the next 90 days, Witt said.
The coalition proposed using it as a multicultural center.
Tours of the university will also be changed to include stops at the new markers, Witt said.
A recruitment tour had included a stop by Fosters but was changed to focus more on academic and student life, he said.
Witt also said that he will ask a faculty committee review curriculum to determine if more classes on diversity and black history are needed.
The coalition also asked that the university recruit more black faculty and administrators. Witt said he will continue programs to recruit, and he said there has not been significant progress in that area.
Nine percent of senior administrators are black, he said.
Also, starting in May, Witt will meet directly with student leaders to discuss campus issues, also a coalition request.
Coalition member Zenobia Harris, a graduate student from San Angelo, Texas, said the university must recognize the contributions of all its ancestors.
"This is just part of the change that must happen for everybody to feel welcome," she said.
Turner said after the meeting that this is a first step in changing attitudes on campus.
"To change attitudes, you first have to know the facts," he said.
The students asked for a response from Witt by Tuesday as a way to gauge how serious the administration views their proposals and because coalition work was eating their time, Harris said.
"We're happy he did what he did, because I have papers to write," she said.
Reach Adam Jones at [email]adam.jones@tuscaloosanews.com[/email] or 722-0230.
-- "It is very appropriate that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us time and again down through history. Let us rise to the call for freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
--Gov. George C. Wallace Inaugural Address, 1963
2004-04-17 00:15 | User Profile
No surprise here. Our Southern universities have been transforming into clones of Berkeley for a long time now. The only reason for a young Southron to attend one of these cesspools now is to undermine it. I admit that I still go to University of Georgia football games, but I take a good hot shower when I get home because after seeing all the miscegination, and the general deconstruction of our beloved Southland I feel like I've been raped.
2004-04-17 01:02 | User Profile
[url]http://forums.originaldissent.com/showthread.php?p=78280#post78280[/url]
2004-04-17 03:02 | User Profile
zimboobwe here we come
2004-04-17 13:48 | User Profile
Yes, indeed, UA must absolutely recognize its terrible crime of doing something that was not socially, legally, or morally prohibited at the time. UA showed criminal neglect in not referring to their crystal ball to find out how self-righteous idiots would feel about the issue 150 years in the future. The only possible remedy is some inclusiveness, with a side of diversity, all wrapped up in some tolerance. Oh yes, and money, don't forget reparations of some sort. Oops, I almost forgot. Relaxed standards; we need relaxed standards to truly begin the healing process. Oh, yes, and some special treatment. Yes, some special treatment will do nicely.
2004-04-17 13:59 | User Profile
Why is it that the university responds to "racial crimes" of the ancient past by practicing "racial crimes" today?
2004-04-17 14:43 | User Profile
Don't you know that "racial crimes" can only be perpetrated by whites?
2004-04-17 17:18 | User Profile
This makes me want to vomit.
2004-04-18 19:40 | User Profile
sing along everyone...koom-by-ya
next thing we will hear about is a drum festival and spear throwing contest.
2004-04-19 02:27 | User Profile
El Cubano <-------- hiding under the table till the bullets stop flying around.
Like a Mexican told me one time "Me to peachi epanish" jajajaajajajajaj