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Davidson College, a liberal arts college in North Carolina, apologized Wednesday for the institution’s “complicity in perpetuating slavery” during the 19th century.
President Carol Quillen said in a video statement that the college “benefited from creativity, labor and talent stolen from Black people” from 1837 to 1865.
The apology came after a recommendation by Davidson’s Commission on Race and Slavery, a group formed in 2017 to examine the institution’s historical ties to slavery. The commission released a new report, unanimously supported by the college’s Board of Trustees, that details the construction and maintenance of Davidson in 1835, which relied on slave labor and was led by slave owners, according to a press release from the college. The commission also reviewed the college's actions after the Civil War, when it “engaged in racial discrimination and segregation consistent with local practice during the Jim Crow era,” the report said.
“While Davidson College as a corporate entity did not own enslaved people, financial records of the college show that the college also paid area slave owners for the labor of their enslaved people as servants on the Davidson College campus,” the report said.
The apology is the start of further work planned by the college to acknowledge and address institutional racism, including building name changes; antiracism training for faculty members, staff and students; and “auditing admission, hiring and other practices through the lens of racial equity,” the press release said.
“While an apology is an important acknowledgment, we know that by itself it is insufficient,” Quillen said in her statement. “We have much work to do to understand the pain and injury the college has caused as well as to appreciate fully the strength, gifts and power of enslaved persons and our foundational indebtedness to them.”
