This was part of the symposium held at the university of virginia in charlottesville. Good morning. In celebration of the bison telling bicentennial, we welcome you to the symposium. Universities, slavery, and the public built landscape, presented by the university of Virginia Commission on slavery and the university, in partnership with the slave dwelling projects Fourth Annual projects. On Vice President and chief officer for diversity and equity, the professor and i cochair the presents cochair the commission on slavery. The slave dwelling project led mr. Joe mug gill and board of directors the slave dwelling project brings attention to sites, people, history, and ways in which the slave contributed to building and sustaining this country. I say 70 to 80 because the temperature dropped about 39 last night. Im not totally sure. They said they had experienced. Humility and a better appreciation for those who live their daily lives is one intent of such an experience. There were very thankful for the slave going partnership. Montpelier. Ns Thomas Jeffersons monticello. The Virginia Foundation for the humanities. The institute in the humanities. Now center for civil war studies. About 40 sessions were scheduled during the fourday symposium. The overnight slave drilling experience. Multiple sessions. 34 breakout panels schedule tonight at 7 30. And i feel trip to monticello and montpelier, president ial homes exploring the legacy scheduled for saturday. Work will be presented covering the civil war. Contemporary issues of race, racism and equality, segregation, White Supremacy and the complicated legacies of slavery and modern society. The human experience, public memory, Community Members, students, to experiences, voices of descendents. Restoration, roots, remembrance. Elements of success, new knowledge and new solutions. They cannot accommodate the 250 on the weightless on the weightless to wanted to register. 17 museums and Historic Sites as institute foundations services, film makers and other organizations. National and local Advisory Boards were established. And many are here today and we thank you. Charged with exploring the universitys historic relationship with slavery, initiatives have included development of a research structure, educational courses, materials and exhibits, and a consortium of 31 institutions addressing the issues of slavery. And gaining approval from the board of visitors for the design of slave laborers to be situated within a bustling area of the as a highlyage site remind that highly visible reminder. You hear more about these initiatives during the symposium. The kickoff celebration is 200th anniversary included a commemoration of the october 6, 1818 cornerstone laying, which occurred in the practice of three. Resilient despite involuntary servitude. Families, disparity of power and privilege, being gifted and not being free to express their own giftedness. The enslaved were cornerstones, for which this institutions future depended. Keystones, the heart. Centerpiece. Mainstay, the trust. Contributions have been hidden for much too long. Bringing together individuals from academia and the community. We are thankful for the support of the symposium by president teresa sullivan. We appreciate your support. Assistant dean and history of college and sciences. And thank you dr. Martin, it has been a pleasure meeting this commission with you for the past four years. I cant put into words how effectively they have devoted to their work over the next four years. If we needed clear evidence of the importance of work here and your work across the nation i doubt we could find it. Brought intove sharp believe just how important this work is. Nationalo engender a conversation about our own path, one that moves beyond campuses and changes general public understandings. Commissions work is regularly greeted on social media with statements such as slavery is bad, can the uav vas uva quit dwelling on slavery echo or studying and the acknowledging straight acknowledging slavery is not a priority. I know a lot of us have a lot of work to do. Im reminded how far we have come from the initial charge. Commission is not a South African style truth and reconciliation issue. We have been deeply reformed by the Restorative Justice mop. This meant sustained Community Engagement for the past three years. Meetings in schools, meetings and churches. All framed around bringing the community to table as partners in our work. Even theake memorial for your slave labor speaks to the many that share with us their perspectives. Its all the more powerful. Our work is strengthening relationships with their Many Community partners. These are the Historic Sites and local preservation groups. We continue to stand on their shoulders. Acknowledgment and a dynamic process. Reinscribing this previous invisibletory, making in multiple formats, and moving forward with a plan from a war orialization and ritual of ritual remembrance. Acknowledging a fuller passed and those who visit the spaces. We have created an entire curriculum around the theme of slavery that can access students to the past and to the professors of dozens of different disciplines who teach relevant courses. This includes a survey and seminar. It also includes a popular summer camp for high school students. They use uva, charlottesville and as the case study. We think it is important. The last model suggested to us the commissions work is not complete until two processes get underway. The first encouraging everyone to engage in similar processes to confront their own path. Createdthat end we universities studying slavery. And we have learned a lot from the schools doing this work. From the United States, canada and scotland. Is one thatrocess involves some sort of reconciliation or repair. And watching closely what schools have been watching. This symposium captures the evolution of our thought and pratt. Hope you will seek out people, panels, and ideas that come from outside your Traditional National associations. Our experience confirms just that, we learn far more by listening to supporters in the contemporary university then we have amongst talking ourselves. We hope we collectively will begin the hard work of talking about actual concrete programs and repair. Together, we can do this. Welcome to the university of virginia. I like to welcome the cochair of the university of virginia bicentennial commission. Good morning everybody. Given a lot of talks, im in medicine and never had a response like that. We need more of that in our country today. Andome to charlottesville our university, particularly those who come from far away. We started this with dr. Sullivan. About a year ago. This is going to be one of the core tenets of our bicentennial, exactly what we are talking about here today. We have been working on it ever since. Toyou dont know how pronounce his last name just go with kurt. Start working on this as a partnership. I was born here over University Hospital 1956. The Little League baseball teams were segregated. Nobody talked about it. Thats just wasnt around in those days. The people responding with this kind of queries are just part of the problem. I was seven years old when Martin Luther king came here and spoke. He made more sense than anyone with the power of speech. I learned through sport we are all equal. They were walking back that they and 250 west. Own they have allowed that have allowed bank. He didnt really react because it was a car backfiring. Went to shield dr. King because he thought it was a gunshot. That metaphorically speaks volumes. You dont experience that it easy to be ignorant of it. That was a subtle form of domestic terrorism in 1963. Here we had an even more profound example of it. Weve got a lot of work to do because our Current Administration is more likely to promote it been prevented. Thankgain i would like to everyone for coming. We have to teach our children that are, because thats when it all starts. We candoing everything and hopefully in the century we can get some place we all want to be. Now my great honor to introduce eighth president of the United States [laughter] [applause] thats what i call wishful thinking. The president of the university of virginia. Shes our first female president and has been a great leader. It is my honor to introduce dr. Teresa sullivan. Thank you all for gathering. I particularly want to thank those of you who come from the universitys other communities. We are eager to tell you what we have learned. I want to thank marcus martin. They and the commission and their staff hope to plan the symposium. I also want to thank bobby battle. Event itsecond was intentional that very close to the beginning of the bicentennial celebration. Four years ago i formed the president s commission on slavery in the university. And advice about appropriate commemoration. They have achieved a lot in four years. Among other things they discovered there were systematic efforts to hide the history they were trying to uncover. That is a detective story. As one of the tangible products, we soon will build uva memorial to enslave labors. Will see a video that tells us more about the memorial. Its important as part of our bicentennial. We dont want to tell a partial story of that past, practicing selective memory in recalling only the parts of our history we would like to recall. As a celebrate the achievements, we cant let those achievements blindness. We cannot let our shortcomings blindness to our achievements. It began as a Regional School for a young man. One of the great universities and passed to greatness. Including women and people of color. The challenge is holding in balance and be conscious of our history that includes the abomination of slavery and at the same time be conscious of our universitys achievement. I think one of the best outcomes of the president s commission on slavery is that students will begin to learn the life stories of many of the people who are essential characters. Certainly they have the opportunity to learn that in a lot of our classroom. About 200 of our students live in house. Tot buildings public spaces display photos and interpretive panels who works displays whose work displays at the university and for whom the Residence Hall is named. They became a prominent religious leader. Became Isabella Gibbons the first person to teach at the jefferson school. A school in short was the lip became part of the Public School system. She taught there for more than 20 years. Others that come and go without live their life stories. We see their names, see their faces and we come to respect and appreciate how much they achieved. That is why we are gathered here at the symposium, to remember, to learn, and to share our stories. To engage fully and opening in these days of reflection and discussion. And with deep respect for the brave human spirit of the people upon whom we reflect the symposium i hope you will enjoy this following video. What we memorialize is important. Oure are some things children and grandchildren remember. Is gone through various periods and phases of what it held in memory and what it forgot. I thought it was important to look at the Hidden History of uva. Thet is to commemorate history but recognize the slave labor contributions. That story was not told. We try to cover new knowledge and pass that knowledge on to our students. One of the charges was to go into the records and learn some of the names of the enslaved. Who was bought and sold, who is rented, who laid the cornerstone . s history is hidden in plain sight. The entire university was at site of enslavement. And its our goal to put the lives of the enslaved back on creatinge information in the rotunda visitor center. Classes that teach the story at the university. We have uncovered much of the history of slave families. We are about to fund raise that will be placed on the footprint of the unesco World Heritage site. To echo thet diameter of the rotunda. Memorial is meant to acknowledge. There is more work to be done here. Tos commission would be able look at other parts for the university history. We are going to use it as a teaching tool. It is our only hope. It isching our students, an opportunity to heal, opportunity to learn, opportunity to know what we need to do next. Im waiting for the light to come on so i can see. Glasses do not help anymore. Lets get rolling. This includes history professor elizabeth faron. Provost, lewis nelson. Yearg jordan and fourth and blackhed major Student Alliance member for theave questions panel please write them on the card and pass them outside. We will begin collecting them around 9 40. Wonderful, thank you. I am delighted to be here and we welcome all of you. The challenges of unearthing the past, connecting the past to the present, and marshaling all the knowledge and goodwill in a space like this to shape the future. We feel a keener stronger sense than ever in light of recent events in our city. A stronger sense of moral urgency in this work and the high stakes of this work and the need for people who share this commitment to make common cause and help each other. Dialogue to start our by posing some questions to my distinguished panel about past present and future and after 45 minutes we will collect and take your questions. We heard in the introduction about this theme of a history that is hidden in plain sight. Uva,ry was pervasive at pervasive in charlottesville and central virginia. The documentary record is complex and fragmentary in some respects. I would like to hear about this challenge of doing research. What does the documentary record tell us what kind of uses can we make of it . The documentary record in the special Collections Library talks about two basic things for whatever cancans, americans did and what was done to africanamericans here at this university. Places, its a bit quirky. Theres no one Central Place we can go and sell it to look at all the slave records. People like me and my colleagues who have a great deal of working knowledge about whats available and what isnt available. Possibilities are endless for research. The records consist of letters, diaries, letters. University records, financial records, faculty and things of this nature. Usually these are people talking about africanamericans. Its not African Americans talking about what is happening to them. White interpretation of what blacks are doing. Some of want to mention my favorite groups of people to prebrights. They often get lost in the shuffle. This placeon is not going to leap right out. Sometimes you will find something youre not looking for. The records are there, its a matter of being patient enough to go through them. And ive been on the plantation for 40 years. I still find myself appalled and saddened by some of the things that happen. Thats something we academics need to remember. These are not abstract beings. They have dignity and they have interest. I would like to think that the records that we have here would reflect that. Thank you so much. So often it is obscured. Owners do get work and work gets done. We have to read carefully with knowledgees who is doing the work. We have no substitute. And holding these documents in them hand and working from directly. And growing databases online. Tell us a little bit about that. I think this is exciting and lewis will chime in with me. Before the commission was even created a group and faculty came together and said we have all need to beds, they digitized and publicly available and connected in a relational database. I know nothing about anything digital. What if we recreated the 19th 3dury university as a digital model that you can zoom in and understand how the landscape and the buildings tell the story about slavery. And how that shaped thes that shaped the enslaved. Shaped the enslaved. They gave us a whole bunch of money to do this work. What we have been creating is exactly this. The faculty minutes, the blb minutes. And now are getting into diaries. Lurking in letter after letter, if any of you have done 19thcentury letter work with a lot of lamenting about how you have arrington have written is the moment there and if you dont know what youre are looking for you will completely miss it. This database has allowed us to do this. Its called jeffersons university. Its working on doing two things, one digitizing all those records and you can track people. There is a long list of enslaved people there. And then theres this digital recreation nearing completion in the 1850s. With the gardens largely becoming work yards for the enslaved. Move away from jeffersons ideal in his head. So they build dormitories for the enslaved, the build kitchens outside. Allowing to move past the vision. Its really deep and robust in , allowing us to search for names. Not only did individuals get suppressed by the institution. Allow this to rebuild narratives of individuals. To test to carefully reconstruct how this landscape functions. See these harrowing tales of student violence perpetrated on slaves. You can cease a c free stories of slave and resistance. You can read resistance. There is so much there. Let us shift a little bit into thinking about this broader theme of changing the volt changing the culture. The students from the outset was to change the culture. And on this and a Student Perspective on what that means. What it would mean and what it would take to change university culture. They were clear, and its not only what we do not know and what we have not been talked not been taught. Schools and schooling mirror society. Who becomes the change agent . Look at anyf we time for social change in history it comes from outside of traditional structures. Students were very intent to date groupial and called the memorial for enslaved laborers began as a Student Group for that and became the seat of what led to many things, including the commission. It has to be co