UA faculty considers apologizing for campus slavery By JAY REEVES The Associated Press 4/19/2004, 12:02 a.m. CT TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) -- Vestiges of slavery are all over the University of Alabama. Behind the majestic president's mansion are three small buildings where slaves lived and worked before the Civil War. The mansion and several other campus structures contain bricks made by slaves. Teachers of the antebellum period owned slaves, and two buildings are named for university presidents who did, too. Another hall honors a doctor who advocated the idea that blacks were genetically fit for slavery. With all these reminders and more lingering at a university that is now among the most racially integrated in the South, leaders are making a break with the sins of the past. The Faculty Senate on Tuesday will consider a resolution apologizing to the descendants of people who were enslaved at Alabama, founded in 1831 and mostly destroyed by Union troops during the war before being rebuilt. President Robert Witt said he "doesn't have a problem" with the apology if it is a beginning rather than an end to the university's attempts to become more diverse and inclusive. "If it does stop there we fail," Witt said in an interview. "I am afraid some think words are enough. I do not." Last week, with momentum for the apology building, Witt agreed to the requests of students and teachers who asked administrators to acknowledge the school's links to slavery with historic markers, including one near the unmarked graves of two slaves buried on campus. The author of the proposed apology, law professor Alfred Brophy, said the resolution is more about making a statement of acceptance today than stirring up the hurts of the 1800s. While reparations for slave descendants and apologies have been discussed for several years nationwide, no other university has apologized for its ties to slavery, Brophy said. "I hope this will be something positive for the university," said Brophy, walking near a campus building he said may have been built in part with slave labor. The proposal has critics, however. Brophy, with degrees from Columbia University and Yale University, has been lambasted on talk radio shows, and the Web site of the school newspaper is sprinkled with criticism. A faculty member who opposes the apology called slavery "the great American tragedy" - an indelible, horrid part of American culture. Because of that, said music professor Marvin Johnson, the idea that an apology could do any good is demeaning to blacks who were enslaved, poor whites who suffered under the antebellum economic system and faculty members of the 1800s who were following a practice of their time. "It's not going to fix anything," said Johnson. "You can't `apologize' for slavery. It's a drastic oversimplification." Alabama isn't the only school reviewing its ties to slavery. Brown University in Providence, R.I., last month began a two-year inquiry into its links to the slave trade. But race is a particularly sensitive topic at Alabama, which last year marked the 40th anniversary of then-Gov. George C. Wallace's showy "stand in the schoolhouse door" to prevent integration in 1963. Brophy, who has written on race and property laws in early America, came to Alabama in 2001. A campus diversity group asked him last year to present a talk on slavery at the university, which today has about 20,000 students, 15 percent of whom are from minority groups. Research assistants found texts and records documenting the use of slaves at Alabama, which had only a half-dozen or so faculty members and about 100 students when the Civil War began. Brophy said he was amazed by some of what they found: Basil Manly, a prominent Baptist minister who served as university president from 1838 to 1855 and gave the invocation at the inauguration of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, owned slaves and was a leading apologist for slavery, Brophy said. Today, Manly Hall is named for him. Nott Hall is named for Josiah Nott, remembered today mainly as a proponent of the theory that different races of people had different origins, and that blacks were genetically built for slavery. Besides the president's mansion and an old observatory that survived the war, Brophy said, slave labor went into Gorgas House, built in 1829 and the oldest building on campus. A historic marker outside the house tells of the family it was named for, but it doesn't mention the slaves who helped build it and, for a time, lived there. Brophy said that while he would like to see the names of some buildings altered to acknowledge the early role of blacks at Alabama, he doesn't believe anything should be removed, including a stone marker honoring students who served in the Confederate army. Manly Hall could become Manly-Luna Hall to acknowledge a campus slave named Luna, he said. "You want to have monuments to the people of the past. But let other people have their monuments, too," said Brophy. Witt doesn't support the idea of renaming campus structures. Rather, he said, new things should be added to give a broader portrait of the university's past. With the Faculty Senate set to vote on Brophy's resolution, his work already has had an impact. Last week, about 80 people attended a ceremony organized by black students to remember two slaves known only as Jack and Boysey who were interred near the old campus cemetery. Witt announced the new historic markers and other acknowledgments of Alabama's ties to slavery after meeting with organizers of the ceremony, which he attended rather than going to a trustee meeting. Robert Turner, a senior from Tuskegee who helped organize the event, said it is important for the university to tell the whole truth about what happened on campus during the antebellum period. "The university has a duty to own up to its past," said Turner.
______________________________________________________ RollTideFan - The University of Alabama Athletics Discussion List "Welcome to RollTideFan! Wear a cup!" To join or leave the list or to make changes to your subscription visit http://listinfo.rolltidefan.net
