The University of Virginia has taken another step in its quest to raise awareness of what enslaved people contributed to UVA during its early years.
At a special ceremony, the school named a new dormitory for Isabella and William Gibbons, a married couple who lived and worked on campus before the Civil War. Dr. Marcus Martin is co-chair of UVA’s commission on slavery.
“They were butlers, cooks, waited on kids, washed clothes, did a number of things, and then when they were emancipated he became a minister of the oldest black church in town, and she became a teacher at the oldest school in town.”
Both could read - even though it was illegal for them to learn that skill. History Professor Kurt von Daacke adds that slaves were central to building the university.
“Slaves are responsible for grading the very ground that the university is built on. They shaped nearly every brick that the university was built with, and they ran nearly everything in terms of day-to-day functioning - chopping wood, cleaning rooms, cooking food, slaughtering animals, tending gardens.”
Gibbons House will be one stop along a new heritage trail to be created on campus - a path marked by memorials to the enslaved. UVA has also hired a historian to spend three years researching the subject of slaves at the university.