Roanoke College reached a milestone in its years-long project to research and document the enslaved people connected to its campus and founders.
The design of a planned campus memorial was unveiled Friday. It consists of a bronze stack of about a thousand books and the names of hundreds of enslaved people connected to the college or its founders.
The design is the work of Richmond-based artist Sandy Williams IV.
"One thing I was thinking about was the bricks of Bittle Hall that will sit behind the memorial, Bittle Hall being the historic library that again was built by enslaved labor. But they were not given access to that space," Williams said during a news conference Friday.
Roanoke College was founded in 1842. The names attached to the spines of the books have been uncovered over the past five years by students researching property and birth records and wills.
"Some of the books will be turned around and facing just the pages out and that’s to kind of speak to the absences in the record and the people who we know were here but will remain unnamed because the record didn’t hold them properly."
The memorial will be installed in the spring. College officials say the research into those names and many more will continue.
"This research can continue seriously for generations because we’re talking about more than 4,000 individuals," according to college historian Jesse Bucher. "And each one of those individuals has a story and a biography and relations to the world around them."
Williams hopes the names will create an empathetic link with students who find a connection with a name. "Every time I find one of these stories, it makes the space around me make more sense. I think so often where we are in this moment of political and environmental and social turmoil can seem so confusing until you look at the records and look at where we’re coming from and see how we got here. And then it just makes a lot of sense," Williams said.
