New Cornell University Fellowship Honors The First Black Student to Earn a Ph.D. in...
The Thomas Wyatt Turner Fellowship will support up to 10 graduate students from 1890 institutions, which are historically Black colleges and universities that are land-grant universities. They will spend the 2022-23 academic year on the Cornell University campus.
The University of Tennessee Acquires the Personal Archives of Artist Beauford Delaney
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Libraries has acquired the complete personal archive of internationally renowned modernist painter Beauford Delaney (1901–1979). Delaney was a member of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the leading modernist painters of his time.
The First Building on the Campus of the University of South Carolina Named for...
During the Reconstruction period, Celia Dial Saxon was one of the first African American students to attend South Carolina College, later the University of South Carolina. She taught school in Columbia, South Carolina for 57 years.
One of the Earliest Schools for Black Americans to Become Part of Colonial Williamsburg
Last fall, the College of William and Mary and Colonial Williamsburg announced that they had verified that a building on the college's campus, which was built in 1760, was the home of the Bray School where both enslaved and free Black children were educated in the eighteenth century. The college sold the building to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
The University of Alabama Renames Hall Honoring a KKK Member, and Then Renames It...
Graves Hall, honoring former Governor Bibb Graves, a Grand Cyclops of the KKK, was renamed Lucy-Graves Hall to also honor Autherine Lucy the first Black student at the university. After an outcry that Lucy's name should not be joined with the name of a KKK leader, the university renamed the building Autherne Lucy Hall.
Researchers Find That El Niño Impacted the Volume of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
El Niño, an oceanic phenomenon that affects worldwide weather patterns, significantly affected the number of enslaved Africans transported from West Africa to the Americas between the mid-1600s and mid-1800s, according to an interesting new study from the University of California, Davis.
Yale Divinity Schools Examines Its Ties to Slavery and Begins to Make Amends
Yale Divinity School recently acknowledged its historical complicity in slavery and racism. It is allocating $20 million to fund 10 social justice scholarships each year for incoming students who are dedicated to social justice work.
Yale University Acquires a Collection of Gordon Parks’ Photographs
Gordon Parks was a true renaissance man. In addition to a long career as a photographer, he was a composer, musician, author, and filmmaker.
Baylor University Opens Its New Black Gospel Archive & Listening Center
The centerpiece of the Black Gospel Archive & Listening Center is a sound isolation pod, which features high-end audio equipment and a full keyboard for researchers who want to play along with sheet music or recordings from the collection.
The American Psychological Association Apologizes for Its Past History of Racism
The apology began by stating that "the American Psychological Association failed in its role leading the discipline of psychology, was complicit in contributing to systemic inequities, and hurt many through racism, racial discrimination, and denigration of people of color."
Yale University to Build a Memorial to Recognize Enslaved People Who Worked on Campus
Research by the Yale and Slavery Working Group found that enslaved people worked on the construction of Connecticut Hall on campus and that many leading figures associated with the early eras of the university held enslaved people.
University of Rochester Creating a Digital History of a Fort in Ghana Used by...
A new digital history project at the University of Rochester in New York will create a website with meticulously detailed virtual tours of a 1632 English fort on the coast of Ghana that was among the earliest to send enslaved Africans to the American colonies.
A New Oral History of Black Alumni at Four Educational Institutions in the Carolinas
The “Counting It All Joy!” initiative aims to better understand and to make more visible the narratives of Black people who have attended Davidson College, Duke University, Furman University, and Johnson C. Smith University between 1990 and 2020.
Bowdoin College in Maine Has Established Four Endowed Chairs to Honor Black Alumni
Bowdoin College, the highly rated liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine, has announced the creation of four new endowed faculty professorships that honor distinguished Black graduates of the college. The four new chairs will honor Matthew D. Branche, Iris W. Davis. Rasuli Lewis, and Frederic Morrow.
An Oral History Project of Black Students at Pennsylvania State University a Half-Century Ago
Among the oral history subjects, there were mixed feelings about Penn State. Some have returned to campus with fond memories, while others do not have positive memories and refuse to come back to campus.
Western Kentucky University Honors its First Black Student
The board of regents at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, has approved the renaming of Northeast Hall to Munday Hall. The change honors Margaret Munday, the first African American student to enroll at the institution. Munday Hall will be the first building on campus named after an African American.
Johnson County in Iowa Isn’t Changing Its Name, Just Who It Is Honoring
Johnson County in Iowa was originally named for Richard Mentor Johnson, a slaveowner who served as vice president under President Martin Van Buren. Henceforth, Johnson County will honor Lulu Merle Johnson, who was the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Iowa and taught at several historically Black colleges and universities.
Emory University Apologizes for Failing to Consider a Black Medical School Applicant in 1959
In 1959, Marion Gerald Hood applied to the medical school at Emory University in Atlanta. After less than a week, Hood was informed that his application had been rejected. A letter from an admissions official stated "I am sorry I must write you that we are not authorized to consider for admission a member of the Negro race."
Board Votes to Change Name of Dixie State University to Utah Tech University
Dixie State University was founded in an area settled by Mormons from the South. It used to have a Rebel as a mascot and in 2012 a statue of Confederate soldiers was removed from campus. Today, African Americans make up 2 percent of the 11,000-member undergraduate student body.
Washington University in St. Louis Acquires the Papers of Author Charles Johnson
University Libraries at Washington University in St. Louis has acquired the papers of Charles Johnson, the acclaimed author, cartoonist, and essayist who won the 1990 National Book Award for his novel Middle Passage.
Three Virginia Community Colleges to Change Their Names
Three Virginia Community Colleges have a green light to change their names and two other colleges are being directed to consider doing likewise after the State Board for Community Colleges voted unanimously to amend its community college naming policy.
Arkansas State University Honors Its First Black Faculty Member
The University of Arkansas System board of trustees has voted to rename the building housing the military science program as the Lieutenant Colonel Frederick C. Turner Jr. Military Science Building.
Vanderbilt University Acquires Large Collection of Dizzy Gillespie Memorabilia
Vanderbilt’s partnership with the National Museum of African American Music has taken a giant step forward with the university’s inaugural acquisition — a rich collection of portraits, personal scrapbooks, signed albums, and more from the life and career of Dizzy Gillespie, a seminal figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz.
Washington and Lee University Trustees Vote Not to Change the Name of the Educational...
In July 2020, the faculty at Washington and Lee University supported changing the name of the university by a vote of 188 to 51. Now the university's board of trustees has voted 22 to 6 to retain the name.
An Unwanted Surprise for the Wingate University Community
In 2018, Wingate University asked three employees to look into whether any buildings, monuments, or statues around campus were named after anyone with egregious pasts. Nothing was uncovered. But researchers at Wake Forest University recently discovered that Washington Manly Wingate enslaved African Americans.
Website Will Track Racial Residential Segregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, Since 1957
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture is creating a map-based website that tracks how urban renewal changed the city of Little Rock in the decades following the Central High School desegregation crisis in 1957.
College of William and Mary Renames Buildings That Honored Confederates or Segregationists
The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, has renamed three buildings and a department that currently honor supporters of the Confederacy or Jim Crow segregation. Two other buildings were renamed a year ago.
Texas Christian University Examines its Ties to Slavery, the Confederacy, and Racial Segregation
The research revealed that the father of the university's founders owned slaves. The founders did not own slaves, but their upbringing did expose them to slavery and racism. The university’s founders were Confederate soldiers.
University of South Florida Debuts New Online Archive on African American History in Florida
The curated collection pulls from decades-old acquisitions and includes unaltered photographs, newspaper archives, and personal narratives. The goal is to continue to build the portal into a larger collection that will help students, educators, researchers, and the general public learn about Black experiences in Florida.
University of Pennsylvania Has Announced Plans for Its 1,300 Piece Morton Collection of Crania
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has announced its action plan regarding the repatriation or reburial of ancestors, including the remains of enslaved individuals and Black Philadelphians. Today, the Morton Collection consists of over 1,300 crania that range in date from ancient Egyptian times to the 19th century.
Western Carolina University Produces a Digital Archive of a Black Oral History Project
The special collections unit of the library at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina, has digitized a collection of oral history interviews conducted between 1986 and 1989 with Black residents from Western North Carolina, all of whom were older than 69 at the time.
Library of Congress Changes Subject Heading of the Tulsa Race Riot to the Tulsa...
The impetus for the Library of Congress Subject Heading Change Proposal Task Force was the members’ shared belief that naming matters: the words used to describe people and events affect perceptions and, in turn, those perceptions have concrete implications for social justice.
Baylor University Issues a Report on Its Founders’ Ties to Slavery and the Confederacy
First and foremost, the report stated that the institution will continue to be known as Baylor University and the statue of namesake Judge R.E.B. Baylor will maintain in its current location on Founders Mall, despite the fact that he enslaved people.
Scholars Assemble a Massive New Database on Enslaved People
Scholars affiliated with the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, the MATRIX Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences at Michigan State University, and other institutions have established a new open-source database called Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade.
Consortium of Prestigious Academic Institutions to Collaborate on SlaveVoyages.org
Emory University in Atlanta will now bring in a group of partners to help it maintain and enhance its SlaveVoyages.org project. The website documents nearly 50,000 transatlantic passages of slave ships between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Auburn University Honors Two of Its African American Trailblazers
Auburn University in Alabama admitted its first Black student in 1964 under a court order. Recently the university recognized its first Black graduate and the first African American to sit on its board of trustees by naming residence halls in their honor.
