By Dan Fountain, Professor of History, Meredith College
Meredith College, a liberal arts college for women in Raleigh, North Carolina, implemented an anti-racism initiative in the spring of 2020 that called for us to “work to understand the realities of our history and any linkage to systemic racism.” I have no doubt that Meredith’s leaders undertook this initiative with sincerity and forward thinking goals in mind. However, like many institutions, our written college history painted an overly rosy picture that left our community unprepared for the realities our research into the past would reveal.
After all, Meredith, a women’s college, had to be on the right side of history because it provided much needed educational opportunities to a neglected segment of our state’s population! Right?
While Meredith did open the doors to a college education for many of North Carolina’s white women, our founders, shaped by the antebellum era, sought to bend their own era to reflect to the racial ideas and attitudes of their society’s slave-holding past. This means that our institution grew up alongside and many of its leadership and faculty supported or helped construct the infrastructure of the Jim Crow South in North Carolina.
Dan Fountain, Professor of History, Meredith College
Discovering this kind of hard history can be difficult for college communities steeped in feel good stories to come to grips with and Meredith is no different. Campus research into our namesake, Thomas Meredith, revealed that the Pennsylvania-born minister was a longtime slaveholder, vehemently opposed abolition, authored a pro-slavery pamphlet in 1847, defended slavery in a multitude of editorials, used enslaved people as collateral for loans, and freed no one in his 1850 will.
Despite this evidence, the college’s initial statement announcing the retention of Meredith’s name read “At different points in his life, he argued both for slavery to be preserved, based on Biblical inclusions of slavery, and for its abolition, calling slavery “scriptural but evil.” After some internal discussion, an amended statement stripped out the word abolition but retained the overall sense that Thomas Meredith wasn’t fully committed to the institution of slavery. I remain disappointed by this statement that doesn’t square with what I see plainly in the historical record.
While I am proud that Meredith went on to change the name of two buildings honoring staunch advocates of white supremacy, the above episode is a reminder of the complications that institutional interest can impose on the writing of campus histories. As such, writing entries for the Locating Slavery’s Legacies Database presents scholars an opportunity to present their findings outside of the institutional context.
As a professor, I was thrilled that the database provides a real world opportunity to apply the research, writing, and analysis skills we develop in our majors. Writing about one’s alma mater also infuses student database work with a seriousness and purpose that traditional assignments sometimes lack which pushed her to always strive for excellence.
The entries my student researcher and I create reflect our original research about Meredith College, warts and all. We allowed the historical evidence to drive our descriptions and conclusions solely without allowing institutional interest to put its thumb on the scale.
Needless to say, this has been a wonderful opportunity for an undergraduate student to write for and consult with professional historians as she begins preparation for graduate school. Zoom meetings with and editorial feedback from the database team at Sewanee were friendly and supportive but gave her much needed experience with teamwork in a professional setting and guidance on how to write for a public audience.
As a professor, I was thrilled that the database provides a real world opportunity to apply the research, writing, and analysis skills we develop in our majors. Writing about one’s alma mater also infuses student database work with a seriousness and purpose that traditional assignments sometimes lack which pushed her to always strive for excellence. What an amazing teaching tool!!
Overall, my experience working with the LSLdb has been a highlight of my work to explore our institutional history and am grateful for the opportunity to demonstrate our community’s commitment to building a better and more inclusive society that rejects bigotry of all kinds. I encourage other faculty to avail themselves and their students of this valuable and worthwhile opportunity.