Davidson College owns slaver past and reconciliation

DAVIDSON COLLEGE

Davidson College commissioned the sculpture “With These Hands” as part of its public recognition of his slaveholding past and reconciliation efforts to acknowledge the people and descendants impacted by its participation.

Davidson College is publicly owning its connection to slavery, but won’t remove the name of at least one slaver whose name is on a campus building.

The school announced today that it is advancing its work on understanding the college’s history regarding slavery and expanding its commitment to education and reconciliation efforts in the present and future. At the study’s center is Maxwell Chambers, a Salisbury financier and slaveowner whose 1855 gift prevented the college from collapse.

The report was written by Hilary Green, the James B. Duke Professor of Africana Studies and Davidson’s public historian. The study – which college officials say was written without school-mandated restrictions – reveals Chambers’ buying and selling of plantations made him a slave trafficker and that the school benefited by receiving at least five slaves and a Salisbury factory from him.

When Chambers died in 1855, his will bequeathed $250,000 that helped Davidson survive the loss of students and faculty before and during the Civil War. The college didn’t collect the full amount because of challenges by his family and later sold the factory to the Confederacy.

Chambers freed 48 enslaved people while he was alive as well as in his will, but he also left more than 160 slaves in bondage, bequeathing some to relatives and friends.

“Chambers derived his wealth, power and reputation through his involvement in the institution of slavery and the slave trade,” Green’s report reads. “He bought, sold and owned enslaved individuals. He accumulated his fortune off of the labor of enslaved people on plantations he owned through foreclosure and in a factory that he owned in Salisbury. His reliance upon slavery made possible his philanthropy to Davidson College and to the Presbyterian Church.”

Said Davidson President Doug Hicks, a 1990 graduate, in a statement: “Maxwell Chambers’ history is the college’s history. The hard reality is that nearly every person associated with Davidson — presidents, trustees, professors, and benefactors — were implicated in the institution of slavery. Simply put, almost all of them were slaveholders. Every name in the college’s early history is associated with enslavement. Removing the name from this building would not expunge our history, and having the name remain requires us each day to account for it, to never forget.

“Our responsibility in the present is to talk about it, teach it and make sure it never happens again. We are called to educate our community about this history, and to expand the college outreach and reconciliation work toward descendants of those who were enslaved.”  

Hicks, trustees Chair Alison Hall Mauzé, a 1984 graduate, Vice Chair Anthony Foxx, a 1993 graduate and former Charlotte mayor and U.S. transportation secretary, and Acknowledgment and Naming Committee Chair Erwin Carter, a 1979 graduate, co-signed a message to the college community that read: “The Board accepted this recommendation to leave the Chambers name, driven by the moral conviction that the college’s collective energy should fuel actions for remembering the history, doing further research and teaching about it, and for reaching out to descendants of the enslaved in meaningful ways.”

The school is establishing a Committee on Education and Reconciliation to support understanding of the college’s history and a more inclusive campus. The board accepted the Acknowledgment and Naming Committee’s recommendation to leave Chambers’ name on the building.

The first Chambers Building, built in 1860, burned in 1921. Its replacement, which still stands, was dedicated in 1930 and funded through insurance payouts and donations.

“What happens in understanding history, particularly history in the United States relative to slavery,” Foxx said in a statement, “is we’re confronted with the underbelly of who we were, where we were at a certain point in time. And the question, then, is: What is our responsibility to today? What is our responsibility to the future?

“What makes this question not so simple is that you can remove stuff — names, statues, whatever. And I can make an argument about why that is useful in some cases and maybe not useful in other cases. But what we don’t want to do, what we never want to do, is forget that history. Because that is the recipe to have it repeated.”

The college will also commission research and programming and permanent exhibits on Chambers’ full history of Maxwell Chambers, a Salisbury financier whose wealth largely was built off slavery.
Davidson also will expand its efforts to identify, contact and connect with descendants of people enslaved by Chambers as well as other school founders and benefactors.

Green’s research on Chambers dovetails with studies on the Beaver Dam Plantation site, the home of descendants of William Davidson, a Revolutionary War general and the college’s namesake that sits 3 miles from campus.

The college is hiring an archaeologist and program manager, to support archival and archaeological studies of the enslaved people who lived and worked there. The school is also moving ahead on “With These Hands,” artwork by artist Hank Willis Thomas that will anchor Davidson’s quad between the four original campus buildings.

College leaders will support creation of an historical display on campus. Oak Row and Elm Row, two of the original buildings and located next to the memorial, are on track to become historical and educational spaces.

Davidson plans to expand efforts toward identifying and engaging with the descendants of people enslaved by Chambers and many of Davidson’s original leaders and faculty. Green has spoken with descendants of people enslaved by Chambers who live near Oberlin, Ohio, where their ancestors migrated in 1855 and 1856 – five years before the Civil War.

“Perhaps [the descendants’] most clear request,” Green wrote in a report to the board, “is that they be acknowledged, not erased.”

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