CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SLAVERY AND JUSTICE
A Place to Learn
PAGE-ROBINSON HALL
Page-Robinson Hall is located on Brown Street, named after the four Brown brothers, Nicholas, John, Moses and Joseph who launched the slave ship Sally the same year as the University’s founding in 1764. Formerly known as J. Walter Wilson, Page-Robinson Hall was renamed in 2018 in honor of Inman Page, Class of 1877, and Ethel Robinson, Class of 1905.
1968 BLACK STUDENT WALKOUT
This building’s renaming in honor of these two pioneers occurred during the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Black Student Walkout at Brown whose leadership by primarily Black women led to the establishment of the Africana Studies Department and Rites and Reason Theatre, the Brown Center for Students of Color (formerly known as the Third World Center), and the Third World Transition Program for incoming first-year students at Brown.
1968: THE DEMANDS
Below is a video of alumni reading the list of twelve demands made by Black students to the University in 1968.
WHO WAS INMAN PAGE?
Inman Page and George Washington Milford were the first two Black students to graduate from Brown University in 1877. Born into slavery in Virginia, Page escaped and survived the American Civil War. Later at Brown, despite a hostile white student populace, he earned the honor of class orator. At his 1877 Commencement address, he presented a speech of such repute that it was covered in the Providence Journal. Page dedicated the rest of his life to education and went on to become a distinguished educator and academic administrator, serving as president of four colleges and universities. Novelist Ralph Ellison was among the many pupils Page influenced. The name of the Inman Page Black Alumni Council reflects his continuing legacy.
“Mr. Page is the first colored graduate from the University. The theme of his oration was the ‘Intellectual Prospects of America.’ ... Mr. Page did not receive his position as class orator from a chivalrous recognition of his race by his white associates, although the choice is none the less creditable to them. He is an orator of rare ability, speaking with weight and sententiousness without effort at display and at times rising to a profound and impressive eloquence. The scope of the essay indicated grasp of thought and the language was often remarkable for elegance and power. There is no doubt but he fairly earned his honors.”
Providence Journal, 1877
GEORGE WASHINGTON MILFORD
After graduating from Brown with Inman Page, Milford later earned a degree in law at Howard University and became a lawyer in Washington D.C., eventually arguing a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Below is the first of two letters written by Milford in the spring of 1875, Milford's sophomore year at Brown, to William Lloyd Garrison, a prominent abolitionist who published the newspaper the Liberator :
"I have to say that I shouldn’t wish to be better treated better [sic] than I am now by all the students. Of course there are some things which I could wish were otherwise, but, then, in your life you doubtless have learned that we can't always have everything just as we want it. I do not see just now how I shall get along during the remainder of this year...I would ask you to give me all the advice and suggestions that you may be able in regard to this matter."
George Washington Milford to William Lloyd Garrison, 1857
WHO WAS ETHEL ROBINSON?
Ethel Robinson was the first Black woman to graduate from Brown, graduating in 1905. After graduating, Robinson returned to Washington, D.C. to teach English literature at Howard University; there she mentored Ethel Hedgeman Lyle in establishing the nation’s first Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, in 1908 at Howard University, an organization which boasts over 300,000 members today.
BROWN AND HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
The Brown-Tougaloo Partnership is a multifaceted relationship between Tougaloo College and Brown University that was formed in 1963 and formalized in 1964, during the Civil Rights Era. The Partnership offers opportunities for student and faculty academic exchanges, collaborative research ventures, and administrative engagements.
This engagement between the histories and lives of a southern, historically black college and a northern, largely white Ivy-League university has inspired and influenced individuals on both campuses. Since its inception, over 760 Tougaloo and Brown students and faculty have participated in the program.
The Brown-Tougaloo Partnership includes the following components: the Student Semester Exchange Program, the Civil Rights mini-exchange, the Black Lavender Experience mini-exchange, faculty exchanges and collaboration, and Early Identification Programs in Medicine and in Public Health among others.
Visit the page on the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership on the Race and Remembering site to learn more about the program’s history from the perspectives of Brown and Tougaloo students.
"THE FIRST ... GRADUATE"
The University has held up both Page and Robinson, along with the Black Student Walkout of 1968, as seminal icons and moments in the University’s history. Today Black students are confronted with their extant legacies on campus in varying ways everyday. The University, and the United States more generally, is quick to draw attention to instances of exemplary Black figures who are very successful against all odds, often in spite of both the anti-Black racism embedded within these prestigious institutions and the nation itself. This obsession with “the first Black...” obscures the virulent racism Black People within the institution have had to resist and masks the ways that Black People within the institution have had to conform to the idea of the “respectable” Black. The Black students who participated in the Walkout name this fact directly in their demands. Here we observe the university obscuring narratives that cannot be reconfigured to fit the story the university tells about itself as a liberal institution. We have a building now named after two Black graduates and not after those formerly enslaved by the Brown family or whose labor was used to build the University.
There is no official acknowledgment of early Native graduates at Brown. Albert L. Anthony was the first known Native person to graduate from Brown in 1944. This lack of recognition extends even to the existence of living local Native peoples themselves. Again we observe the University erasing histories and peoples whose narratives threaten the story that the University has constructed of itself, its founding, and continued participation in a settler-colonial project.