CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SLAVERY AND JUSTICE
A Place to Learn
REFLECTIONS ON THE REPORT
Below are reflections from various community members within and outside the Center, using the Report as a point of departure in order to explore a number of issues highlighted in the Report including but not limited to questions surrounding the role of institutions in slavery and the slave trade, confronting slavery’s legacy in the present-day, and the reparations question and slavery's relationship to capitalism, among other pressing topics.
"...To try and think about why this Center is important to Brown, the Center was formed out of the Report of the Slavery and Justice Committee, the 2006 report. The report came out at a moment when there were discussions in America about questions of reparations and slavery...what I think was important, was an additional element to the discussion, and that was the ways in which institutions like Brown don’t have to take into account their historical formation—in other words—How was the university founded? How was it funded? How did that funding shape the university? If it shaped it at all? And if the university was connected to the Atlantic slave trade in any shape or form in terms of its funding, What actions could the University now take, remedial actions, actions that would recognize its founding, but would also try and think about how we could go forward and think about how we were founded.
The why is really about how institutions reckon and take account of their history and then try to move forward once they have done the reckoning and the accounting. That why is about how democracy really works, in thinking through institutions and the history of any particular country, and that is why I think the Center is a Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, because it is a center that thinks through not just history, but it thinks through justice and how can we make this a better democracy than what we have now."
Professor Anthony Bogues
BROWN UNIVERSITY
“The men who constructed University Hall, their names were Pero, Mingow, and Job, and in University Hall there is a permanent exhibition titled Hidden in Plain Sight, and one of the panels in this exhibition is a log of the work they were forced to do. Seeing their names highlighted on this ledger is basically one of the only remnants of the forced labor they had to do. Thinking about this and juxtaposition with the fact that Brown University is named after the Brown family and their legacies are much more legible to a whiter public but seeing Pero, Job, and Mingow’s name on this log is probably the only time people on this tour or in general will know that enslaved people were basically foundational to the building of the university.”
Chandra Marshall, 2018-2020 CSSJ Fellow, AM '20
“...the Center has held me accountable over my time at Brown...and thinking about what it means to be a student at Brown in terms of Brown's history...the Slavery and Justice Report was such an amazing report and such important scholarly work went into creating the report, but [it is important] to recognize that the Report is an ongoing project in how we can continue to think about what it means to be at an institution where we are studying in buildings that were built by enslaved people or funded by money from the transatlantic slave trade...so to continually question, and think about, and then, most importantly, act on what that means today...I appreciate the Center for encouraging me to continue to reflect on that and encourage action as well.”