About the Slavery Research Group

One day in what was probably the year 1860, Edward C. Boynton, the new professor of chemistry, minerology, and geology at the University of Mississippi, took a picture of the carriage house behind his faculty residence. Boynton was practicing using his new photography equipment by taking shots of campus buildings as well as his own family members. The new photographic technology he was testing, known as “the wet-collodion process,” had just been invented. The technique utilized individual glass plate negatives which were fragile and “somewhat cumbersome and tedious,” but were superior to “earlier daguerreotype and calcotype processes… and produced images of remarkable sharpness and fine grain.”[1] All of the antebellum photographs of the UM campus were a result of Boynton’s new hobby and the fortunate coincidences that resulted in the survival of his box of high-quality fragile glass negatives.

In the photo he took of the carriage house, we can clearly see three figures. On the far right stands Boynton’s wife, Mary Hubbard Boynton, in a long dress. On the far left, we see his 6 year-old daughter, Lizza, dressed in petticoats and a sporty brimmed hat. And in the middle, framed by the opening of the carriage house, stands an African American woman. Wearing a long cotton dress with a white collar and a scarf covering her head, she rests her right hand on the handle of a wheeled bassinet, likely holding Boynton’s 4 month-old baby, Florence.

We do not know the name of this woman, nor do we know anything about her life attending to the Boynton family and caring for the Boynton children, but she is likely the person listed as the sole slave owned by Boynton in the 1860 Federal Slave Schedule: age, “45;” sex, “female;” color, “black.”

While the photograph connotes her probable role as nanny to the Boynton children (Mrs. Boynton is not holding the bassinet handle), her image–this fragile trace of her life–serendipitously preserved as the only image of antebellum slavery at the University of Mississippi found to date, leaves us with many questions: What was her name and who was she? What was her life like? What was her relationship to her owners and masters, the Boyntons? What did her work entail? Where exactly on campus did she live? What was her relationship to the University? And, most importantly, what was her relationship to the other dozens, perhaps hundreds, of African American slaves who worked on the University of Mississippi campus, and in the surrounding town of Oxford, during those antebellum years? Was her experience similar to those who worked the campus fields and gardens that provided for the student meals in the Steward’s Hall or the cooks and waiters who served these meals? Was it different from those who labored to fire the hand-made bricks and construct the earliest campus buildings, such as the Lyceum and the Observatory? Did she interact with the other slaves who undertook the domestic chores of caring for the students and faculty: building their fires in the morning, making their beds, laundering their clothes, making their meals, emptying their chamber pots? And what happened to her after the war, after her owner and master, Edward Boynton had been dismissed for harboring Northern sympathies and left the University? Did she leave Oxford along with other free people of color to build a new life elsewhere, or did she remain, perhaps even returning to work on the very campus on which she was standing when this photo was taken?

We know none of the answers to these questions because Boynton’s slave, so far as we know, left no letters or documents of her own. It is unlikely that she could even read or write, though she may have been able to do so. Like most of her black contemporaries, her life is shrouded in obscurity; almost completely absent from the material traces typically left by society’s more privileged citizens. Not even the Federal Government, required by law to enumerate every individual in the nation every ten years, asked for her name. What hope does the historian or archaeologist have to ever recover these traces never recorded? Especially when even the faintest signals have been lost, denied, hidden, and even intentionally repressed for over 150 years?

But the stories of slavery and the University of Mississippi are not completely lost. Many fragile traces of antebellum slave life on this campus are actually “hidden in plain sight.”[2] We know, for instance, the names of the enslavers and the extent of their slave ownership. We also know that slavery was a fact of life in North Mississippi prior to the Civil War. Nevertheless, even these facts and details are often obscured by lenses of misperception and misunderstanding. They are minimized, even, by the dynamics of national shame and denial associated with our collective memories of American slavery and the racial biases of the scholars who have spent decades constructing them. The enslavers are called “wealthy planters” in our institution’s official history, the slave labor camps that enriched them and created the economic wherewithal for the founding of the University itself: “plantations.”[3] The details of the founders’ slaveholdings, perhaps casting too dark and painful a shadow for the author or his institution to fully contemplate, are conveniently omitted and carelessly neglected. Nevertheless, the fragile traces are there, waiting to be fully recovered, explored, and understood.

Notes:

[1] James B. Lloyd, The University of Mississippi: The Formative Years, 1848-1906 (Oxford, Miss.: John Davis Williams Library, Department of Archives and Special Collections, 1979), 19.

[2] Working group member Jodi Skipper, as quoted in “UM Students Dig for Clues about Slaves’ Daily Lives,” UM Press Release, April 24, 2015. 

[3] David G. Sansing, The University of Mississippi: A Sesquicentennial History (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1999), 36, 32.

On February 22, 1861, Phi Sigma, one of two antebellum literary societies at the University of Mississippi, held its weekly meeting to facilitate an academic debate and conduct regular society business. During the meeting, however, Francis Fentress, a Phi Sigma member and University of Mississippi student from Bolivar, Tennessee, insisted that there were more pressing matters at hand. He introduced a motion to burn two abolitionist books held in the society’s library.

In calling for the destruction of these abolitionist books, Fentress was not only acting upon an abstract proslavery ideology, he was also working to protect his own very concrete interests in the institution: Fentress hailed from a slaveholding family and no doubt expected to become a slaveholder in his own right one day. In 1860, the federal census slave schedules revealed that, back in Tennessee, Fentress’s mother, Matilda, laid claim to eleven men, women, and children,¹ while his brother James held nine.² In Texas, meanwhile, his brother David also claimed nine enslaved people.³ Fentress continued to act in tangible ways to defend slavery in the months that followed. Shortly after graduating from the University of Mississippi, he joined the Confederate Army’s Seventh Tennessee Cavalry, ultimately rising to the rank of sergeant.⁴

Fentress’s investment in and commitment to slavery, made manifest in his motion, was broadly shared among members of Phi Sigma. The motion carried, and the society organized a special committee to oversee the destruction of these monographs.⁵ Because the society hired enslaved men to prepare and clean their meeting room, and specifically tasked these individuals with building fires, however, it is likely that an enslaved man, rather than the students who sought to keep him and other black people in bondage, built the fire used to burn the society’s abolitionist books.⁶

Notes:

¹ U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census, 1860, Slave Schedules, Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tennessee, s.v. “M.C. Fentress,” Ancestry Library, AncestryLibrary.com.

² U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census, 1860, Slave Schedules, Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tennessee, s.v. “Jomes Fentress,” Ancestry Library, AncestryLibrary.com.

³ U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census, 1860, Slave Schedules, Hays County, Texas, s.v. “M.W. Fentress,” Ancestry Library, AncestryLibrary.com. Note that in this entry the “D.” has been transcribed by Ancestry Library as “M.” The neighbors of D.W. Fentress in the regular census, the Brown family, appear as neighbors in the slave schedule.

⁴ John Allison, ed. Notable Men of Tennessee: Personal and Genealogical, with Portraits, vol. 2, (Atlanta: Southern Historical Association, 1905), 103.

⁵ Phi Sigma Debate Society Meeting Minutes. February 22, 1861. The Department of Archives and Special Collections, J.D. Williams Library, The University of Mississippi.

⁶ Phi Sigma outlined the duties of the hired slave, including building fires, in their September 29, 1849 meeting.

By Andrew Marion and Anne Twitty  |  April 25, 2018

On July 15, 1852, at the invitation of the University of Mississippi’s two antebellum literary societies, Jefferson Davis delivered an address that challenged students and other attendees to defend slavery and the state of Mississippi against ideological attacks. His remarks took place at an annual event during which the Phi Sigma Society and the Hermean Society celebrated their founding by bringing  a well-known speaker to Oxford. Since the faculty mandated that each student join a literary society, it seems likely that every student attended this address, but Davis’s comments were almost certainly heard by every faculty member and many residents of Oxford as well. Before this crowd, which had assembled at the Oxford Methodist Episcopal Church,¹ Davis warned of a coming crisis and described ideological assaults on the institution of slavery:

An unholy crusade has been directed against the domestic institution of the South, under the pretext of a holy horror of the existence of that African slavery which has continued among us after it had ceased to be profitable among our assailants. In vain have appeals been made, to the requirements of the constitution, and the duties of the states. All obligations, social and political, these self-canonized saints proclaim to be annulled by the higher law revealed to them, and which was theirs to execute; though ruin should be thus brought upon a section, and misery be the future lot of both the happy races now inhabiting it. Religion has been perverted from its mission of peace, good will, and brotherly love, to sanctify this unprovoked hostile aggression, and the word of God offered as authority for the commission of half the crime defined by the Decalogue.³

Davis characterized the rising tide of abolitionism in the North as “the most dangerous agitation which has ever disturbed our Union,” and, like Jacob Thompson before him, Davis suggested the college should instill a fierce loyalty to the state of Mississippi and slavery in their students.⁴ Davis told the students they could potentially play a key role in maintaining slavery, stating:

To you, the young men of Mississippi and the [students] of her University, I especially look for the protection of her rights; from you I expect such keen sensibility to her fame and her honor as sons feel for their Mother, and that community of sentiment which gives strength.³

Ultimately, Davis’s warnings and predictions from his address to the Phi Sigma and Hermean Societies became a reality. University of Mississippi students fought to defend their proslavery values and principles when the Civil War broke out less than a decade later.

Notes:

¹ Oxford Democratic Flag, July 21, 1852. The Oxford Methodist Episcopal Church, which was founded in 1834, is today the Oxford United Methodist Church.

² Jefferson Davis. Address Delivered by the Hon. Jefferson Davis Before the Phi Sigma and Hermean Societies, July 15, 1852. The Department of Archives and Special Collections, J.D. Williams Library, The University of Mississippi, 7.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Ibid., 8.

By Andrew Marion  |  April 19, 2018

On May 26, 1849, during its fourth recorded meeting, Phi Sigma, one of the antebellum literary societies students at the University of Mississippi were required to join, paid for the hire of a campus slave for the first time. “The acct of the College Servant, for lighting of the room, and other services, was presented,” the minutes read, “and The Treasurer was ordered to collect the money and pay it as soon as possible.”¹

Such entries, which are scattered throughout Phi Sigma’s ledgers, reveal that while the substance of the organization’s meetings advanced the University’s proslavery mission, their very existence was made possible by the labor of enslaved people. Indeed, the work performed by the unnamed “College Servant” mentioned in the minutes of Phi Sigma’s May 26, 1849 meeting was deemed so essential to the organization’s functions that, a few months later, the body decided to formalize the relationship, passing a resolution stating that it would pay $1 for the services of an enslaved man named George.² The meeting minutes outlined the tasks Phi Sigma expected him to perform. These included attending the hall, sweeping the floor, cleaning the spittoons, disposing of trash, bringing water for the meeting, and making fires when necessary.

Ledger of the Phi Sigma Society, 1849-1867. The Department of Archives and Special Collections, J.D. Williams Library, The University of Mississippi.

The society, moreover, was apparently unable or unwilling to operate without the services George provided: when, at the November 3, 1849 meeting, “George was deposed for not attending to The Hall,” Phi Sigma chose Isaac, another campus slave, to complete the same duties that had previously been assigned to George at the same price. The minutes indicate that on December 8, 1849, the treasurer of the society was instructed to pay for the hire of Isaac, and on February 9, 1850, the society appointed a member to superintend the cleaning of the hall, a command which almost certainly instructed that member to oversee Isaac’s work.³

Despite its dependence on such work, Phi Sigma was often delinquent in paying for the services it hired. The May 11, 1850 meeting minutes indicate that, by that time, the society was “in debt to Isaac, for services.” In response, the society instructed the treasurer to “inquire into the matter and pay if just.” The meeting minutes do not show if this debt was paid, but during the June 15, 1850 meeting, “it was reported that the servant’s time had expired, and he demanded his pay.” The treasurer was then told to pay the amount due. It can be assumed that the “servant” who demanded his pay was Isaac, and it is noteworthy that the minutes explicitly state that he “demanded his pay.” This suggests some autonomy and agency for Isaac, since it would have been bold for an enslaved person to make demands on students.⁴

Precisely how long Isaac continued to work for Phi Sigma after this incident remains unclear, but by December 1852, the society had hired a new campus slave, Simon. During the January 15, 1854 meeting, the treasurer was instructed to pay Simon $3.50 for his services in the hall. Simon appears in the minutes at least until June 1854, when the society once again needed to pay for his hire.⁵

In addition to demonstrating Phi Sigma’s dependence on the work performed by the enslaved, the hiring of slaves by the society also provided a way for students to practice mastery. In the classroom and in their debates, they reaffirmed their own proslavery views, and their personal interactions with slaves allowed them to put their views into action.

Notes:

¹ Phi Sigma Debate Society Meeting Minutes, May 26, 1849. The Department of Archives and Special Collections, J.D. Williams Library, The University of Mississippi.

² In 1849, $1 in wages would have been a significant sum, the equivalent of $241 in wages in 2017. See Samuel H. Williamson, “Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1774 to present,” MeasuringWorth, accessed April 11, 2018.

³ The meeting minutes suggest that The Phi Sigma Society paid the enslaved laborers it employed at the end of each semester. Phi Sigma Debate Society Meeting Minutes, September 29, 1849; November 3, 1849; December 8, 1849; February 9, 1850.

⁴ Phi Sigma Debate Society Meeting Minutes, May 11, 1850; June 15, 1850.

⁵ Phi Sigma Debate Society Meeting Minutes, December 11, 1852; January 14, 1854; June 10, 1854.

By Andrew Marion  |  April 12, 2018

The proslavery mission of the University of Mississippi touched nearly every aspect of campus life. In this, and subsequent, posts, we examine how student participation in antebellum literary societies on campus not only centered around and advanced proslavery ideology but was facilitated by the labor of enslaved people.

On May 5, 1849, near the conclusion of the University of Mississippi’s inaugural academic year, the Phi Sigma literary society recorded their meeting minutes for the very first time. The group had likely met before, but during this meeting they adopted a constitution and established their organizational name.¹

Phi Sigma was created, alongside the Hermean Society, by the order of the University of Mississippi faculty and administration. Because of frequent misbehavior, faculty mandated that each student join a literary society. In addition to their hope that membership in such organizations would help instill discipline, faculty also claimed that participation in fraternal literary societies was both an essential component of a complete college experience and an activity that would reinforce the proslavery mission of the university. Given the importance faculty placed on these groups, it is perhaps unsurprising that they frequently participated in the academic debates conducted by the societies.²

Students debated a wide variety of subjects, including those that touched on history, foreign policy, and philosophy, but the questions Phi Sigma members addressed most frequently centered on slavery, nullification, and secession. In the decade or so before the Civil War, for instance, Phi Sigma members were asked:

Is there a probability that the American Union will be divided within fifty years? Was the nullification of South Carolina justifiable? Are the influences which tend to perpetuate [the Union] stronger than those which tend to dissolve the Union? Would the southern states be doing themselves a forfeit by seceding from the Union? Can a state under any circumstance justly secede from the Union? Will African slavery be perpetuated in the United States?³

The decisions in these debates, which were handed down by the chair, moreover, show the power of proslavery ideology at the University of Mississippi: they suggest that students more broadly believed that the country would shortly be divided, that nullification and secession were justifiable, and that slavery’s future in the United States was at risk.

The meeting minutes of Phi Sigma demonstrate that University of Mississippi students were deeply aware of current events that touched on slavery, nullification, and secession. Students heard constantly about these issues in their courses, and they discussed them frequently in their literary societies. These students would later communicate their own proslavery views through the publication of literary magazines, and their devotion to slavery would lead many of them to take up arms for the Confederate cause.

Notes:

¹ The minutes explain that in previous, more casual, meetings the Society went by the name Phi Beta Kappa. After realizing or being informed that their initial name had already been adopted by another group at the College of William and Mary decades before, University of Mississippi students took the name Phi Sigma, which stood for Philostephanie or “lovers of distinction.” Only the last names of the students in attendance at this meeting are listed, and because several students shared the same surname there is some difficulty in identifying all of them. That said, J.H. Bramlett, James William Lambuth, James Hamilton Mayson, John Townes Mosely, John L. Hudston, John Bannister Herring, Joshua Long Halbert, T.S. Wyatt were present, along with one member of the Kilpatrick family (either E.P. or J.G. Kilpatrick), and one of the three Phipps brothers (Jordan McCullough Phipps, Richard Wright Phipps, and B.S. Phipps). Professor John Wadell was also present. Phi Sigma Debate Society Meeting Minutes, May 5, 1849. The Department of Archives and Special Collections, J.D. Williams Library, The University of Mississippi.

² For general information on the early years of the college, see David Sansing, The University of Mississippi: A Sesquicentennial History (Jackson, Miss.: Mississippi University Press, 1999); Allen Cabaniss, The University of Mississippi: Its First Hundred Years (Hattiesburg, Miss.: University & College Press of Mississippi, 1971); For examples of faculty participation in Phi Sigma debates see the debate notes of William Forbes Stearns in his collection at Archives and Special Collections at the J.D. William Library at the University of Mississippi.

³ Phi Sigma Debate Society Meeting Minutes, September 29, 1849; January 26, 1850; February 9, 1850; October 5, 1850; April 12, 1851; March 28, 1857.

By Andrew Marion  |  April 5, 2018

On November 6, 1848, the University of Mississippi held a celebration in honor of the opening of the college. Both Jacob Thompson, on behalf of the Board of Trustees, and George Frederick Holmes, President of the college, delivered addresses. At the time, Thompson served as a democratic congressman for Mississippi’s 1st District in the House of Representatives. Later, Thompson joined President James Buchanan’s cabinet as Secretary of the Interior. Earlier in his life, Thompson attended and worked at the University of North Carolina, another institution known for its strong pro-slavery identity.

In his address, Thompson outlined his vision for the new university. He explained the process in hiring faculty, and he declared that the university would serve all Mississippians. “To this altar,” asserted, “we invite worshippers from all classes and conditions in society.”¹ Thompson’s claims notwithstanding, of course, the university only admitted white male elites at the time. Thompson subsequently moved into his assessment of the increasingly dire political situation in the United States:

Moreover there is a growing disposition manifest to us all, in different portions of the world and of the United States, to denounce and vilify our institutions which have come down to us from a remote ancestry. On the maintenance of these institutions in its integrity and full enjoyment, our prosperity, safety, and happiness depend. We can never look to expediency; necessity alone, is the ruling consideration, and it is of the last importance to us, that the hearts of our young men should be kept in the right place, and it is verily a sin against our children to send them into that circle of fanaticism, which surrounds our northern colleges.²

In the midst of sectional crisis, Thompson reflected the fears of many prominent Mississippians in the public sphere. They feared the rising tide of abolitionism in the North, and they believed that northern colleges indoctrinated young men with abolition propaganda. Thus, the trustees of the University of Mississippi established the college in opposition to northern colleges. Thompson believed that the university must educate Mississippi’s young men so that they may one day defend the institution of slavery itself.

Notes:

¹ Jacob Thompson, Address, Delivered on Occasion of the Opening of the University of the State of Mississippi: In Behalf of the Board of Trustees, November 6, 1848 by Hon. Jacob Thompson, M.C. Inaugural Address, Delivered on the Occasion of the Opening of the University of the State of Mississippi, November 6, 1848 (Memphis: Franklin Book and Job Office, 1849), 5.

² Ibid., 5-6.

By Andrew Marion  |  February 13, 2017

In September 2013, Charles K. Ross, director of African American Studies and professor of history and African American Studies, and Jeff Jackson, associate professor of sociology, met with Joe Ward, chair and professor of history, and Kirsten Dellinger, chair and professor of sociology and anthropology, to discuss the idea of inviting Craig Steven Wilder, author of Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities to campus. Frustrated by recent incidents of racism on campus and concerned whether our respective departments might be able to do more to provide opportunities for our students and faculty to engage questions regarding the legacies of racial inequality in our local context, we had just emailed each other an NPR story featuring Wilder on the radio and saw immediately the potential of studying the relationship he explored in our own locale. Ross contacted Wilder about the possibility of visiting our campus in February 2014 and learned that he would be interested and available.

The basic idea that emerged from the discussion was to create a faculty reading group, read Wilder’s book collectively, and invite him to campus for a discussion with the group and see where it might lead. We were very encouraged when, upon presenting our idea to Chancellor Dan Jones, he responded with enthusiastic support and a commitment of $20,000 for the reading group. This funding would provide for Wilder’s campus visit, the purchase of the books, as well as a series of luncheons that would allow the reading group to discuss the book prior to Wilder’s visit and discuss the implications of the book for the UM campus following Wilder’s visit. In addition, Jones pressed us to use the remaining funds to explore what other campuses were doing on this issue (Brown University and the University of Virginia, in particular) and to, if possible, develop a set of preliminary initiatives that faculty and students on the campus might be able to tackle with regard to the history of slavery at the University of Mississippi. Dr. Jones also emphasized that these efforts should attempt to connect the realities of antebellum slavery to the legacies slavery in the post-bellum and current contexts.

When we sent out the campus wide invitation for faculty to participate in the reading group, we hoped we would get at least 15-20 reading group members to sign on to read the book and attend the series of luncheons during the Spring 2014 semester. We were encouraged and surprised when 58 people from all over campus signed up! This included faculty from seventeen different departments and centers and a number of people from the central administration, including Jones.

During the Spring semester, 2014 our “UM Reading Group on Slavery and the University” met three times. The first meeting was to discuss the book and prepare questions for Wilder. During the second meeting, we had the opportunity to meet with Wilder to discuss the book and its broader implications. At the third meeting, we discussed what we had learned as a group and decided to form a “working group” that would continue to explore these issues.

The discussions we had within the reading group were engaging and robust. It became clear early in our meeting that we didn’t want to limit our work solely to discussions about enslaved people and their historic significance to the university, but rather we wanted to focus our efforts on addressing bigger and broader contemporary issues of race on campus. In the wake of events across the country in the past year, we felt this was a critical time to examine what is currently happening on campus and become more purposeful and honest about race and diversity. We agreed that faculty often avoid discussions about race because they feel unprepared or are ill-equipped to handle the topic appropriately, and we saw one of our missions to be providing training/support to faculty so they all would be able to facilitate these conversations in constructive and respectful ways.

While the nature and content of these numerous discussions are too much to recap here , what became clear is that there was a great deal of energy and interest among reading group members to delve into this topic more fully. In particular, the reading group concluded that there was tremendous potential in exploring the relationship between slavery and our institution and it recommended that we should form a faculty “working group” devoted to investigating and laying out potential plans and initiatives that we might undertake.

Of the original 58 members of the reading group, 28 signed up for the working group, which met multiple times in the Fall of 2014 and Spring of 2015 to build upon the reading group’s recommendations. We decided to form subcommittees in three main areas: Research, Teaching, and Community Outreach. Each subgroup was asked to meet independently from the larger group to try to identify the “most fruitful first steps” we might take in each area.

Since the formal creation of the UMSRG, we have focused on four areas: building relationships with other colleges and universities who are pursuing similar projects, learning from historians and preservationists, pursuing partnerships with archeologists who specialize in slavery, and, perhaps most importantly, researching the history of slavery and enslaved people on the University of Mississippi’s campus and in the surrounding community.

We began reaching out to other institutions committed to studying slavery’s legacy in October 2014, when two group members, Anne Twitty, associate professor of history, and Lynn Deitrich, volunteered to travel on behalf of the UMSRG to the University of Virginia for a national symposium on the topic of Universities Confronting the Legacy of Slavery. Their report back to the group was extremely beneficial in terms of situating our own activities within the larger national context of what other Universities with histories directly connected to slavery were doing. This symposium subsequently launched the Universities Studying Slavery (USS) consortium, which the UMSRG officially joined in 2016. Group members have actively participated in the USS consortium, with Twitty both attending and presenting at the Fall 2016 meeting.

Since our first visit from Craig Steven Wilder, UMSRG has been joined by a number of additional historians and preservationists to share their insights about how we might move forward. In April 2015 we hosted Nancy Bercaw, curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C., to give a presentation and meet with the group. Dr. Bercaw is a former history faculty member here at UM and her expertise in the areas of slavery interpretation and engaging the public on these matters was extremely helpful for addressing many of the questions we had. Not only did she help us reflect on what community engagement might mean for our own potential activities, but she also offered many ideas about how we might connect to larger funding opportunities and other national and international level initiatives. In February 2016 group members Carolyn Freiwald, assistant professor of anthropology, and Jodi Skipper, assistant professor of sociology and southern studies, brought Joseph McGill, founder and director of the Slave Dwelling Project, to campus. A former employee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, McGill has been publicizing the dilapidated state of sites that once housed enslaved people and attempting to ensure their preservation–by sleeping in them. A couple of months later, in April 2016, group member Anne Twitty, associate professor of history, brought James T. Campbell, the Chair of the committee that drafted the original Brown University “Slavery and Justice” report to the University. In addition to giving a public presentation on his current research, Campbell also addressed the UMSRG on “Lessons from Brown University’s Slavery and Justice Committee.”

In addition to inviting historians and preservationists to campus, we have also pursued relationships with archeologists who specialize in slavery. In particular, we have pursued a partnership with the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS), which has created an online, relational database that contains the digitized results from “multiple archaeological sites where enslaved Africans and their descendants once lived and worked.” Their database has focused, to date, on comparative archaeological research in the Cheseapeake, the Carolinas, and the Caribbean areas, but group member Maureen Meyers, assistant professor of anthropology, has spearheaded efforts to find out more about joining DAACS’s efforts and expanding their geographical focus to include deep South sites in Oxford and Lafayette County. Meyers succeeded in bringing DAACS Analysts Elizabeth Bollwerk and Lynsey Bates to campus in December 2015 and DAACS Project Director Jillian Galle to campus in November 2016.

Finally, the UMSRG has begun the task of unearthing, both literally and figuratively, how slavery and enslaved people shaped our campus and the greater Oxford-Lafayette County area. In spring 2016 the UMSRG funded two research assistants, Andrew Marion and Chet Bush, both graduate students in the history department. Marion and Bush, who were directed by group members Anne Twitty, associate professor of history, and Paul J. Polgar, assistant professor of history, and aided by group members Jennifer Ford, head of Archives and Special Collections and associate professor, Leigh McWhite, political papers archivist and associate professor, were tasked with examining a wide range of materials in Archives and Special Collections. Their efforts culminated in presentations at the September 2016 Empire, Power, Identity, and Conflict (EPIC) conference at Milsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. Marion’s presentation, “‘That the Hearts of our Young Men should be Kept in the Right Place’: Pro-Slavery and States’ Rights Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi, 1848-1861,” examined the effects and purpose of pro-slavery and states’ rights rhetoric in speeches and lectures delivered by faculty, administrators, trustees, and politicians from the University’s founding to the Civil War. Meanwhile, Bush’s paper, “Enslaved Lives Recovered: Autonomy and Agency in the Slave Community at the University of Mississippi,” not only uncovered the names of a number of enslaved people who lived and worked on campus, but explored the nature of their labor and attempts to carve out a space for themselves. In addition to Marion and Bush’s efforts, associate professor of history and UMSRG co-chair Jeff Jackson has also recovered a number of original maps, both of campus and the broader community. These maps have not only provided insight into the buildings that may have been used as living space for slaves and servants from the 1850s to the 1890s, but also the location and extent of various plantations in Lafayette County.

These efforts, of course, are only the beginning, and we look forward to sharing our findings with you as our work continues.

• Create opportunities for University of Mississippi (UM) students and faculty interested in studying slavery, Indian removal, settler colonialism and the legacies of slavery.
• Bring state of the art research techniques and methodologies for exploring these issues to the UM campus.
• Support these efforts through external grants and funding opportunities.
• Become known as a site for innovative practices in American slavery research through the use of traditional manuscript collections, archaeology, public anthropology, cultural geography, historical comparative sociology, ethnography/oral history, critical race analysis, literary analysis and engaged community research.
• Become a clearinghouse for scholars interested in studying slavery in general and slavery in the lower south, in particular. Develop visiting scholars’ program.
• Build connections among our campus community interested in these issues. For information about who we’re working with see our page on Partners.
• Develop classes on “Slavery and the University of Mississippi” for undergraduate and graduate students.
• Build connections to our local community. We’re particularly interested in working with Oxford and Lafayette County schools, and Oxford and Lafayette County history groups as well as entities in Holly Springs and Pontotoc.
• Develop summer classes for Mississippi teachers and community members on the history of slavery on campus and in North Mississippi generally.
• Build connections to our statewide community. We’re particularly interested in working with Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson.
• Build connections to the larger national discussion on slavery and the University. We’re particularly interested in working with Brown University Center for Study of Slavery and Justice, University of Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Alcorn, Tougaloo, and Mississippi State.
• Build connections to the larger national and global discussion on slavery. We’re particularly interested in working with the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery and the Smithsonian Institution.
• Build a permanent site or destination for students and visitors to learn about slavery on campus and in North Mississippi generally by exhibiting artifacts and objects related to slavery our locale.