Uncovering the Slavery History at University of Virginia
University of Virginia Rotunda
University of Virginia’s history was tied inextricably to the South and slavery. From 1809 to 1819, Thomas Jefferson developed his vision for a new form of public higher education in Virginia. Jefferson, who owned 607 people over the course of his life, believed it was important to educate Virginians, and other southerners, in an institution that understood and ultimately supported slavery.
Slavery remained essential to the University of Virginia for its first fifty years, they built the entire school and served the students until the Civil War brought freedom to the people who lived and labored there. However, freed people continued to work at the school for very low wages. To secure the labor that was needed, the University rented enslaved people from slave owners in Albemarle and the surrounding counties, with some enslaved people traveling upwards of seventy miles to the construction site.
Statue of Thomas Jefferson
Between 1830 and 1860, according to the census records, the population of enslaved African Americans residing in faculty, staff, and hotelkeeper households fluctuated from a high of 143 in 1830 to a low of 92 in 1850. The actual overall numbers yearly were likely somewhat higher when short-term rentals are factored in. The census data shows that enslaved African Americans were at all times one of the largest populations residing within the grounds.
Sexual assaults against the enslaved African Americans were very common. In April 1850, the faculty clearly recorded an act of “violent outrage (a rape).” According to the notation in the minutes, the victim was described as a “small negro girl, a slave about 12 years old.” The rape was committed by three students: George H. Hardy, Armistead C. Eliason, and James E. Montandon. They were discovered by three other students who “interfered to prevent it.” In this instance, the students reported the actions of their classmates to the authorities and the faculty voted to expel them from the school. However, the three students expelled for the rape in 1850 were clear exceptions in terms of their punishment. In many cases, students receive minor or even zero punishments for committing rape. In Professor Harrison’s 1829 complaint, because “there was no evidence but that of a slave,” and because the “offense occurred in the dark,” and the students denied involvement, the faculty decided not to do anything. The students were well aware that they were rarely held accountable for their behavior. In most cases, the offender received no punishment at all.
The First African American at UVA
In the early fifties, there had been some black students who entered the University's specialty schools, like Law, Medicine, and Education. The university president back then was Colgate Darden. Gregory Swanson is the first African American accepted by UVA, he entered the University of Virginia Law School in 1950. The undergraduate community, however, had not been desegregated until five years later. In 1955, three men bravely made history by being the first three to desegregate the University of Virginia’s undergraduate community. Their names were Robert Bland, George Harris, and Theodore Thomas, and they all had hoped to receive a degree in UVA's Engineering program.
However, they found their efforts to be exhausting. For Bland’s experience, he did not recall anything particularly pleasant. All Bland recalled was spending a lot of time with his textbooks. Bland was determined to do well in his classes, his math and science background was strong, but not strong enough to compete with his white peers, who were exposed to higher quality of education during their earlier years of life.
Alienated from their classmates, Bland, Harris, and Thomas studied and socialized together. Bland and Harris were roommates and Thomas was right down the hall from them in his own single. The social life of the University was centered primarily around fraternity life, so if one was not in a fraternity or not allowed to be in a fraternity, opportunities for socializing were very few. As the doors to fraternity life and other social clubs were closed to Gregory Swanson, they were also closed to Bland, Harris & Thomas.
In each other, they sought academic support and strength. The black community of Charlottesville welcomed them into their homes, churches, and social events, the black community of Charlottesville were proud that finally, black men were attending the University for an education, not to clean another hall or dormitory. But at the end of the first year, Harris and Thomas withdrew from the University and transferred to other universities. Bland stayed and as a result was the only African American to graduate in the Class of 1959.
Gregory Swanson, UVA and UVA Law’s First Black Student
Those other trailblazers that followed Bland were Harold Marsh and Rupert Picot who made up the Class of 1956. Elmer Dandridge, Nathaniel Gatlin, Aubrey Jones, Walter Payne, and James Trice were the black students in the Class of 1957. Leroy Willis was among them that entered in 1958. There were less than 10 each year, just a few brave ones who decided instead of attending an all-black university with their friends they would attend the University of Virginia.
The HistoryMakers at UVA
Elaine Jones, one of the HistoryMakers, was the first African American woman admitted and graduated from the University of Virginia law school. She encountered discrimination during her study. When she was reading a book in a resting area, a white lady, who was the secretary of a dean, came up to her, being polite to her as she can be, said: I know you're taking your rest break now but when you finish, would you clean the refrigerator? “She saw color only. She didn't see the books.” Elaine concludes.
Elaine Jones, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive
HistoryMaker Cassandra Newby-Alexander is another UVA alumni. She graduated with her B.A. degree in American government and African American studies from the University of Virginia in 1980. “During those four years I hated Thomas Jefferson because he represented all the bigotry and the sexism that I encountered there.” She recalls on her first day of class, she didn't see any black people the entire day until she returned to dorm where there were about three or four blacks in that dorm. Racism was everywhere. “There would be some people who would pass by you and they would hit you with their shoulder, sometimes hard enough to knock you back, and I would get a lot of that…it was that nasty kind of racism.” Sometimes when Cassandra and two or three of her black friends were walking down the street, people would pass by in the cars calling them “nigger, nigger, nigger,” and throwing water balloons at them. Cassandra was also not satisfied with the number of black faculty at UVA, so she went up to the dean of faculty, who was a racist, and tried to convince him to hire more black faculty, but unsurprisingly got refused. She realized that even though couldn’t change the mindset of that racist dean, she could still make some influence by publicly embarrassing the school. “And I remember my mother calling me up one day during that year and asking me why I was on the front page of her newspaper marching across a bridge when I should have been in class, and, and I, you know and I thought you know this is what you all have, have raised me to do is to be true to myself and I really believe that it was important that that institution change what it held so dear, which was white supremacy,” Said Cassandra.
HistoryMaker Cassandra Newby-Alexander
Arlene Maclin went to earn her M.S. degree in theoretical nuclear physics from the University of Virginia in 1971. “The first day of class, there are--and this is in our classical mechanics class. Professor comes in. There are thirty-eight white boys and me.” The professor encouraged students to work in groups of three, but she was left alone. She did struggle a bit through the first semester, yet she was better than the majority of the white boys: “at the end of the first semester, the two top males in that class invited me to their group.” Said Arlene with a smile. Arlene proved her ability and erased other’s prejudice through her hardest work. From Elaine, Cassandra, and Arlene’s stories, despite racism, sexism was also a challenge to their academic lives. Their intersectionality of being both black and women had them experienced more discrimination than black men.
HistoryMaker Arlene Maclin
