The Memorialization for Enslaved Laborers, or MEL, hosted an event Friday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
The event featured speeches from a panel of University faculty, a member from the Board of Visitors and a member of University President Teresa Sullivan’s Commission on Slavery and the University. A question and answer session followed the speeches, as well as historical tours about African-American history on Grounds led by the University Guide Service.
“The purpose of this event is really to tell students and faculty and the higher-ups of the U.Va. administration about the reasons why we want to memorialize the enslaved laborers, our thoughts on it and the importance of doing it,” MEL Chair Diana Wilson, a second-year College student, said.
Kelley Deetz, the commission’s research associate and keynote speaker, said the commission has been working to plan a memorial for enslaved laborers at the University.
“[The commission] has been working very hard with MEL and faculty and staff to try to figure out a way to start planning [the memorial],” Deetz said. “So [we] are here today to ask the Board and President Sullivan for permission to move forward on planning.”
The University is among a small group of colleges and universities around the nation to start planning and building a memorial for enslaved laborers, Deetz said. Other schools working on memorials include the University of North Carolina, Brown University, the College of William and Mary and Georgetown University.
“There is a lot of momentum right now — especially with the events around the world with black lives,” Deetz said. “The people who built this university, we don’t know much about them and we may never know them.”
Architecture Prof. Lewis Nelson commented on the centrality of enslaved laborers to the construction of the University.
“Grounds has the potential to signal who we are not or remind us of who we do not want to be,” Nelson said. “But our history is not going away.”
Nelson worked in the Architecture school to find physical remnants of slavery on Grounds and to preserve them.
“The material and physical legacy of slavery is printed in our landscape,” Nelson said. “We have a preservation responsibility.”
Students attending the event also noted the impact of students working together with faculty and the University administration. Second-year College student Jordan Maia said it is crucial for the University to have a connection between students and professors.
“I think it’s important to connect a student CIO with a bigger community,” he said. “[With that connection] such a small club will have a larger impact.”
University alumna Ishraga Eltahair said while she and her classmates started a competition in 2011 for the memorial and awarded winners, the commission does not yet know what the memorialization will look like.
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