Reparations: What UVA Owes Transcript

Ryan [00:00:01] Charlottesville is the home of the University of Virginia, founded in 1824 by former President Thomas Jefferson.

Ryan [00:00:11] The campus was designed by Jefferson, a self-taught architect. It looks like the platonic ideal of an American university with its long rolling green lawns and neat brick paths surrounded by brick buildings with neoclassical white columns, all of it rising to a three-story rotunda.

Ryan [00:00:36] Jefferson may have designed the original campus, but he didn't build it.

Myra [00:00:44] When you think about the fact that the university has flourished on the backs of the slaves, that the enslaved workers that built that.

Ryan [00:00:57] That's Myra Anderson, a Charlottesville native and community organizer.

Myra [00:01:03] And in flourishing, they created a whole line of wealth and privilege that continued to be passed down generation to generation. So you have that on one hand. And then on the other hand, descendants of the people who made this place flourish, is down here begging for crumbs like this is so ridiculous.

Ryan [00:01:31] Historical sites like Monticello have started to acknowledge not just Jefferson's life, but the ugly facts that made it possible.

Myra [00:01:39] No, my main connection is actually to Monticello. My ninth generation, grandmother and grandfather, whose name were David and Isabel, as well as my eighth- generation grandmother and grandfather, whose names were Lonnie and Sarah, arrived at Monticello in 1774 as part of the inheritance Thomas Jefferson got from the death of John Wayles.

Ryan [00:02:08] There's an increased focus on the lives of people like Myra's ancestors.

Myra [00:02:13] So in 1827, 1826-1827, at the death of Thomas Jefferson, there were 34 of my ancestors who were sold, one of them, my sixth-generation uncle, Brimson, was sold to the university and that's my connection to Monticello.

Ryan [00:02:30] The university has also publicly acknowledged that it was built and run within enslaved labor through the civil war. A memorial to enslaved laborers on the campus was completed in the spring of 2020. But for Myra and other descendants, the acknowledgment that slavery existed is not enough. She and other activists are pushing for reparations. Restitution for the descendants of people whose labor built the university and helped make it one of the wealthiest public universities in the country.

Lawrie [00:03:13] I think the main thing is not to think of reparations as a panacea.

Ryan [00:03:19] Meet Lawrie Balfour, a professor of politics at UVA who has researched and written about reparations in relationship to African-Americans.

Lawrie [00:03:30] No single form of reparations on its own can undo the violence, the theft, the loss.

Ryan [00:03:37] Without a doubt, individuals who are able to trace their lineage and discover that their roots helped to build the university deserve forms of reparative justice. But this also includes Black people who aren't able to trace their lineage.

Lawrie [00:03:57] As I read more, especially about the reconstruction period, it became very clear that reparations were owed in multiple ways. They were owed because enslaved women and men created the wealth that they brought this country into the modern industrial world.

Ryan [00:04:22] One of the things that is most striking about this history is that it is a history that literally continues to live. Not just through its questionable statues and building names, but through the members of the university and the community.

Ryan [00:04:38] Among them is Jessica Harris.

Jessica [00:04:41] My family history goes back all the way, as we discovered recently, to the enslaved community at Monticello. So, my family has been in this area for generations.

Ryan [00:04:51] As a descendant of enslaved people from Monticello, Jessica, much like the larger UVA and Charlottesville community, has thought about the complicated legacy of Thomas Jefferson.

Jessica [00:05:03] So I think my perception of Thomas Jefferson changed long before I set foot on grounds when I went home and had this conversation as a person of color with my family, like, what is this? What does this mean? How can you know this this man whose home my classmates and I go to and it's fun. How can that, you know, be brought to bear with the fact that he was a slave owner and that that he treated folks horribly and owned people as property?

Lawrie [00:05:34] There's some simple things I think that UVA can do. One thing is to eliminate the kind of gratuitous references to Jefferson so that Mr. Jefferson's university, talking about Mr. Jefferson's university, makes it an unwelcoming place for some people. And I am not sure that it's necessary to use that language to make it welcoming to others.

Ryan [00:06:01] So as UVA continues to grapple with this complicated history. What does the future of reparations look like at the University of Virginia.

Lawrie [00:06:12] Whether or not it's tied to an idea of reparations specifically, I think a racially just future UVA would involve expanded access so that the university is more broadly affordable, so that we don't have students, for instance, who are living with food insecurity.

Myra [00:06:40] I will say, at least at Monticello, like there, I feel like they're trying to do some things. They have what they call promise grants, which I think they awarded 12 last year, and they were all for college scholarship to descendants of people who were enslaved there. UVA has done nothing like that. They need to, they need to have legacy scholarships, tuition free to descendants of the enslaves workers there. That's a start to me.

Jessica [00:07:12] I think, in terms of what that looks like, whether that's, you know, waved tuition for descendants or whether that's providing additional resources or support in terms of, you know, whatever that looks like. I'm not claiming to be a fiscal expert by any means, but I do know that if you want to make change, you have to put your money where your mouth is.

Ryan [00:07:42] This audio project was produced for the Religion, Race and Democracy Lab at the University of Virginia. With help from the lab's senior producer, Emily Gadek, and the lab's editor, Kelly Hardcastle Jones. I also want to send a special thanks to Myra Anderson, Lawrie Balfour and Jessica Harris for all of their great contributions, as well as Murad Idris for all of his help and guidance along the way. Music for this project comes from Blue Dot sessions, and you can find more documentary research on religion, race and democracy at religionlab.virginia.edu.