Mote expresses regret for slavery

Stops short of issuing an explicit apology

Published: Thursday, October 8, 2009

Updated: Monday, October 12, 2009 12:10

University President Dan Mote expressed regret on Friday for the university's early connections to slavery, but stopped short of issuing an apology.

His remarks came after students from an undergraduate research course released "Knowing Our History," a 40-page report showing an intimate relationship between slavery and the university's origins as an agriculture college.

Although the report found no definite proof that slaves built campus buildings or served the university's early students, it makes clear the university was a product of wealth built on slave labor and a society rooted in plantation culture. The report shows that 16 out of the university's original 24 trustees owned slaves, and Charles Calvert, the university's founder, owned 52 slaves.

After the students introduced their findings in a ceremony at the David C. Driskell Center, Mote repeatedly cast the university's founders as products of their time and did not formally apologize for the university's ties to slavery.

"As inheritors of a society in which slavery was practiced widely, we all share in the benefits and tragedies of that era," Mote said. "The University of Maryland is like many institutions founded in the era in which slavery was practiced in the United States. Because of this legacy, the university shares in the profound regret for the suffering and injustices."

The state of Maryland, the United States Congress and several other universities have issued such apologies.

Mote personally commissioned the research course last year after the university's 150th anniversary reignited a debate about slavery's role in building the Maryland Agriculture College, which later evolved into the university. But even after 18 undergraduates, a graduate student and history professor Ira Berlin investigated the matter for two semesters, the role slaves played in the university's founding is still not entirely clear.

The university's first president, Benjamin Hallowell, was an ardent abolitionist who accepted the position based on the condition that slaves wouldn't work the campus grounds. And the report notes that university's emphasis on agricultural science likely implied that even its slaveholding founders recognized the limitations of the state's struggling slave-based economy.

But Hallowell quit his job after one month at the institution, and it's unclear whether slaves worked on the campus after he left. Regardless, the report stresses the Maryland Agricultural College emerged from a slave-dependent economy.

Even if the slaves didn't lay a single brick on the campus, they likely delivered supplies and built its bricks and mortar, said junior history major Grace Waldron, who contributed to the report.

"In this economy, you're going to have slave labor involved in the building of this campus no matter what," Waldron said. "But whether they built the buildings, whether they labored on the campus, we just can't say with 100-percent certainty."

In light of their early findings, the students recommended the university study slavery further, issue a statement of regret and reassert its commitment to international fair-labor laws. They also urged Mote to honor Hallowell and the black laborers who contributed to the university by naming them as founders.

Mote said he would review the recommendations, but expressed reservations about adding to the list of the university's official founders.

"We're going to respond to the ones that we can respond to," Mote said. "We, of course, support those recommendations in general, but I think it's a bit difficult to change your founders. It's like trying to change the signers of the Declaration of Independence."

After the university's 150th anniversary, several black students and professors called on Mote to formally apologize for slavery's history on the campus. But the Rev. Jerome Fowler, the great-great-grandson of one of Calvert's slaves, balked at the idea on Friday.

"I believe the founders should be recognized, and of course, I am favorable to my ancestor being recognized as what they have called a founder of the school," he said. "My only concern, and the only hesitation that I have, would be the recommendation of a statement of apology coming from the university because none of us that are living were a part of that society. We are all of the present society. None of us are slaves. None of us are slaveholders."

slivnick@umdbk.com

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Phig

Thu Oct 15 2009 12:49

Slavery was a GREAT thing. It developed our nation which helped out white people who own this place. It also saved lives of blacks from being eaten by lions and death by their tribal warfare.

Your name

Wed Oct 14 2009 08:27

Mike R. that is the most fail I have seen contained in one post in quite some time. Good job.

Mike R

Tue Oct 13 2009 19:54

There is an obvious anti-Mote slant in this article. Is this supposed to be news or an opinion column? Frankly, we should be thanking Mote for bringing this issue up and expressing regret for the university's past. Forcing him to apologize to people who were not victimized for an institution he was not involved in is a worthless endeavor. What does anyone expect it to do? Fix the mistakes of the past? End racial inequality in America today? Boost a few activists' egos by making them feel that they're accomplishing something for civil rights? I don't think that his apology would accomplish anything useful at all.

And anti-Idolitarian, I can see where you're going with the "blacks should be thankful to whites for ending slavery" argument, but it has not and will never convince any public figures in the black community. That logic is equivalent to me robbing your house, burning it to the ground, and expecting you to thank me profusely later on when I return some of your stuff. While white abolitionists like Lincoln have received an enormous amount of gratitude from black people, the fact remains that Africans still had not made up what they had lost.

Big AL

Mon Oct 12 2009 21:15

If the African slave trade didn't exist, the labor would have been homegrown. But it did exist, and people of the time were simply taking advantage of a historically proven method. We didn't invent slave labor or an indentured workforce, that was in place centuries before. And it still goes on in many cultures, and we support it worldwide. Look down at those sneakers you're wearing.

Do many black or white folk today have a problem with child labor in China? It's huge, but so far away and unseen. How about the slave labor and child soldiers in many African countries? Ya can't see it from your house, right?

This country was built on the backs of not just black slaves, but on the backs of all sorts of immigrant labor. If not for the Chinese, Italians and Irish, we'd have no railroads right? Wrong..that would have been done no matter what. Folks just took advantage of racial and ethnic bigotry because it was convenient, and put those considered to be less than human to work.

Bottom line, this country is an omelet built from many broken eggs. We are all stronger and live better, for the past mistakes, which have been corrected for the most part.

Anti-idiotarian

Mon Oct 12 2009 10:28

Only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. This is true even for those who lived in the ante-bellum South where only one white in five was a slaveholder. Why should their descendants owe a debt? What about the descendants of the 350,000 Union soldiers (including Marylanders) who died to end slavery? They gave their lives. What possible moral principle would require their descendants participate in offering apologies?

Anti-idiotarian

Mon Oct 12 2009 10:25

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the advent of the Great Society in 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences (in contracts, job placements and educational admissions) - all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances. It is said that apologies (issued ad nauseum) are necessary to achieve a healing between African-Americans and other Americans. If trillion dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a "healing," what will?

Anti-idiotarian

Mon Oct 12 2009 10:23

What About The Debt Blacks Owe To America?

Slavery existed for thousands of years before the Atlantic slave trade was born, and in all societies. But in the thousand years of its existence, there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Christians - Englishmen and Americans -- created one. If not for the anti-slavery attitudes and military power of white Englishmen and Americans, the slave trade would not have been brought to an end. If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?

Anti-idiotarian

Mon Oct 12 2009 10:21

On Columbus Day, Americans should recall that blacks were here before the Mayflower. Who is more American than the descendants of African slaves? For the African-American community to isolate itself even further from America is to embark on a course whose implications are troubling. Yet the African-American community has had a long-running flirtation with separatists, nationalists and the political left, who want African-Americans to be no part of America's social contract. African Americans should reject this temptation.

For all America's faults, African-Americans have an enormous stake in their country and its heritage. It is this heritage that is really under attack by the reparations movement. The reparations claim is one more assault on America, conducted by racial separatists and the political left. It is an attack not only on white Americans, but on all Americans -- especially African-Americans.

America's African-American citizens are the richest and most privileged black people alive -- a bounty that is a direct result of the heritage that is under assault. The American idea needs the support of its African-American citizens. But African-Americans also need the support of the American idea. For it is this idea that led to the principles and institutions that have set African-Americans - and all of us -- free.

JJohn Parr

Sun Oct 11 2009 19:25

I am absolutely ashamed of some of these posts. Talks about hunting white people, come on ladies and gentlemen, I thought we stopped this mess over a century ago. You guys are acting a bit naughty naughty here. I am a maryland alumn, and everytime time Im on that campus, underneath that blazing sky, I am proud to be a maryland Grad and damn proud to be an American. I thought this was the land of the equal and the land of the free, where the eagle's flying higher and higher. We havent put all of our wheels in motion over the past century or so to revert back to reverse racism here. You guys need to see the writing on the wall, and jibberish about hunting white's and "getting real" are only taking us backwards in our pursuit to be a truly free and equal society. This is certainly not taking me where my future wants to lie.

Voodoo Priestess Nephertite

Sun Oct 11 2009 19:22

I'll say a chant to curse the White creatures in your class Luis F. You should say it too for the full effect. Make sure that you face north when you say it.

Come dance with me
Goddess of the Sun.
Good One of the East.
Faithful One of the West.
Show us your wisdom.
Guide us to the light.
Protect us from harm.
Pave our paths.
The salvation will be ours.
Give us strength.
Give us courage.
So let it be. Let it be.

Your name

Sun Oct 11 2009 19:21

Steve Perry

Sun Oct 11 2009 18:47

I have never been so proud to be a Terp! SLAVERY OHH YEAAA ALRIGHT!

Sun Oct 11 2009 15:19

What the hell is "Cynthia" talking about? A simple word search returns 0 on "left" or "prop". Did he/she forget to write a racist sockpuppet post?

World Class Sweet

Sat Oct 10 2009 23:30

Kelly... "world class university" LOL

Get over it

Sat Oct 10 2009 23:27