Washington College Magazine
Owning Up To Our Past
by Baird Tipson, President
As college President, I have the privilege of judging two important competitions. You might know that, along with members of the English Department, I decide who among the Sophie Kerr Prize contestants has the strongest portfolio of original writing. You are less likely to be aware that I serve as one of seven judges who determines the winner of the George Washington Book Prize.
I tell you this because I have just finished the first of three finalist entries for the 2008 prize, Marcus Rediker's The Slave Ship: A Human History. Without prejudicing my final decision, I must tell you that this first-rate book has compelled me to think even more deeply about America's deeply troubling history of race relations.
The Slave Ship tells the story of how African people—whether taken captive in war, convicted of a local crime, or simply kidnapped—were uprooted from their villages, marched to the coast, sold to slave ship captains, transported under the most brutal and terrifying conditions to the American colonies, and sold to the highest bidder. Despite the economic incentive for the captains to deliver the "cargo" alive, many enslaved people died en route, sometimes more than 100 on a single voyage. Those who survived the voyage faced similar challenges: 15percent died in the first year of their slave labor. No one who reads The Slave Ship can imagine how the defenders of American slavery could possibly have believed that it was a benign system that "improved" the lives of enslaved African people. Rediker further contends that the slave system did not simply enrich the slave owners; it fueled enormous economic growth that benefited the entire nation.
From its founding, Washington College was complicit in the slave economy. William Smith owned slaves. Many of the original College benefactors were Eastern Shore slaveholders. Both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman grew up in slavery in our immediate neighborhood. What is the College's responsibility to its own past?
As an educational institution, Washington College can tell the truth about our past, even when that past is deeply disturbing. We offer a number of courses on African-American topics, courses which form the basis for our Black Studies minor, and several of our students have done prize-winning research on local African-American history, from the activities of the Underground Railroad in the 1850s to the regrettably recent desegregation of the College itself a full century later. Professor Carol Wilson of our History Department published her fine book, The Two Lives of Sally Miller: A Case of Mistaken Racial Identity in Antebellum New Orleans just this past year. The C. V. Starr Center supplements our curricular offerings by bringing nationally prominent authors to Chestertown to speak on difficult topics, most recently Ralph Eubanks on growing up in racially-tense Mississippi, and Sherrilyn Ifill on lynching on the Eastern Shore.
We can also make every effort to expand access to students who would not traditionally have considered Washington College. The Vincent Hynson Scholarship has attracted outstanding students from Kent County. We have an agreement with Chesapeake College and the Kent County High School that guarantees admission and a full-tuition scholarship to any local student from a low-income family who maintains a strong grade point average and enters Washington College as a junior. Competition for academically talented African-American students is particularly intense, and Kevin Coveney and his Admissions staff compete vigorously to recruit such students. Efforts to diversify our student body—and staff—will continue, though progress seems painfully slow.
Honestly confronting our past, as individuals and as a College, creates a foundation for growth. Admitting and working to correct our mistakes and misjudgments allows growth to occur. Like all of America, Washington College is trying to understand its history, to recognize its past shortcomings as well as its many accomplishments, and to grow.
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