Researching since 2020-2021 as the Vann Professor of Ethics in Society, this page contains some but not all of my campus history research. This page highlights transcriptions, primary sources, and other materials for understanding the history of slavery and its legacies at Davidson College. It is for current students, alumni and staff who want to deepen their understanding of this campus history as well as educators who want to enrich their courses. More importantly, it is a resource for descendants grappling with this complicated history, other institutions engaged in similar projects, scholars and all other interested life-long learners.
It is a work in progress.
It is a work in progress.
Institutional Statements and Initiatives
Commission on Race and Slavery, Report and Initial Actions
Commission on Race and Slavery, Formal Apology for Role in Perpetuating Slavery and Systemic Racism
Race, Slavery, and Reconciliation, a college website detailing past and current initiatives for reconciling its complex racial past.
With These Hands: A New Monument to the Enslaved and Exploited at Davidson College, www.davidson.edu/race-slavery-and-reconciliation/memorial-enslaved-and-exploited.
Oak Row Exhibition Space, https://www.davidson.edu/about/race-slavery-and-reconciliation/oak-row.
Hilary Green's Maxwell Chambers and His Complicated Connections to Davidson College, report (2023), maxwell_chambers_and_davidson_college-final.pdf
Commission on Race and Slavery, Formal Apology for Role in Perpetuating Slavery and Systemic Racism
Race, Slavery, and Reconciliation, a college website detailing past and current initiatives for reconciling its complex racial past.
With These Hands: A New Monument to the Enslaved and Exploited at Davidson College, www.davidson.edu/race-slavery-and-reconciliation/memorial-enslaved-and-exploited.
Oak Row Exhibition Space, https://www.davidson.edu/about/race-slavery-and-reconciliation/oak-row.
Hilary Green's Maxwell Chambers and His Complicated Connections to Davidson College, report (2023), maxwell_chambers_and_davidson_college-final.pdf
Primary Sources and Transcriptions
Jim Crow Era Janitors at Davidson College
File: "Servants" at Davidson
YMCA Black Homeownership Program
File: "Servants" at Davidson
YMCA Black Homeownership Program
BHM Social Media Campaigns
2025 African Americans and Labor: This campaign showcased the names of the men and women who worked at Davidson College from slavery to the post-desegregation era. Pdf copy of the final campaign: bhmcampaign2025.pdf
Locating Slavery's Legacies Project
In addition to "unessay" projects, students complete a variety of assignments exploring campus history. During Fall 2023 semester, students have been developing contributions to the Locating Slavery's Legacies Project. Learn more about the DH project here.
Frequently Asked Questions About With These Hands memorial and Oak Row Exhibition Space
The Research Process:
Research has included a multi-facetted examination of a range of sources about known employees and unknown employees identified in college and published sources as well as named employees gathered directly from descendants. Some individuals left few archival traces. Others have fuller archival documentary presence. For each name, there is at minimum one specific piece of evidence documenting their campus employment. Digital copies and transcriptions of sources have been carefully maintained for reference and future inclusion in a digital humanities project exploring African American college employees from slavery to the post-desegregation eras. I began this work during my Vann Professorship of 2020-2021 and continued in earnest after becoming the James B. Duke Professor of Africana Studies in 2022.
Sources used, but not limited to the following:
Descendant Gathered Information:
For individuals whose descendants identified their seasonal, part-time employee, or direct employment by individual faculty, Presidents, fraternities, and the eating houses, I conducted extensive research in the above sources verifying the connections. I have found that these individuals fall outside of traditional college records because the institution used generic terms with names such as hands, servants, laundresses or janitors or in the case of the post-1965 campus directories, only included full-time employees. Ancestry.com, oral interviews, Newspapers.com, obituaries, and community histories frequently supported the descendants’ familial archives.
Collaboration with Archives and Special Collections:
Collaboration with librarians and archivists have been essential throughout this project. For my classes, they helped with in-class research trips to the Davidson College archives and special collections, identifying campus resources for student projects, and my own individual research.
Student involvement:
This work is not just a research project but a part of my own pedagogical and Davidson College’s commitment to teaching. As part of the course assignments,
students have been involved in writing short biographies and documenting the final resting places of identified employee for the Locating Slavery’s Legacies (LSL) Project, a digital humanities project developed at Sewanee: The University of the South. In some classes, they have focused primarily on the men and women who worked during the Reconstruction Era profiled in a 1895 photograph from in the Quips and Cranks, Jim Crow era, and post-desegregation era. Students research, draft, and edit these entries. Following the class, the entries are edited, peer reviewed for LSL standards and made public for use on the project site.
In upper-level classes, students have been using Davidson College Archives and Special Collections for crafting longer research papers on early African Americans employees during enslavement and the post-campus desegregation campus eras. For the latter historical period, they have primarily focused on Paula J. Miller Moore, Brenda Tapia, Charles Dockery and Nancy Fairley but a few have focused on early athletic coaches.
In addition to continuing these efforts, students will be used as possible fellows working in the Oak Row exhibition space dedicated in October 2025.
The Work Ahead for Dr. Green:
Research has included a multi-facetted examination of a range of sources about known employees and unknown employees identified in college and published sources as well as named employees gathered directly from descendants. Some individuals left few archival traces. Others have fuller archival documentary presence. For each name, there is at minimum one specific piece of evidence documenting their campus employment. Digital copies and transcriptions of sources have been carefully maintained for reference and future inclusion in a digital humanities project exploring African American college employees from slavery to the post-desegregation eras. I began this work during my Vann Professorship of 2020-2021 and continued in earnest after becoming the James B. Duke Professor of Africana Studies in 2022.
Sources used, but not limited to the following:
- Davidson College Archives and Special Collections, including manuscript collections, official college and alumni publications, campus directories, yearbooks, newspapers, and other student publications. Faculty and trustee minutes and D-Files were consulted.
- The Quips and Cranks, annual student yearbook, 1895-2020
- The Davidsonian, student newspaper, with help from a DataCats project, https://open.rc.davidson.edu
- Published campus and town histories, including Beatty, Blodgett and Levering, Engle, Puckett, and others
- State archives and digital collections
- Oral interviews conducted by students and staff and housed in college archives
- Ancestry.com for census records, death certificates, marriage certificates, and other information to understand the life and experiences of documented individuals.
- Newspapers.com for obituaries and newspaper coverage of college employees
- Digital copies and transcriptions of the articles have been maintained.
- FindAGrave.com
Descendant Gathered Information:
For individuals whose descendants identified their seasonal, part-time employee, or direct employment by individual faculty, Presidents, fraternities, and the eating houses, I conducted extensive research in the above sources verifying the connections. I have found that these individuals fall outside of traditional college records because the institution used generic terms with names such as hands, servants, laundresses or janitors or in the case of the post-1965 campus directories, only included full-time employees. Ancestry.com, oral interviews, Newspapers.com, obituaries, and community histories frequently supported the descendants’ familial archives.
Collaboration with Archives and Special Collections:
Collaboration with librarians and archivists have been essential throughout this project. For my classes, they helped with in-class research trips to the Davidson College archives and special collections, identifying campus resources for student projects, and my own individual research.
Student involvement:
This work is not just a research project but a part of my own pedagogical and Davidson College’s commitment to teaching. As part of the course assignments,
students have been involved in writing short biographies and documenting the final resting places of identified employee for the Locating Slavery’s Legacies (LSL) Project, a digital humanities project developed at Sewanee: The University of the South. In some classes, they have focused primarily on the men and women who worked during the Reconstruction Era profiled in a 1895 photograph from in the Quips and Cranks, Jim Crow era, and post-desegregation era. Students research, draft, and edit these entries. Following the class, the entries are edited, peer reviewed for LSL standards and made public for use on the project site.
In upper-level classes, students have been using Davidson College Archives and Special Collections for crafting longer research papers on early African Americans employees during enslavement and the post-campus desegregation campus eras. For the latter historical period, they have primarily focused on Paula J. Miller Moore, Brenda Tapia, Charles Dockery and Nancy Fairley but a few have focused on early athletic coaches.
In addition to continuing these efforts, students will be used as possible fellows working in the Oak Row exhibition space dedicated in October 2025.
The Work Ahead for Dr. Green:
- Continue to research employees who worked in the less documented campus areas, specifically eating houses, fraternities, and direct employees of faculty and Presidents.
- Continue to research enslaved campus laborers of trustees, faculty, and college presidents.
- Continue to have students create biographies and memorial entries for the Locating Slavery Legacies Project.
- For employees identified by descendants, continue to corroborate information via archival methods and share with individuals as co-partners.
- Drawing on Dr. Green’s research, she will develop a digital humanities archive of African American employees from 1835-2000. This will make her research on identifying and documenting campus employees accessible to students, researchers, and descendant communities. Student biographies and memorial entries for the LSL project will be added here as well.
- Publish peer-reviewed articles and book chapters drawing on the campus history research.
- “Bridging the 1865 Enslaved and Exploited Divide: African American Employees, Mythmaking, and the With These Hands Memorial at Davidson College,” in Degrees of Liberation Campus Activism, Public History, and the Struggle for Educational Justice, edited by John Legg and Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, in progress.