Exhibit–transcriptions

“History is about connections between people and how we tell stories to one another. Reading history is like looking into the past and gaining insights into what life was like in different time periods and asking questions that you might not have thought about before. Like did toothbrushes exist in Victorian England? And I don’t know about you, but I would definitely read that story.

“All stories have a lesson or a goal at the end. There’s the famous quote, “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” We hear it all the time, but are often not listening. Problems that have existed long before our country was founded like rights to one’s body, racial inequity, and uneven distribution of wealth continue to impact us today. As historians it is our responsibility to continue learning about the past in an effort to build a better future.”

“As I was preparing my remarks, it is from Isaiah 58, chapter 12–verse–it says, “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall rise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, our organization is committed to preserving the history, genealogy and culture of African ancestor populations. There are twenty–thirty-seven–chapters across the United States and five in Virginia. Our local chapters, as well as many other chapters, stress the importance of our history and encourage active research and documenting family history.

“Many of us have internalized the meaning of sankofa. By putting into practice the adage of returning to the past, to research the knowledge of who we are, and who we be.

“Sankofa rejects the pleas of many who would say, “Get over slavery or get over the past.” We cannot get over something which, from which today, we are still collecting [unknown], bearing the scars of generational trauma.

“Our members use research tools to document the truth–the truth shall set you free–history of our existence within the American sojourn. Along this journey to the past untold stories of the ancestors emerge, placing upon us a duty as historians to tell their stories and recognize their trauma, reclaim their identities, acknowledge their humanity, and connect their life experiences to the present for us to learn. Black lives present and past matter.

“For any genealogist uncovering the stories of our ancestors is challenging. But for African American genealogists finding our ancestors can be particularly difficult. However we can find them and we do. In the written lines of slavery-era documents, our ancestors whispered their names and those of their children and their kin and their community. They say, “We are here telling our stories.”

“While we cannot change history, we can locate those documents that thread the stories of trauma, pain, separation, sacrifice, resilience, faith, hope, and survival. We can place the documents supporting those stories into the public domain so that history can be corrected. And families connected.

“Our ancestors were witnesses to history. They have a testimony to share. Lifting up those documents and records is crucial and necessary for both the descendants of the enslaved as well as the descendants of the enslaver. Even where no names exist, our ancestors’ presence is confirmed. It is confirmed in buildings and homes [uncertain] standing today. It is confirmed on university campuses, at state capitals, and yes, even at the Capitol of the United States.

“Where genealogy and history research uncover family connections to enslave people, the names of those enslaved people must be shared. Where enslaved laborers built academic institutions, their names must be memorialized. Where no names are known, their presence must be acknowledged, and their descendants’ voices included, interpreting the spaces in which their ancestors moved and had being. Religious and corporate institutions who use the bodies of enslaved people as collateral for mortgages or loans or to erect buildings or amass wealth must be committed to a transformative process of truth-telling, reconciliation and healing in order to repair relationships, and work to address the legacy of slavery, even as those institutions stand today on the backs of the enslaved.

“The institutions which black hands built for black communities must be supported, because those institutions stand as testimony to our ingenuity and our resilience. Our sacred resting places must be honored, their [uncertain] and the spaces restored and protected, for they provide evidence of lineage and legacy the ancestors left in our DNA. Through this, we can identify and cover the true historical narratives that are missing in order to face our complex and human history. How our history, how our true history is addressed, is up to us. The ancestors are speaking through the research that we as genealogists do. America must listen. America must be the repairer of the breach.”

Muller: “Well I just mean that, for example, whether it’s slavery or Native American rights or rights of women, you know, we all know that actually at the end of the day when the Constitution was set up these issues were not dealt with.”

Smith: “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

Muller: “You know there are some remarkable things that were created in the context of the American Revolution, which have really structured at the least Western modes of thinking ever since. Ah, I mean that, so there is all that promise there. I just don’t think that we should accord to some of the founding fathers that have visionary spirit that open, cooperative spirit.

Muller: “But he told this story about how a chap called sort of Daddy Gabby [uncertain] pleaded with him, for him to write down all his children’s and his father and mother’s names. And so [name] does this and gives him back to this man who’s like in his eighties, black. And it’s obvious, you know, I just [uncertain].”

Smith: “So these are people that had been held in that family, or–?”

Muller: “Yeah, so these were people who were the slaves to the owner, or the children that he’s teaching . . . What was amazing was, you know, even then, by all the [uncertain], black people wanted their history recorded. I mean, the fact that they couldn’t write or you know that. So they had checked that this guy had a conscience and so he wrote down, and you know, this poor father, who had fathered all these children, just wanted his history documented.”

“As we consider what it is going to take to do racial justice work, the first idea we I want us embrace is, we have to tell the truth. Author, Rhonda McGee says it like this, “because there are so many rivers of pain joining and forming the ocean of racial suffering in our times, personal awareness and practices are essential for the racial justice work we must do.” We must be honest about the pains and ills inflicted upon people of color and the systems that continue to attempt to oppress, like voter suppression; like red lining; like re-districting to keep color lines drawn to keep the dominant culture secure in their standings. We must be honest and understand the ways in which race and racism and biases are mere cultural constructs to keep certain demographics of people in a subordinate state of mind and experience. We must all examine the shadow we carry as part of this society before we can heal the places of pain inflicted on others. Otherwise, we find ourselves living into Zora Neale Hurston’s quote, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it”.

“I take comfort in the Word of God which reminds us according to Psalm 34:18, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” In my study for this morning, I found the term brokenhearted means “to be shattered into pieces.” If your spirit is traumatized today, please know that the Lord is close to you right now. And more than Him just being close to you, according to the scripture read in our hearing, David promises, “The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel.3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” The clear call to social justice found in Isaiah 58:6-7 may also be a call to heal. The inner and outer journeys mirror each other. Having a smoking hot body physically with a wounded spirit is a recipe for disaster. But that’s another sermon for another day!

“Let me put a Lisa spin on this: God builds you up, gathers you together – from all of the places you’ve left pieces of yourself, and then he heals our broken hearts and binds up our wounds. That’s the good news today! We have a Savior who may find us broken, but He doesn’t leave us there! The Isaiah text promises that God is a repairer of the breach. His fast says that he wants us to loose the chains of injustice, untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke. The question is are we willing to give up and fast from the people and behaviors that are keeping others and sometimes ourselves in bondage or pain.

“I’ve been trained in the formational counseling model of healing. Through this training, I’ve been made aware of the importance of journeying with an empathic witness in our healing process. This is not someone who is going to tell you what to do, but one who will keep bringing you back to the Holy Spirit so that Holy Spirit can do what needs to be done for you. Healing comes in community! So, the gift of having someone be a witness to your life story, who is willing to listen to the parts you share is huge. In many instances it is as great a gift to the listener as it is to the person telling the story. It works both ways. It is my desire as co-pastoral director to create a culture where reparations become second nature and that we operate with a spirit of compassion for one another, with a spirit of inclusiveness, and with a spirit of hospitality regardless to who crosses our threshold.”

“I’m noticing how the building is now tucked into what feels like a, feels like it’s nestled into a forest, but I’m wondering what it was like in the 19th or the 18th centuries. I’m wondering if the enslavers ever came out to this corner of the property or whether even though such a small and limited space whether it felt a little bit safer and distant from the main house.

“I wouldn’t want to ban it [cell phones] entirely [uncertain] you know, exterior photos but what would it mean [uncertain] be just a place of sanctuary and people not posing?

“But the problem that we have when we look at antiquity is it’s really hard to know where enslaved people slept or if they had any spaces that would be considered their own. So in the literary materials that we have, we know that enslaved people, again in domestic spaces–because also in antiquity, we have a split between rural and domestic–but in domestic spaces, often slept very near their enslavers.”

“Hello, my name is Lauranett Lee, and I’m a historian. I’m also a Virginian. And I had never known about Richmond Hill, until I was a member of the Community Trustbuilding Fellowship in 2017. And toward the end of the five month, ah, stay, we went out on the property into a dwelling that had been inhabited by enslaved people. And it was, it was an experience very much otherworldly. You could, you could almost feel the, the presence of past lives there. And we didn’t really know anything about who could have lived there, how long, when they came, what their lives were like.

“But being in that space made me want to know more, and made me actually weep for the people who had lived there. It’s a dirt floor, um, there wasn’t much light that came in. And so you can use your imagination, to kind of place yourself in the past, to feel what it was like to live in a, a space like that. When you’re on the property with such a big and grand house, and how your life is so much different from those who live in that big, grand house. The lives of your children are so very different.

“And you have to ask, what must it have been like with them on a daily basis, to live with that reality? And to know that, even if they wanted to, they could not move beyond that until war came, the Civil War. And when so many were still enslaved, there were so many who was, who sought their freedom, and left to places to go to places unknown in search of family.

“And one of the things I really feel, ah, when I’m in that space is the craving to connect with them. The need to be around not just those, ah, with your bloodline, but those whose culture is similar to your home and who can identify with not only what people might have gone through and did in fact go through, but what we are going through now.

“And so Richmond Hill itself is a very special place. And the dwelling on that place where enslaved people live is, like, a step back into the past. But also a place that brings us to the present, and helps us to think about what is it we want our future to look like? Not just our future, but the future of our children as well. I love that place.

“Most of the students at the University of Richmond are not from Richmond, so they don’t really know the history. In fact, they don’t too much know the history of the places that they do come from. Um, and when I talk with them about Richmond’s history, it makes them see not only the university in a new light, but this, this city in which they are now living, in a new light. They know of Richmond because of the, you know, the restaurants–ah, it’s now a foodie capital–or the tattoos. It’s now tattoo capital. Or beer gardens. They might know of some of the historic sites, but they don’t really know, ah, the ways that our history helps open their minds to how people have lived in the past, particularly those who were enslaved. They generally think of enslaved people being on plantations. They don’t think of urban enslaved people.

“This is an opportunity for them to learn about the experience of those who are enslaved in, in cities and Richmond had quite a few enslaved people, free blacks, too, but enslaved people living, ah, on properties that were owned by whites. And so what a wonderful opportunity not only to visit that, that dwelling that was inhabited by enslaved people, but to see Richmond Hill and learn about its own history. It’s an opportunity to learn about, ah, the indigenous people, transatlantic slave trade, ah, urban history, ah, women’s history, religious history, and preservation itself. There’s a lot to learn at Richmond Hill.”

“Thinking about these people were put into slavery, I mean they so easily go called–they called and categorized as slaves and like the house was the slave house, and I know for archaeological purposes and whatever historical context we label, and yet I think of [posthumously] like what we honor in these people who are dead, like, they had names, they had, like, life experiences [uncertain], so just thinking about justice for them even after they’re gone and never got to hear of the possibility of freedom, like, how do you liberate that space?”

“And it makes me think about this place, like, even with the good and the bad that this space has held, the evil and the goodness and the righteousness, like–can’t the–I wouldn’t want to just bulldoze it all and then just create a whole new foundation altogether I-I think it’s kind of important to pull this story and this narrative together and to see, um, the humanity at all and what has covered across this stretch of time.”

Quarshie: “Growing up and living in Ghana and going to see the slave castles and just seeing the dungeons where slaves were kept predominantly for like 36 months waiting for the ships and, um, not knowing what the story was once they got on the ships. And then coming to America and realizing that there was like a whole different kind of struggle. Um, and just being here just reminds me of some of those dungeons that they lived in. And for me, I’m standing here questioning in myself like am I even worthy to be here, you know? Um, because there is so much history and connection to this place, um, to the point where like, I, coming from a different country and continent are still coming and I’m experiencing the same chills that I experienced when I was back home when I visited some of these slave castles. It’s just … I don’t know. It’s … it’s … it’s incredibly … (sighs)”

Smith: “It’s a lot.”

Quarshie: “Yeah. ‘Cause there’s a difference between trying to imagine how you know like our ancestors lived and actually being in a space where they were. You know what I mean like just, like I literally I am wearing three jackets and I still have goosebumps.”

Smith: “One thing about the institution of slavery, as you know, it was unpredictable in some ways. They could move people at any time–“

Quarshie: ”I mean, at some point were they not even rented out to–”

Smith: “Yes.”

Quarshie: “I read in Jefferson’s story they would loan you out–“

Smith: “Yes, ‘hired out.'”

Quarshie: “–and you may not even come back, right?”

Smith: “Right, exactly, you may not even come back. And the money that you earned is supposed to go to them.”

Quarshie: “Yes it goes to your owner–“

Smith: “To the owner”

Quarshie: “So it was like–“

Smith: “And Richmond was known for that ’cause it was urban slavery here and that’s where–so most of the of the people who, who would have slept here would have been the women and children, which I think about as the separation of families.”

Quarshie: “Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, why do you, I mean when you look at it, being in the U.S. for a while and just reading a lot and doing research and just looking at, like, um, doing just research on this, um, social perspective, why do you think it’s difficult for black families to hold strong? There’s a historical perspective ’cause you take away the man, you take away the foundation of the family.”

Smith: “And trauma lives in our bones.”

Quarshie: “Oh! Hundred percent. It’s like, and, and that’s the thing like, the difficult conversations that we’re talking about, it’s like, those difficult conversations lead to healing, a place of compromise. But as human as we are, we, we pretend it never happened. So there’s no closure. It’s like someone who did you, who did you wrong, and because every time you see them you get angry, and because you don’t see them anymore and you don’t feel that anger you think that you are okay like you have closure and then you’re meeting them again and [uncertain] like oh, okay, you know what I mean, so…I wish, like, as a community we would figure out the way to talk about some of these things. And that’s why like personally, inasmuch as it makes me uncomfortable inside, I still try to talk about it because I, I bring, like, the whole slavery story from a different perspective, how most of these slaves were–my, my great-grandmother was sold into slavery and she escaped, you know, so–but then, that’s where you also bring the other side of the story about the struggle because [uncertain] they are not just traveling, they are here. They literally have nowhere to, to go.”

Quarshie: “For me just being able to see the other side of, like, this whole story is, is humbling. But I wish, you know, there was a lot more conversation around it, without necessarily pointing fingers.”

“Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Meghana Boojala. I’m a graduating senior at the college and the outgoing president of the Student Assembly. About one year ago, many of us gathered here to ceremoniously break ground for the memorial. Now, we stand before this completed grand structure and are able to witness our campus changed forever. I have reflected on what this memorial means to members of Williamsburg, who are not a part of the black community. What could this mean for students who attend this university after us?

“A few weeks ago, the Lemon Project and Student Assembly’s Reparations Committee hosted a session to discuss how students will interact with this space. And that left many of us thinking, what does this space mean to us? How will we use it, respect it, protect its sacredness?

“I lived on this side of campus for three out of four years of my college experience. Every morning, I would walk along the sidewalk to get to class. During my 15 minute walk, I would play my daily news podcast and admire the nature and architecture around me. This memorial will forever change the student experience.

“But the past few months, I passed this construction site and thought of the significance every day. From here on out. Students will read the names of the people who were enslaved by this university every single time that they enter campus for class. Students who have the privilege of not tuning in to conversations about race will read these names in their minds every day. There is power in bringing the names of those who built and cared for this university to life.

“For those students who have been advocating for systemic equality, and against racial injustice on campus, this serves as a meaningful step. As a university, we now recognize the role we played in protecting the system of slavery loud and clear. Many students on campus have felt that their personal story, their history, has been unheard. Unrecognized. This memorial has fundamentally changed the way people perceive our campus. We are facing our burden, and celebrating all of the lives that were here before us, head on.

“At William & Mary we take pride in our history as the Alma Mater of the Nation. I have taken many classes in the Wren Building, and feel the same feeling of exhilaration every time I walk in. The company–the community here adores what we call Old Campus, the aged bricks, the greenery, the spaces for gathering. This memorial both blends and stands out against the other architecture as President Rowe described. It fills in the chapters of the stories present in our old buildings. It provides a space for community.

“At the same time, you can now not walk to the Wren without seeing the memorial. You cannot perceive those aged bricks until you acknowledge the new ones behind me. We have changed our architecture forever. And as students, that fundamentally changes our college education for the better. The positioning of this memorial influences our national discourse on memorials and monuments. How do we actively provide space for untold chapters of our history? How do we, William & Mary, reconcile the buildings that were erected with people who were enslaved? How do we reconcile educating the first leaders of this country while acknowledging the communities we have failed at the same time? We will live in this uncomfortable dichotomy for the rest of our lives. There are many possible answers. And yet there are no definite answers for how we address our individual and unique positioning in America.

“Going forward, this memorial will stand tall beside new students, when they complete their major university traditions–traditions have come up three times so far–convocation, commencement, and everything in between, it will greet them whenever they step on the grounds to get to class. It will provide them shade when they sit and reflect in this area. It will stand proud and as a gentle reminder, whenever we acknowledge our privilege for attending this university. It will remind us all every day of our complicated goal to both address inequities within our system and celebrate the lives of those who came before us.

“Our journey as a nation and as a university is just beginning. Last year at the groundbreaking I said, ‘This memorial is a meaningful milestone in acknowledging 170 years of slavery on this campus, but now we have 158 remaining years’–now 159–‘of recent history to confront, and I look forward to the steps we take to tackle the complicated web of institutional inequality.'”