I just completed the first two weeks of my internship with the Center for Studying Structures of Race. The Center is directed by Dr. Jesse Bucher and aims to examine and provoke discussion around the long history of race in the United States and in Southwest Virginia especially as it relates to Roanoke College. In only two weeks, I have already learned so much about the history of race in the Roanoke valley and at the college. Much of the college’s success in its early years relied on enslaved laborers, a reality that the college had addressed last year with the erection of plaques on the columns of the Administration Building recognizing these enslaved workers. However, the Center emphasizes that a continuous discussion about slavery and institutional racism pertaining to Roanoke College is essential.
Last week, I spent a number of hours looking through the Center’s archive which houses a great number of objects and texts from Confederate organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy as well as offensive racist imagery present in a number of everyday objects like kitchen utensils, postcards, and toys. We are working on photographing these objects to update our archive and think about ways in which we can use these things as vessels for education rather than for hate and intolerance.
I am including a picture I took of the Administration Building at Roanoke College because I have spent a lot of time this week contemplating my place in and relationship to spaces like this one; a physical environment that was built by the hands of enslaved people. How can I appropriately appreciate spaces that have been integral to my academic experience while also recognizing their tumultuous histories?
-Samantha Meyer ’22
