What we memorialize is, of course, important.
There are some things we wish to remember ourselves and have
our children and grandchildren remember.
There are other things we would actually just as soon forget.
The university has gone through various periods and phases
of what it held in memory and what it forgot.
The history of slavery to a large extent
was something we forgot.
So I thought it was important for us
to look at what I thought of as the hidden history of UVA.
The charge of the President's Commission
on Slavery and the University is to commemorate
the University of Virginia's history, first of all,
but also to recognize the slave laborers'
contributions to the building of this institution.
For many years, that story was not told.
What we fundamentally do as a university
is research and education.
We try to uncover new knowledge, and we pass that knowledge
on to our students.
One of our charges from the president
was to do the research, to go into the records,
to try to tease out the history of slavery at the University,
and learn some of the names of the enslaved.
Who was bought and sold?
Who was rented?
Who actually laid the cornerstone?
Who erected the institution?
This history, it's hidden in plain sight all across grounds.
The entire university was a site of enslavement,
our goal has been to reinscribe that history and the lives
of the enslaved back onto the landscape in many ways as
possible.
Naming buildings after the enslaved,
creating information in the rotunda visitors' center
that provides history about slave laborer's
contributions to university.
We've developed an entire curriculum,
classes that teach the local particular story
at the university.
We've uncovered through archeology much
of the history of slave families who
lived behind the pavilions in the gardens
behind the serpentine walls.
And now we are about to fund-raise and erect a memorial
to the slave laborers that will be placed
on the footprint of UNESCO World Heritage site just
north and east of the rotunda.
It's meant to echo the diameter of the rotunda.
It will list the names of the enslaved.
We have nearly 1,000 people that we
can identify from the records.
This memorial is meant to finally acknowledge
the thousands of enslaved people who built and maintained
the university, speak to the meaning
and value of their lives, and connect back
to the academical village.
There is more work to be done here.
I very much hope that this commission or another group
would also be able to look at other parts of the university's
history.
Recent events in America tell us we have to tell this story.
We have to confront our own past and use it as a teaching tool.
It's our only hope.
Going forward, having that knowledge,
teaching our students, educating the public
is an opportunity to heal.
It's an opportunity to learn, an opportunity
to know what we need to do next.