By Carly Williams
Many institutions try to erase the history of slavery from their past, says Hilary N. Green, a professor at the University of Alabama. Green is examining the legacy of Jim Crow era efforts to expunge the history of slavery from that university and is working to correct the campus’ historical narrative.
History professor Hilary N. Green from the University of Alabama tells UCSB students how past Jim Crow policies tried to erase her university’s history of slavery.
“My mission is to make sure students of color and other communities notice that history is salient,” Green said at a recent Zoom event hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s History department.
Green is an associate professor of history in the department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama and serves as the co- director of its African American Studies program. Since 2015, she has hosted tours around the university to give context to many of the buildings on campus that are named after Confederates and Klansmen.
After a student in 2015 told Green that slavery never existed at the University of Alabama, Green began working on changing how the university told its narrative on slavery.
Green’s goal is to shed light on the stories of the enslaved people who built, served and suffered at the University of Alabama where current students, faculty and guests walk every single day.
“This is a part of the institutional DNA of the school. Not only the history of slavery, but to forget that there was even slavery there,” Green said.
She told the virtual audience about Luna, a young enslaved woman at the University of Alabama in 1850, who was raped every night by Basil Manly, the then-president of the university. Now, Manly’s name adorns the very front of the Gender and Race Studies building on campus.
University of Alabama history professor Hilary N. Green, bottom right, discusses how she is addressing her university’s history of slavery, with UCSB history professor Ann Marie Plane at a recent virtual event.
Green said she is working to make known Luna’s story, and that of the many other enslaved people at the university. She put together the campus tour to show students where and how slavery existed at the university. Markers and plaques have been positioned to explain the contributions made by enslaved people. Her campus tours project is called the Hallowed Grounds tour.
Green said there are many campus buildings named after racist individuals. These include Maxwell Hall, named for someone who owned the President’s mansion where enslaved servants served the university staff, Nott Hall, which was named after a white supremacist, and the Round House, where enslaved men played music for white cadets.
Green’s tour has prompted important and ongoing conversations as the campus continues to change and evolve. She hopes to help shape the future campus and a new narrative that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
Green's says her efforts have already led to change. “You can no longer tailgate on the grass of the lawn in front of the guardhouse. It is now protected as a sacred space of remembrance,” she said. In addition, the university built a slave cemetery and a plaque with a formal apology and many of the university’s buildings are being renamed.
“Students were not seeing the campus. They were accepting the white-washed narratives that erased the history of slavery on campus,” said Green.
Carly Williams is a third-year political science major and aspiring professional writing minor at UC Santa Barbara. She wrote this article for her writing class, Journalism for Web and Social Media.
History professor Hilary N. Green, bottom right, told a UCSB audience how her Hallowed Grounds Tour takes students around the University of Alabama and sheds light on the lives and experiences of the enslaved men, women, and children at the university in year’s past.