The Project Student Team

Free black people worked at the College. Enslaved people were manumitted by College owners, some of whom were part of an organized abolitionist movement on the Eastern Shore. Other enslaved people freed themselves by running away. And we have followed the stories of some individuals beyond emancipation, examining the lives of Civil War veterans formerly claimed by College owners, as well as efforts to continue a form of enslavement through the illegal apprenticeship of African-American children.

In a 2013 interview, Professor Wilder said of college campuses, “people of color have always been here.” Yet at Washington College their stories–their actual existence–has been erased. We have unearthed an enormous variety of original documents–Board of Visitors and Governors Meeting Minutes, Presidential records, freedom certificates, soldiers’ pension records, census data, wills, letters, newspaper articles, and advertisements for fugitive slaves. This search has taken us to the Maryland State Archives, Delaware, the Kent County Courthouse, the Kent County Historical Society, and our own College archives. With this effort, we are recreating the stories of the enslaved and free African Americans of Washington College.