My semester-long research project is actually on the removal of confederate monuments in the United States, with Richmond and New Orleans serving as focal points. Going to a college located within a city with such a complicated history makes my research even more meaningful, as we continue to grapple with UR’s connection to slavery and the confederacy. I remember coming to campus last fall as a freshman and hearing rumors about an uncovered burial ground on our campus for slaves. It was not until January that President Crutcher released a statement declaring that there was enough evidence to assume that not only is UR built on a slave graveyard, but also a former plantation. Like with much of the history of people of color throughout the United States, these former slaves’ names and lives have been forgotten. Our conversations and push to rename Ryland and Freemen are important–I think the University made a huge mistake in not entirely giving these buildings a new name to represent other important figures in Richmond’s history. Freemen and Ryland are branded with a refusal to acknowledge our history. However, there are much larger consequences of not acknowledging the University’s contribution to racism and oppression–the names of the slaves buried beneath our feet and those who worked on our land will continue to be forgotten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My semester-long research project is actually on the removal of confederate monuments in the United States, with Richmond and New Orleans serving as focal points. Going to a college located within a city with such a complicated history makes my research even more meaningful, as we continue to grapple with UR’s connection to slavery and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4547,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4547"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6493,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6489\/revisions\/6493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}