U-Va. Board Regrets Past Link To Slavery

Warren Thompson's great-great-grandfather was born a slave, not far from the University of Virginia. His father, a Korean War veteran, was refused admission to the state's flagship university. Every time they drove through Charlottesville, Thompson said, he would hear about that.

So when the Board of Visitors unanimously passed a resolution expressing regret for the use of slaves at the school, Thompson, a board member and an alumnus, thought of his forefathers.

"This means a lot to me personally," he said. It felt like he'd kept a promise, to make things better.

The university has always celebrated its founder, Thomas Jefferson. The resolution recognizes that his vision for the school was carried out by slaves who helped build the Rotunda and the buildings on the Lawn, the historic heart of the school that Jefferson designed.

Some called the resolution empty symbolism.

But others said that for an institution long known as a white gentlemen's finishing school, which desegregated only a few decades ago and had a slew of racist incidents at the beginning of the last school year, the message is important.

After the vote, Thompson noted, one of the board members, a white man from southwestern Virginia, said, "It's about time."

U-Va. officials said they believe the university is the first to apologize for its past history of slavery. It joins a growing list of schools taking a look at the issue, most notably Brown University, said Diana Cordova, director of the center for advancement of racial and ethnic equity at the American Council on Education.

Brown's president, Ruth J. Simmons, charged a committee with investigating the slave history at the Ivy League school in Providence, R.I. The report, released last fall, found that some of the university's earliest benefactors took part in the slave trade and that the school benefited. Earlier this year, Brown announced a memorial, academic initiatives and investments in Providence students, plus a $10 million endowment and fellowships for graduate students who teach in local schools, to show a commitment to addressing social problems in the community.

The Virginia legislature passed a resolution earlier this year acknowledging slavery in the commonwealth with regret.

That's easy to do, said Paul Gaston, professor emeritus of Southern and civil rights history. "Who's in favor of lynching? Who's in favor of slavery?" They should have gone further, he said, and talked about more recent problems.

"In addition to apologizing for slavery, the board might have apologized for the lamentable record of the university in bringing about integration," said Gaston, who has been at the school 50 years. The first black student was admitted in 1950, but it was more than 15 years before more widespread change came. "That's scandalous."

It took student protests to transform the school, he said. In more recent years, President John T. Casteen III has pushed diversity issues and brought about important changes, Gaston said.

The board voted earlier this month but did not publicize the vote until yesterday because of the shooting at Virginia Tech last week, said Thomas F. Farrell II, university rector. "This is more reaffirming the philosophy of our institution; we think our policies already reflect this."

It is symbolic in a way, said William B. Harvey, U-Va.'s vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity, who was hired about a year ago. "That doesn't mean symbolism can't be practical and useful. I think it acknowledges a very important institutional shortcoming and allows us to talk more realistically about what happened, why it happened, and where we go from here."

He said he hopes the message is felt by other schools. "It says to the higher education community . . . to look forward, to do that in a significant way, you have to acknowledge what happened in your past."

Thompson, who graduated from the Darden School of Business in 1983, said the school is very different than when he attended, when there were few black students and even fewer who graduated.

Now the school has the highest graduation rate for black students of any public university, statistics that have held up for more than a decade.

"I think our future," Thompson said, "is brighter than our past."