About the Slavery, Race and Memory Project
Wake Forest University, as a southern institution founded decades before the Civil War, has a history bound up with slavery and its tragic legacies. Attempts to recover, understand and reckon more fully with that complex past have accelerated in recent years and are collected in a many-faceted Slavery, Race, and Memory Project. This effort extends across and beyond our Winston-Salem and original Wake Forest, N.C., campuses and includes active membership in the Universities Studying Slavery consortium.
Wake Forest University joined the Universities Studying Slavery consortium to help us understand and acknowledge the role enslaved peoples had in building and growing our University. The “Slavery, Race and Memory Project” will guide the research, preservation, and communication of an accurate depiction of the University’s relationship to slavery and its implications across Wake Forest’s history.
Edited by Corey D.B. Walker
Genealogy Updates for Enslaved Individuals
For the past 2 years, renowned genealogist Renate Sanders has been working to expand the stories of the 16 enslaved individuals auctioned in 1860 to benefit Wake Forest College. This report provides positive and probable findings for 8 of these 16 individuals, and works to better see them for who they were as parents, spouses, veterans, and pillars of their communities after emancipation.
Campus Memorial Update
Please visit the Memorialization website to see the design concept and learn more about the Memorial’s timeline.