US colleges confront slavery ties with descendant scholarships
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, (Thomson Reuters Foundation) U.S. colleges are confronting their past ties to slavery with public apologies, renamed buildings and scholarships for descendants - a push that could shape national efforts to tackle the thorny issue of reparations.
Five schools in Virginia are racing to comply with a pioneering state law requiring them to launch scholarships or economic programs, while Georgetown University recently doled out the first grants from a slavery "reconciliation fund."
"When you go to (the University of Virginia), you see Thomas Jefferson literally on a pedestal. How do you think that makes me feel?" said Robin Reaves Burke, a descendant of Mary Hemings, whose family was enslaved at the former U.S. president's home.
Reaves Burke is hopeful her son Clinton, who is enrolling at the university this year, will be accepted as part of the scholarship program, as discussion about broader reparations measures continues elsewhere in the country.
"This is a huge process and it's historic," she said.
She credited the university with taking the lead on acknowledging the enslaved people who built the school and working to move forward on implementing the new law.
"It has to do with atoning for a wrong," Reaves Burke said from near campus, taking breaks from monitoring a virtual meeting of descendants.
Debate about slavery reparations has intensified in the United States as Congress considers proposals to financially compensate descendants in an effort to confront and repair the longstanding racial and economic discrimination against Black Americans. They could draw on the experiences of universities as they try to move forward on the issue, which is highly divisive along political lines and among Black and white Americans.