Sloan
SloanOn April 12th and 13th of 1961, the college screened “Birth of a Nation” as a social event preceding final examinations (Yi and Mellin 2018). The film, released in 1915 by D.W. Griffith, was part of an anti-Reconstruction movement to not only lament the loss of the Confederacy, but to revise the way that the Civil War was remembered and re-establish the South as morally virtuous and politically powerful. It is well known for its glorification of the KKK and various anti-Black themes (Mintz 2019). The fact that this was considered an appropriate film for a social event and likely was not accompanied by any critical analysis illuminates the continual association with and nostalgia for the Confederacy. For more about the college’s deep roots in the Confederacy, see <http://disorientingdavidson.com/>.
Chambers Building
ChambersBegun in the 1850s and completed in 1860, the original Chambers building was designed to be the “literal and figurative center of campus life” (Davidson College 1996, 12). The money for the building was given to the college as part of a $250,000 bequest by Maxwell Chambers in 1855.Chambers ran a large plantation in Mecklenburg county called Spring Hill (NC Board of Agriculture 1896, 246) and may have owned mines in Mecklenburg and Cabarrus county (Ibid., 182). He claimed ownership of numerous enslaved people, and often participated in business ventures with his brother, Joseph Chambers who was engaged in the slave trade in Virginia (Yi and Mellin 2018). While some sources claim he made the majority of his fortune from managing cotton prices (Shaw 1923, 87-8), others strongly imply he was directly involved in the slave trade (Davidson 1969, 16; Burnet 1999, 3). Whether or not Chambers himself was involved in trading enslaved people for profit is largely a technicality, as he undoubtedly amassed his wealth through the labor of enslaved people (principally in the production of cotton) and thus benefitted directly from the slave trade (Shaw 1923, 87-8).The original Chambers building was assembled from stone quarried at Sloan Mill Place (Holmes 1893, 85), lime mined from Little Mountain, and lumber from Huntersville and further away in South Carolina (Shaw 1923, 90-1). Some bricks were made on local plantations (DC Archives 2015), and others were made on the college’s property (Shaw 1923, 91), but the time period and amount of labor required indicates that much if not all of this work was performed by enslaved people. Following its completion in 1860, the Chambers building housed living spaces, five classrooms, library materials, and a laboratory (Davidson College 1996, 12). In 1921, the building was destroyed by a fire, but much of the original structure (mostly stone and brick) survived (Lingle 1947, 111). It underwent a rebuilding and renovation from 1921 to 1929 (Davidson College 1996, 16).
Watson and Dana
Watson and DanaDavidson College has a long history of mistreatment of Black employees, which is discussed in depth at <http://disorientingdavidson.com/>. According to the second international African student at the college, Georges Nzongola, Black workers at the college were listed as “janitors” regardless of their responsibilities in order to distinguish them from White “maintenance engineers” and justify the pay disparity between the two positions (Davidson College 1990, 14). A notable example of this treatment is the case of James Howard; although he was hired as a janitor around the 1950s and paid a janitor’s salary, he worked for several decades as a research and lab worker and teaching assistant. He was frequently called in to supervise or finish projects if a science professor wanted to leave the lab, and was often summoned from his home late at night to help with miscellaneous tasks (Yi and Mellin 2018). A description of his duties in his own words is included below:“I worked in the chemistry stock room. I set up the labs, chemical apparatuses and chemicals for general chemistry, quantitative and qualitative analysis… and organic… I would pour out the acid and other chemicals they needed… I would cut the glass so they could use it for stirring rods… and I had just a little old small vent fan. But sometimes I’d have to stop and go out and get some air” (Howard 1997, 2-3).
