Rutgers Confronts Its History of Slavery, With Mixed Results

Rutgers University officials were deep into preparations for a year-long celebration of the institution's 250th anniversary in 2016, when students recognized a major part of the story behind its founding was missing.

"It did not include an acknowledgement of the history of slavery," said Marisa Fuentes, an associate professor in the Department of History at the New Brunswick campus. "At that time the university administration did not know the history, other than it was the anniversary of its founding, and a few of the trustees’ names."

At the students' insistence, university officials conceded—with then chancellor Richard L. Edwards acknowledging complaints that the university had ignored its past, "such as that our campus is built on land taken from the Lenni-Lenape, and that a number of our founders and early benefactors were slave holders."

He launched the Committee on Enslaved and Disenfranchised Populations in Rutgers History in 2015, and out of that came the Scarlet and Black Project, an exploration of the experiences of Blacks and Native Americans at New Jersey's largest university.

The project yielded a rich trove of research and stories, including “Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History," a volume edited and written by Rutgers scholars. The first of three historical volumes, it takes an unsparing look at how the university’s colonial-era founders and the institution itself benefited from the slave economy, and the central role that enslaved men and women played in the construction of what was then known as Queens College. Rutgers was founded in 1766.

But, just five years after the debut of the Scarlet and Black Project—a reference to the university’s colors as well as the African Americans directly impacted by the history—many Rutgers students are unaware of the work, or their school's history.