In post-Charlottesville environment, CU Boulder historians put slavery in context during events that are drawing campus and community participants

A series of participatory forums looking back at American racism by the University of Colorado Boulder’s History Department is proving to be a very popular campus learning experience, with organizers working on the fly make sure as many interested people as possible can attend.

“Most of us grew up with a very white version of American history, but the field of history is changing just as the field of genetics is changing,” said adjunct history Professor Peter H. Wood, who has specialized in early American and African American history. “We’re all writing books and papers, thinking that this information will trickle out, but that hasn’t always happened.”

Given Wood’s stature as an expert on slavery, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that the department’s “Charlottesville in Historical Perspective” educational forums are filling up fast. The first forum in the series, a panel presentation and discussion organized by History Professor Susan Kent, drew 165 participants on Sept. 19.

The second forum will be an all-day workshop titled “Slavery Matters,” presented by Wood on Oct. 21. Limited to 60 participants, the registration page at www.slotted.co/smw had already registered 51 in early October, so organizers are looking at creating a second date on Dec. 2.

“It’s a real luxury to have him; he’s one of the foremost experts on slavery,” said History Department Chair Paul Sutter about Wood’s participation.

A third event, a panel discussion set for Nov. 7, will address “Monuments and Memorialization,” and is being organized by Sutter. The series itself is hosted by the History Department, and Provost Russell Moore’s office has pitched in for pizza and refreshments.

“The thought is to continue as long as we’re getting interest, and we’ve asked people to suggest topics and formats they would like to hear about. So we may continue into spring,” said Wood about the overall series. “As for ‘Slavery Matters,’ it is exciting to see so much interest for a Saturday project, even before we put up posters.”

While the series is certainly timely in light of the Charlottesville tragedy, the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent attention turned to the National Football League, Wood said organizers are seeking to put some of these issues into a much broader and deeper historical context.

“My own sense is that to truly understand current controversies we have to go way back before Civil Rights Movement and the Civil War. In fact, the search for causes takes you back before the American Revolution,” he said. “It is still hard to imagine that there were 12 generations of unpaid labor.”

Atlantic racial enslavement already existed in the West Indies and Brazil well before English colonists reached North America. But the newcomers were not inclined to follow this pattern at the outset.  A half-century after the founding of Jamestown, fewer than 3,000 Africans lived in England’s mainland colonies.

“At first, English Protestants opposed patterns set by their Catholic Spanish enemies in the New World—including the importation of African slaves,” Wood said. But things changed rapidly in the two generations after 1660, a shift that many historians now call “The Terrible Transformation.”  

Steadily, conditions for colonial workers from Europe improved, and so-called indentured servants were rewarded with free land to start their own farms.  Conditions for the growing number of Africans, in contrast, became steadily worse.  Soon, in colony after colony, they were bound to service for life and even their children inherited the status of slaves, on the basis of their color alone. 

To rationalize an increasingly brutal system, an ideology of racism and white supremacy took hold quickly.  Wood first explored this topic in Black Majority, his book on slavery in colonial South Carolina that appeared in 1974.

“Even today, it is not yet common knowledge that this system of unpaid labor was solidly in place well before the era of the Founding Fathers,” he said.

Wood, who retired from Duke University before coming to CU Boulder as an adjunct professor, is working with teachers from the Boulder Valley School District to expand knowledge about slavery and the slave trade. Last spring, a CU Outreach Grant allowed him to work with “Impact on Education,” a foundation supporting the school district, to offer a day-long workshop at Boulder High School designed to give teachers and parents new insights into how to approach the history of slavery in America.

“The whole idea of this (Charlottesville) series is to involve not only the campus population, but also teachers, parents and ultimately the entire community,” Wood said. “We’re trying to reach out as broadly as we can.”

His first workshop on “Slavery Matters” will be held from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 21, in the Flatirons Room of the Center for Community (C4C Bldg) on Regent Drive at CU. To register, please go to www.slotted.co/smw. For the December workshop, tentatively scheduled for the same times but with the location yet to be determined, please go to www.slotted.co/smw2. Registration is free but attendance is limited to 60 people.

The third forum, “Monuments and Memorialization,” will be held on Nov. 7, with a tentative time of 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Glenn Miller Ballroom. Organizers, including the Diversity and Inclusion Summit, are still finalizing details, including participants, time and location.