Abba
Abba
Abraham
Barron Peter
Barsheba
Belinda
Betsey
Betty
Black Betty
Captain
Cato
Coba/Cuba
Cooper
Cuff
Cuffee
Diana
Diana
Fortune
George
George
George
Girl 6 years of age
Hagar
Hector, slave driver
House Peter
Jacob
Jemmy
John
Jonto
Joseph
Joseph
Joseph
Joseph
Mira
Nan
Nancy
Nancy
Nanny
Ned
Nuba
Old Cook
Old Negro Man
Peter June
Peter
Phebe
Phillip
Plato
Present
Prine
Priscilla
Quaco
Quacoe
Quamino
Robin
Robin
Ruth
Santo
Sarah
Smith
Stephen
Stephy
Sue (Susanna)
Tobey
Trace
Trace
Walker
Anthony
Mingo
Betty

UNDOING

Harvard Law School

“IN HONOR OF THE ENSLAVED WHOSE LABOR CREATED WEALTH THAT MADE POSSIBLE THE FOUNDING OF HARVARD LAW SCHOOL MAY WE PURSUE THE HIGHEST IDEALS OF LAW AND JUSTICE IN THEIR MEMORY”
- Harvard Law School Memorial Honoring Enslaved People,
Wasserstein Hall, 18 Everett Street Cambridge, MA 02138

As justice shielded herself from the wails of torture, with liberty blind to my confinement, I tore into the world with a mandate to be recognized. I am the name of that stained mark on the backs of Revolution. Fighting a war of freedom with backs turned and whips cocked each lash became a reminder that my fight would be endless, without end, or ended before it began. It was across seas, and territories, foreign and native, indigenized and settled that my bondage provided your ability to be. A coward this man was. Royall was a Loyalist. Truly obsessed with a quest for ordained superiority. He needed the right to be great, to be wealthy, to stand above. Falling further out of grace his legacy had been extinguished. Just another slaver who pledged ill-fated allegiance to the wrong oppressor. Where power lies there is no loyalty. With the swift instruction of a dear friend, Royall was saved and his wealth, our wealth, had been made monumental: the founding of a school.

The remarkable hypocrisy that a Law School would be founded with the bloodied money of slaves. The robust clarity of morals and jurisprudence inscribed by stolen people, on stolen land. Ha. A free country? Interned politely, the modesty of our encapture could be slightly overlooked in its context. On the edges, we are unseen. The slave quarters a nondescript building against a small garden, functioning and operating as intended. The estate was the central point for the movement of people from islands, up North, and through the mainland to other places, in the same relation I cannot speculate in levels, or registers of horror.

Any kind of place like this is ungodly to exist. Their pursuit of the higher ideal is a defunct misrepresentation of their pursuit for power. Setting forth their standard of ‘just,’ of ethic is indicative of immateriality: an idea and concept to uphold, while practicing and creating rules to justify whatever evil you can imagine. Imagination is strong. It is the will of spirit and when it becomes material it is our reality. I would imagine so much working for that man. No payment, the confinement, the complete loss of any control over yourself: he took it. Attempting to rot me out, to let me wither forever under the pressure of your rod. I worked and made and cleaned. I deserve. I imagined, and dreamed and thought of what exactly it might take to have a chance that working and making and cleaning for me. For my own. I wished to give my children that opportunity. I had been stolen, and stolen from. My name is almost forgotten in a list of sacrifices. But, I took claim of it. I was owed what I had worked hard for. I cannot bestow upon the benefactor of my stolen labor their right to take claim of it. Who is this memorial for?

- Belinda Sutton, 1783 petition to the Massachusetts General Court,
claimed a pension from the estate of Isaac Royall Jr,

The representation of enslavement as a giving of forced labor and the product of the accumulated wealth that bestowed the creation of an institution they never were allowed to attend is a profuse and disgusting offense on both the lives of those enslaved and their descendants. The present issue of memorializing chattel slavery in America rides on the memorial’s inability and lack of desire to speak truthfully of the conditions of slavery. Institution’s are inflexible and almost never respond to their own harm willingly. In an attempt to formalize the recognition of its racist past, Harvard Law School engraved a bronze sign onto a less than two foot rock and placed it into the landscape with no context or given recognition. The issue with this middling approach is that the medium of commemoration does not speak to the landscapes or materialities of labor that produced the wealth that led to the founding of Harvard Law School. The language is vague, neutral, and non-specific. We are left to inquire which enslaved persons, and to who were these enslaved persons enslaved.

The agnosticism is a product of insufficient accountability. The sum of worth and the value of their lives are obstructed, and simply characterized as wealth in a language of violent, forced labor as a gift. Furthermore, the ending statement lay’s claim to a non-specific body’s responsibility to pursue some moral vision that is not directly linked or explicitly regarded as a continued condemnation of the historic immorality of practicing slavery. The ending shifts recognition and centrism to the role of the implied institution and its inheritance to contend with a history that is not fully fleshed out or attributed to a clear perpetrator.

What and how do we recognize:

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UNDOING

Harvard Law School

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