Scarlet and Black Project, Rutgers University
Our book Scarlet and Black, Volume 2: Constructing Race and Gender at Rutgers, 1865-1945, won the 2022 New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance (NJSAA) Author Award in the edited non-fiction category!
Congratulations to editors Kendra Boyd, Marisa J. Fuentes, and Deborah Gray White and chapter authors Beatrice J. Adams, Shaun Armstead, Miya Carey, Shari Cunningham, Tracey Johnson, Eri Kitada, Brenann Sutter, Pamela Walker, Meagan Wierda, Caitlin Wiesner, Joseph Williams!
The Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice is proud to announce the launch of the new database New Jersey Slavery Records. This website aims to document the history of slavery in our communities through digital archival sources and linked open data. This database was developed in collaboration with On These Grounds: Slavery and the University, a cross-institutional digital initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation.
The New Jersey Slavery Records project is led by Jesse Bayker, Digital Archivist at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. Our team includes Francesca Giannetti, Digital Humanities Librarian at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, and graduate assistants Lindsey Dixon, Isaac Guzmán, and Adam McNeil.
The New Jersey Slavery Records project builds on the work of Rutgers historians who took a deep dive into the historical connections between slavery and the university and wrote the book Scarlet and Black, Volume 1: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History, edited by Deborah Gray White and Marisa Fuentes. The researchers went on to trace Rutgers Black history to the present in Volumes 2 and 3. Following the publication of the Scarlet and Black books, archival materials documenting African American history at Rutgers from slavery to the twentieth century have been compiled and published in the Scarlet and Black Digital Archive, curated by digital archivist Jesse Bayker.
In the course of this research, the Scarlet and Black team learned that Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives hold a treasure trove of documents that illuminate the history of slavery in Middlesex County beyond the walls of the university. These documents describe hundreds of events in the lives of enslaved people who lived in surrounding communities. Dr. Bayker began compiling a dataset of names and events related to these archival records.
From this original dataset, Dr. Bayker began developing a digital project to create a searchable database of slavery-era records that would reach beyond Rutgers. From 2021 to 2024, Dr. Bayker worked on developing the New Jersey Slavery Records dabatase while serving as the digital archivist at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
During the formative stage of development, our partnership with On These Grounds: Slavery and the University shaped the intellectual trajectory of the New Jersey Slavery Records project. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, On These Grounds is a cross-institutional initiative to create, evaluate, and disseminate a Linked Open Data ontology focused on adequately describing the lived experiences of those enslaved individuals who labored in bondage at higher education institutions and who are represented in those institutions’ archival holdings. On These Grounds is led by Dr. Sharon Leon with core partners at Michigan State University, Georgetown University, and the University of Virginia.
Since the summer of 2021, Dr. Bayker led a team of Rutgers collaborators who engaged in an intensive year-long process of testing the alpha version of the data model created by On These Grounds. In addition to MSU, Georgetown, and UVA, we worked with testing partners at Washington and Lee University, University of Georgia, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Hampden-Sydney College to apply the linked open data ontology to our archival holdings, test data creation workflows, and provide feedback on revisions to the model.
Today, as we gather with our On These Grounds partners at the fall 2022 Universities Studying Slavery Conference, we launch the New Jersey Slavery Records website, which uses the platform and data model that we tested over the past year.
The Black Camden Oral History Project was featured in the summer 2022 issue of the Rutgers Magazine. This project is led by Kendra D. Boyd, assistant professor in the Department of History at Rutgers-Camden and an Early Career Faculty Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, and Jesse Bayker, the digital archivist at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice.
Look out for the print issue in your mailbox or check out the interview with the project leaders online: “The Oral History of Camden” by David M. Major.
The uncertain times we’re living in certainly remind us that now is the time to record and preserve the important stories and contributions of living historical figures. The people we are interviewing, and hope to interview, are of a generation that is starting to retire, and that’s a great time to reflect on the past. For those who passed through Rutgers–Camden in the 1960s and 1970s and are finishing their careers, they can reflect on what their trajectory has been—and how their activism and experiences at Rutgers shaped their lives.
– Kendra D. Boyd
Check out our related oral history website Black Voices at Rutgers.
A new oral history project by professor Kendra Boyd and digital archivist Jesse Bayker is gathering stories of Black student activism at Rutgers University–Camden.
In 1969, a group of Black student activists at Rutgers–Camden occupied the campus student center with a list of two dozen demands for the administration, including removing racist faculty members, hiring additional Black faculty and staff, and establishing a Black studies department. The protest made headlines, and the events and their aftermath seemed to have been documented for posterity. But when one of the student participants, Roy L. Jones CCAS’70, sat down for a recent interview with the Black Camden Oral History Project, he shared a degree of detail about tactical deliberations between the student protesters that wasn’t reflected in the record.
“He was able to tell us the conversations that students were having before they took dramatic action, before they staged a protest,” says Jesse Bayker, digital archivist at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice and co-creator of the project. “Getting insight into those kinds of conversations and seeing some of the disagreements and how they shaped the course of activism at Rutgers–Camden was enlightening.”
The Black Camden Oral History Project grew out of the Scarlet and Black Project, an ongoing re-examination of the legacy of slavery and dispossession at Rutgers University and in New Jersey. Bayker GSNB’19 and assistant professor of history Kendra Boyd GSNB’17 spearheaded the oral history project and teamed up with the Rutgers Oral History Archives to collect the stories of Black alumni, faculty, staff, and community members via interviews to develop an accurate, more granular picture of Black life at the university and in surrounding communities. Both projects, Bayker says, are part of a larger reckoning in American universities about the history of race and institutional racism.
The power of perspective
Boyd and Bayker are still interviewing people who (like Jones) were involved in the Black student protest movements at Rutgers–Camden, as well as alumni and community members who participated in or lived through the Black Power and civil rights eras in Camden. They’re also looking for interviewees with experiences in Black business, entrepreneurship, and social and cultural life.
First-person interviews, Boyd says, are uniquely capable of complementing other archival materials. “Oral history is important because you get to hear the words of people who lived through an experience from their own perspective,” she says. “It’s one thing to look at a historical document—a newspaper clipping, for instance. You’re going to get a general understanding of what events took place, but you’re getting an interpretation of the journalist. When you do an oral history interview, not only do you get a participant’s perspective on or memory of an event, but you can also learn more about their entire life.”
The new interviews will be cataloged over the next several years and made available to students and researchers working on their own historical projects. Already, Boyd says, the interviews resonate in her own research and teaching.
“I teach African American history, and students are hungry for and respond to this history—particularly if they hear it from people who were present, people that they can relate to,” Boyd says. “I’m hoping students will see some of the key historical themes in African American history at play right here in Camden, and that will help them to understand history better and to contextualize the continued struggle for Black freedom.”
Have a story to share?
Boyd and Bayker are casting a wide net for interviewees and soliciting suggestions for people to interview for the project. Participants will receive a written transcript of their interview as a keepsake that they can use to preserve their own family history. Interested parties can contact the researchers through the website.
“I just want people to know that their stories are valuable,” Bayker says. “Even if they’ve never thought that their story should be archived or that their story is a part of history, we want our African American alumni to understand they are a very important part of Rutgers history. We need to preserve their stories, and we need their help to ensure that their stories are recorded and remembered properly.”
Also in the works…
In addition to conducting interviews, Bayker has created a research tool called Black Voices at Rutgers to help students and community members discover African American oral history interviews housed at various repositories across Rutgers. Existing interviews have provided helpful research for the three-volume series of Scarlet and Black books edited by Marisa J. Fuentes and Deborah Gray White. Bayker and Boyd have each contributed chapters to the books, and Boyd also served as a co-editor of the second volume. The third volume in the series—Making Black Lives Matter at Rutgers, 1945–2020—was published earlier in 2021 by Rutgers University Press. The books can be ordered at Scarlet and Black: Books.
A new oral history project is gathering stories of Black alumni at Rutgers University–Camden. The Black Camden Oral History Project grew out of the research for our recently published book Scarlet and Black, Vol. 3: Making Black Lives Matter at Rutgers, 1945–2020, edited by Miya Carey, Marisa J. Fuentes, and Deborah Gray White. While archival research helped us reconstruct important events in the history of Black student protest at Rutgers–Camden, our work for the book also highlighted the urgent need to preserve the memories of Camden alumni and local community leaders through oral history interviews.
Kendra Boyd (Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers–Camden and ISGRJ Early Career Fellow) and Jesse Bayker (Digital Archivist at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice) teamed up with the Rutgers Oral History Archives to interview African American alumni as well as community leaders and entrepreneurs in Camden.
Recruitment is currently underway, and we encourage you to contact the Black Camden Oral History Project to learn more and schedule an interview.
Visit blackcamden.org to learn more about the Black Camden Oral History Project.
A new historical marker on Rutgers–New Brunswick’s Livingston campus explains its namesake William Livingston’s deep involvement in slavery and his halting efforts to abolish slavery as New Jersey’s first governor.
In this virtual presentation, Robert Snyder LC’77, a professor emeritus of journalism and American studies at Rutgers–Newark, will talk with Jesse Bayker SGS’19, digital archivist for the Scarlet and Black Project at Rutgers–New Brunswick, who will discuss Livingston’s life.
Brooke A. Thomas, an African American history doctoral candidate at Rutgers–New Brunswick, will share the importance of Livingston College to Rutgers, why it was created, and how activism was one of its important contributions to Rutgers. Thomas is also a co-author of the chapter “We the People: Student Activism at Rutgers and Livingston College, 1960–1985” in Scarlet and Black, Volume 3.
Livingston College graduates Snyder and Debra O’Neal LC’87 will share their experiences of educational innovation and campus activism from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. The discussion will end with a question-and-answer forum.
This event is sponsored by the Rutgers University Alumni Association, the Livingston Alumni Association, and the Rutgers Alumni Association.
Dr. Michelle Stephens, Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, sat down with Dr. Deborah Gray White, Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History, to talk about the research, legacy, and future of the Scarlet and Black Project.
This webinar took place on October 8, 2021, and was sponsored by the Rutgers University Alumni Association.
On September 30, 2021, Scarlet and Black contributors shared their experience studying slavery at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of the 3-day symposium called In the Wake of Slavery and Dispossession: Emory, Racism, and the Journey towards Restorative Justice. This symposium highlighted the ongoing efforts and research in the areas of slavery, dispossession, and restorative justice, with a focus on the legacy of racism and its enduring effects at Emory University. The sessions included creative interpretations and dialogue, with a primary focus on the perspectives of Black, Native American, and Indigenous peoples.
You can learn more about the symposium and view videos from all sessions on the symposium website.
Panel Discussion: Rutgers Experience in Studying Slavery and the Development of the Scarlet and Black Project
Presenters:
We are excited to announce that Rutgers University’s Scarlet and Black project has been selected as a testing partner for On These Grounds: Slavery and the University. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, On These Grounds is a cross-institutional digital initiative to describe the history of enslavement found in archival materials at colleges and universities. This initiative is led by Michigan State University, with core partners at Georgetown University and the University of Virginia.
On These Grounds is developing a linked open data model to organize, publish, and share information about the history of slavery with interested scholars, students, alumni, descendants, and members of the public. Over the next year, Rutgers will work to test this data model while closely examining our institutional archives. In addition to the core project partners at MSU, Georgetown, and UVA, we will work together with testing partners at Washington and Lee University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Georgia, and Hampden-Sydney College.
The Rutgers testing team will be led by Jesse Bayker, Scarlet and Black Digital Archivist, and Francesca Giannetti, Digital Humanities Librarian at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
Check out today’s announcement from On These Grounds for more details about this project.
The Scarlet and Black Project celebrated the release of our newest books from Rutgers University Press with a 2-day virtual symposium on April 29-30, 2021. Thank you to all of our speakers and attendees for participating in our celebration and making it a success!
All symposium sessions and President Jonathan Holloway’s keynote address were recorded and are now available on our website. View the videos here.