Reclaiming History: Black Lives at Sweet Briar College

Abstract

Sweet Briar College was founded in 1901 on the land of a former Virginia plantation and was constructed and run by many of the descendants of the enslaved. As recently as 2019, it was estimated that thirty percent of the hourly wage workers of the college were descendants of the enslaved. While many universities and colleges have been reckoning with their slave past, Sweet Briar has lagged far behind in this self-examination. My thesis, through interviews and research, attempts to understand how the history of the family that owned the plantation influenced the way Black lives at the College were marginalized and why only one of two U.S. colleges built on the land of a former working plantation has done so little to examine its history, even at a time when many other colleges and universities are engaged in that research. The College promoted itself as a place where the ideals of Southern white womanhood were elevated, preserved and perpetuated and the racial divide between white students and Black staff was sharply defined. This thesis also looks at those who, though often in the minority, attempted to push back against the administration and Board during critical times of change, such as the period of integration and currently, as Sweet Briar has changed its admissions policy to bar transgender applicants. I continue the work of historian Lynn Rainville, a professor who first began to research the college’s slave history in 2001. Rainville is the only academic who has studied the founding of the college in a full light, illuminating the false narrative rife with the Lost Cause paternalism that had previously been the published and accepted history of the school. In my examination of the myths of the Lost Cause in the South and its influence on generations of white students at the college and their families, this thesis attempts to see the influence false ideas about race, privilege and social order have had on the operation of the college. I attempt to gain an honest understanding of how the College handled matters of race, interviewing former Black and white students from the period of the 1960s and 1970s to see how this racially imbalanced environment affected their experience as students. The college archives and school publications from the earliest periods and throughout the mid-to-late 20th century also feature significantly in my research in their ability to reveal student life at the College as well as the actions of the administration and the Board regarding many aspects of life at Sweet Briar. It is my aim in this research to further the work that has begun in this area that could move Sweet Briar College forward in a racial reckoning and a more honest and fulsome history. A key finding of my research reveals that the will of the former slave owner that created the College has been interpreted in conflicting ways by the Board at pivotal times in its history to justify controversial changes that they wished to make. This practice is continuing currently with the College’s decision in 2024 to change the admissions policy to bar transgender women based upon a 1899 definition of “woman.” It was an unexpected change in policy for a college that currently has transgender students and thirty percent of the student body identify as nonbinary. In the current political climate in the U.S., it is difficult to project what effect this will have on the future of Sweet Briar College. The history of the school I have researched and written about suggests that facing the current realities of life is not something that comes easily or quickly.