Gerald Gill & SCL
Founded in 2022, the Slavery, Colonialism and Their Legacies Project at Tufts University is a collaborative effort of the Center for Public History, the Center for the Humanities at Tufts, and the Tufts Archival Research Center. Support for the project comes from the Office of the Provost.
This project builds upon earlier work of Tufts scholars and community members, including especially Professor Gerald Gill (1948-2007), who began research on the earliest African American students at Tufts in the 1990s, documenting what he called the Tufts Black Freedom Trail. Scholar and NAACP co-founder W.E.B. Du Bois had noted in 1910 that Tufts had “sent forth Negro graduates of power and efficiency.”
In spite of the fact that racial and national origins were difficult to ascertain, Professor Gill sought to identify the earliest Black students at Tufts, including the first identified Black graduate, Forrester Washington, a native of Salem, Massachusetts and a member of the Class of 1909.
“Individually as well as collectively,” Professor Gill wrote, “Black students have contributed greatly to the ambiance of the ‘Tufts experience.’ Their accomplishments, past and present, need to be acknowledged and made more a part of the history and lore of Tufts University.”
The SCL Project builds upon Professor Gill’s groundbreaking research, recent research at the Tufts Archival Research Center, and the work of the African American Trail Project to cultivate African American historical memory and intergenerational community across New England, placing present-day struggles for racial justice in the context of greater Boston’s historic African American, Black Native, and diasporic communities. The project depends upon partnerships with historical sites, community archives, and museums, including especially the Royall House and Slave Quarters, the West Medford Community Center, and the Medford Historical Society and Museum.