TCU to investigate its historic ties to racism, slavery amid recent pushes for change
TCU is launching an effort to research its own historic ties to racism following a string of controversial incidents that have called into question the culture and legacy of the school.
The endeavor of academic self-examination has been named the Race and Reconciliation Initiative, the college announced in a news release on Friday. Frederick Gooding, associate professor of African American Studies in the John V. Roach Honors College, will lead the 15-person group over the course of multiple years as they look into TCU’s founders, traditions and named structures on campus as they relate to the Confederacy and the institution of slavery. Students, graduates and professors are all a part of the initiative.
TCU has been dogged by allegations of racism for years and in particular over the past year as the school has faced a lawsuit from five Black women who say they experienced racial discrimination as students. In February, 11 faculty and staff members penned a letter to the school calling for an end to what they described as systemic racism on campus.
The chairman of TCU’s faculty senate added to this in a letter in July in which he said the school isn’t doing enough to “take concrete action on racial justice.”
People have made these allegations against TCU as the school has made news for its associations with individuals using racist language or supporting white supremacy, from an incoming student using the N-word to a recent student making an apparent white power sign during a protest in downtown Fort Worth.
The first year of the Race and Reconciliation Initiative, TCU officials said in the release, will focus on Black Americans and TCU’s experiences with racism, slavery and the Confederacy. Gooding said he hopes the project can move the school toward reconciliation.
“Our study of TCU’s history will provide critical perspective, deepen understanding and result in recommendations for action and healing,” he said. “The historical research previously conducted by campus members who worked on related projects for a number of years provides a firm foundation for us to continue this necessary work.”
The calls for change at TCU have been heightened and amplified over the past several months as the country has reckoned with its racist past and institutions following the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.
In late June, a few dozen people, some of whom were TCU graduates, marched to the college along West Berry Street to push for changes such as hiring more people of color, designating a multicultural center for minority students and bringing in someone to evaluate the racial climate on campus. They stopped four times along the way for about two minutes to kneel, representing the rough amount of time a Minneapolis officer knelt on Floyd’s neck until he died.
They also chanted “Say Her Name. Jane Doe” in reference to the anonymous woman who began the student lawsuit in January alleging racial discrimination. Four more women signed on to the suit in June.
TCU is facing another suit from May 2019 in which a former employee who’s Hispanic claimed he was denied a work opportunity that was granted to a white colleague.
Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg, provost and vice chancellor of academic affairs, made the decision to appoint Gooding as the chair of the Race and Reconciliation Initiative. Dahlberg said in the release that the initiative will provide the school with crucial knowledge “from which to build our preferred future of a more diverse and welcoming campus.”
“We will hear, learn and discover the more nuanced and perhaps complicated aspects of our history that might not have been frequently shared or even acknowledged,” she said.
Members of the team will rely on existing grassroots efforts that examine TCU’s past, including the TCU Portrait Project, Indigenous Peoples historic marker and Intersectionality Month, officials said in the release. These programs, officials said, are already revealing historic patterns of racism and racial inequality at TCU.
Regular updates on the initiative will be available on a university webpage. The researchers will file a final report after the first year that includes recommendations on how to explore other identities in the school’s shared history, officials said in the news release.
Members have already placed signs next to the statue of TCU founders Addison and Randolph Clark announcing the start of the initiative and asking for community input. Some students have called for the removal of this statue since the founders served in the Confederacy.
TCU is the second school in Texas to join the Universities Studying Slavery consortium, a group of colleges looking into their historic ties to slavery. The University of Virginia started the group.
