Invisible Founders : : How Two Centuries of African American Families Transformed a Plantation into a College / / Lynn Rainville.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2019
• VerfasserIn: Rainville, Lynn,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2019]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (232 p.)

Literal and metaphorical excavations at Sweet Briar College reveal how African American labor enabled the transformation of Sweet Briar Plantation into a private women’s college in 1906. This volume tells the story of the invisible founders of a college founded by and for white women. Despite being built and maintained by African American families, the college did not integrate its student body for sixty years after it opened. In the process, Invisible Founders challenges our ideas of what a college “founder” is, restoring African American narratives to their deserved and central place in the story of a single institution — one that serves as a microcosm of the American South.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1. Invisible Workers -- Chapter 2. Family Origins, 1685–1810 -- Chapter 3. Virginian Slavery, 1811–1830 -- Chapter 4. Survival Strategies, 1831–1857 -- Chapter 5. Families Divided, 1858–1865 -- Chapter 6. Freedom Communities, 1866–1883 -- Chapter 7. Mourning the Dead, 1884–1900 -- Chapter 8. Forgotten Founders, 1901–2001 -- Chapter 9. Commemorating Founders -- Bibliography -- Index