$2.56 million Mellon Grant to University of Massachusetts Amherst expands Slavery North Initiative

BY PAUL JUNOR

The awarding of $2.56 million from the Mellon Foundation to the University of Massachusetts Amherst will significantly enlarge the vital work of the Slavery North Initiative. This innovative, creative, and educative academic and cultural institution has been making a difference in academia since it was launched in 2020. It is the brainchild of art historian, educator, author, and professor of art history Charmaine A. Nelson. The three-year grant will go towards the implementation of the Slavery North’s Fellowship Program.

The features of this fellowship program for graduate and undergraduate students will feature the following:

• A three-person staff
• A lecture series
• Black History Months panels
• An academic conference
• An edited academic book
• Podcast series, workshops, art, and cultural exhibitions
• Historical database that houses primary source for the study of slavery in Canada and the U.S. North

It was on August 16^th, 2022, that the University of Massachusetts Amherst announced that prominent scholar and art historian Charmaine A. Nelson had joined the university’s history of art and architecture. She founded the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery when she moved to NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2020. This first of its kind research center was devoted to the study of the 200-year history of Canadian participation in the Transatlantic Slavery. It was established in 2022 as an international first. It combines a focus on slavery in Canada and North America. Four mandate areas of it are:

• Canadian slavery
• Slavery in the American North
• The comparative study of slavery in: Canada, the American North, and other northern, or temperate regions
• Black-Indigenous relations

The acquiring of official initiative status at UMass in 2022 was the first step on the path towards forming an institute. This grant will take it to the next level.

Dr. Charmaine shares, “A fellows program is at the heart of this grant, so that we can grow this field of research. Since there are not many scholars studying slavery in the U.S. North and Canada, the ability to grow the field is limited. Mellon’s generous support will provide fellows with the: space, time, and a like-minded community in which to develop their own research and the field at a more rapid pace.”

Dr. Charmaine notes further, “If you transform people’s understanding of slavery, you allow them to understand the roots of anti-Black racism that are 500-600 years old. This problem really began in the 1400’s, and that’s where the stereotypes of Blackness we see today originate. All these dimensions of anti-Black racism today-the Black maternal health crisis, for example, or that we get stopped more if we’re driving a nice car, or we get asked for an ID when paying for luxury goods-goes back to the hyper surveillance and the brutalization of our ancestors in the period of slavery.

For me, the work of Slavery North is teaching people about slavery in these specific regions, making this field more accessible to scholars doing the work, and asking the question: Which countries and regions have been allowed to forget their participation in slavery?”

There will be the development of a new physical space at the Newman Center that will be supported by three staff members in conjunction with cohorts of fellows. Dr. Charmaine states, “I am deeply grateful to Mellon Foundation for this extraordinary support and show of confidence that will allow us to undertake this transformative work.”

The overall vision for Slavery North and the Mellon-funded program is to foster: redress, atonement and reconciliation, and be a conduit through which to confront and heal traumatic histories. It is an academic initiative with a social justice mission.