Five Colleges, Incorporated: Slavery and Its Legacy

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Symposium Series: Slavery and Its Legacy

Members of the organization known as Five College Learning in Retirement (5CLIR) will launch a semester-long series of symposia in mid-February devoted to "Slavery and Its Legacy." The keynote event, which honors Black HIstory month, features talks by Amherst College President Anthony W. Marx and Lucas Wilson, professor of Economics and chair of African American and African Studies at Mount Holyoke College. It will take place on Wednesday, February 16 in Cole Assembly in Converse Hall, Amherst College, at 4:00 p.m. Their topics, designed to reflect on the past and look towards the future, are "Making Race and Nation" and "Challenges on the Road to Racial Justice in Higher Education," respectively.

Other speakers in the series, which continues through April, include John Bracey of UMass/Amherst, Henry Thomas III, CEO of the Springfield Urban League, the Reverend Howard-John Wesley of St. John's Congregational Church in Springfield, and Derrick Bell, noted attorney and educator at New York University's School of Law and author of Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform. All events in the series are free and open to the public. Some transportation will be available from Amherst and Northampton to Springfield and vice-versa.

As its name implies, Five College Learning in Retirement promotes the pursuit of learning among retirees or near-retirees. It is part of a growing movement, related to Elderhostel, of "life-long learning" institutes across the country. Each year, 5CLIR sponsors as many as 50 peer-led seminars for its members, who now number more than 250. According to Chuck Gillies, former 5CLIR president and project director for this series, two recent 5CLIR seminars, "Causes of the Civil War" and "Understanding Slavery" helped to inspire the series. He credits Robert Romer, Amherst College professor of physics, emeritus with sharing "some little known facts about slavery in the North with all of us," facts he had learned initially in the seminars and as a new guide at Historic Deerfield. "Much of this local history as well as the background on slavery nationally had been forgotten, minimized or denied," according to Gillies. Several months ago, a core group of 5CLIR members, including Romer, Gillies and Ted Belsky, retired history teacher and Dean at American International College in Springfield, set out to design a series that would accomplish a number of things:

share the background on slavery more widely;
inspire discussion of the modern consequences of slavery;
promote dialogue about these issues across all segments of the community;
demonstrate the fact that retirees are eager to contribute to the community.

"While 5CLIR is open to all and prides itself on a membership from all walks of life and educational and professional backgrounds," adds Gillies, we hoped the series might also help demonstrate LIR's ongoing interest in diversity."

This project, Gillies points out, "represents a major effort by 5CLIR to reach out to all members of the community from Springfield to Greenfield, to the five colleges and to other academic institutions in the area." In planning the series, Gillies and his colleagues consulted with representatives from Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith colleges and UMass Amherst, especially those in the departments of African American or Black Studies, and at Smith with the Dean of the School for Social Work, and the Office of Institutional Diversity. "Everyone we met with responded enthusiastically," according to Gillies, offering various forms of support. The primary collaborators have been Henry Thomas III, CEO of the Springfield Urban League, Lucas Wilson of Mount Holyoke's African American and African studies department, and Joe Carvalho, President of the Springfield Museums. Financial support has come from all four colleges and the University, from Five Colleges, Incorporated and from Florence Savings Bank and the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts. Scholars on the campuses also responded by agreeing to serve as speakers along with 5CLIR members who have done research on the topic of slavery.

Among those taking part will be:
Anthony W. Marx, president, Amherst College
Lucas Wilson, department of economics and African American and African Studies, Mount Holyoke College
Robert Romer, Amherst College Physics Department
Frank Heston, Frontier Regional High School, retire
Chuck Gillies, 5CLIR former president
John Bracey and Manisha Sinha, department of Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst
Hilary Moss, Amherst College Black Studies
Henry Thomas III, CEO, Urban League of Springfield
Glen Davis, Executive Director Urban League of Springfield Community Development Corp.
Joyce Everett and Mary Hall, Smith College School for Social Work
Dean Robinson, Political Science, UMass/Amherst
Peter Brandon, Sociology, UMass/Amherst
Reverend Howard-John Wesley, pastor, St. John's Church, Springfield
Derrick Bell, NYU School of Law

A PDF file of the brochure can be downloaded here. It contains detailed information about the topic for each of the six events in the series, along with information about times and locations.

Questions about the series can be addressed to: Chuck Gillies, Project Director at (413) 253-9232, or Karen Tatro, 5CLIR Program Coordinator at (413) 585-3756.

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