The St. John’s College History Task Force will research the college’s past with a focus on understanding its relationship to indigenous and enslaved people, and to make recommendations to the board on how that history should be acknowledged. This is not the history of one campus or the other, but the history of the college. Reflecting this, the Steering Committee of the Task Force (see below) has representation of all the roles that make up the college community.

The Steering Committee has divided the work of the Task Force into three phases. In the first phase (preparation) we are 1) studying how other colleges and universities have researched and acknowledged their histories, 2) speaking with local historians to learn what materials are currently available outside of the college, and 3) identifying what historic materials exist inside the college. Having learned that the college archives have never been digitized, we are hiring four work-study students (two per campus) to scan and transcribe them.

Based on what we have learned, we are also considering various methods for conducting the Research Phase that will do a thorough job in a timely fashion at a moderate cost while involving students as much as possible. One factor that complicates this process is that The Program does not allow for research to be conducted by students as classwork, as has been done in other institutions (preceptorials are too short). Due to the size and complexity of this effort, the original deadline of June 2021 has been removed.

We have not yet devoted substantial effort to discussing potential processes for the Recommendations Phase.

St. John’s College has a long, rich history—324 years’ worth—longer than any college in the United States except for Harvard and William and Mary. Researching and reporting on it accurately will not happen easily or quickly, but is essential if we are to have an informed discussion on how we should acknowledge it. The diagram below provides a schematic of the historic topics that we have identified so far. No doubt others will appear once the research begins.

College History Taskforce Report – February 27, 2021

Introduction

This is the second report of the College History Task Force (CHTF), covering the period between the November 2020 and February 2021 BVG meetings. Please see the earlier report for a description of the CHTF’s work during that period. We anticipate sharing further reports here after each board meeting until our work is concluded.

Research Phase

After considering several ways that we could structure the Research Phase, the Steering Committee decided that in place of one large report prepared by one vendor (as we had decided previously), we would break the research down into multiple small reports, each to be done by an individual historian. This would give us access to the many professional and semi-professional historians in the Annapolis area who have a strong foundational knowledge of the time period and locality. We also divided the research topics into three categories: Archive Dependent, Non-Archive Dependent, and Oral History (see Appendix A). This would allow work to begin immediately on topics not requiring access to the college archives, which are still closed due to COVID. We discussed this with the leadership of the Annapolis History Consortium, a group of local historians, and at their suggestion modified the SOW that we had drafted and prepared an RFP to be posted.

In parallel with the above work, the Steering Committee also spent considerable time discussing ways to involve students in the Research Phase. We spoke to three alumni who are professionally involved in history to see if they had any insight on this question. They were Frederick Bohrer (A78), who recently retired as Professor of Art History at Hood College—much of his work focused on historic monuments; Barbara Hahn (A88), Professor of History at Texas Tech University—in addition to her other work, she has published a book on the history of the tobacco industry from colonial times to the present; and Allen Mikaelian (SF91), a best-selling historical author and independent historian. Our thanks to them for taking the time to talk to us and share their informed opinions.

Although we spoke with them individually, they were unanimous in telling us that conducting historic research, especially using historic institutional archives, requires training and oversight, and the structure of The New Program does not provide a way to do that. Seeking a way around this, we discussed various other options with them. They thought that Preceptorials in the Junior and Senior years might be a way to provide some of the training and background, but would not allow enough time to do any meaningful research. The best way to involve students in research, they thought, would be as a summer internship. Of course, with the college archives inaccessible due to the closure of the Maryland State Archives, it is difficult to see how this might be organized right now.

In view of the numerous (ca. 20) Non-Archive Dependent research reports, each prepared by a separate historian, the Steering Committee decided to set up a Review Panel to provide quality control to the finished product. Professors Bohrer and Hahn will be joined by Ina Dixon (A10), a history PhD student defending her dissertation, and Boyd Pratt (SF75), an architectural historian and former President of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, to represent SJC; the Annapolis History Consortium will provide members as well. Each report will be reviewed by two Johnnie alumni and two AHC members (as well as the Steering Committee) to ensure it is of the desired quality. With an eye toward the Recommendation Phase, the RFP specifies that the historians be prepared to present their work to the college community, including a question and answer session.

In addition to looking at ways to include students in the research, we also considered additional activities that would involve students, and identified three. As mentioned in the previous report, we moved forward with hiring work-study students to digitize and transcribe the college archives. Under the leadership of the two college staff members of the Steering Committee, Jordan Klein and Jennifer Sprague, we prepared a job description, posted it, had the student applicants do a transcription exercise (see Appendix B), interviewed applicants via Zoom, and hired students. At our request, the Deans made funds available for an additional student on each campus, bringing the total to six. As we waited for the Annapolis campus to open up and the COVID status to improve enough for the Annapolis students to be trained on using the scanner, Ms. Sprague and Mr. Klein had all the work-study students review the websites of the Universities Studying Slavery to identify, among other topics, how their processes were organized and how they had chosen to recognize their history.

A second activity, suggested by the two student members of the Steering Committee, Salomon Cordova and Zion Peart, is an online discussion forum, to be managed by students, with faculty advisors. They intend to start with documents surrounding the beginning of The New Program, both writings of Barr and Buchanan and general works looking at the state of higher education in the early 1930s which caused Barr and Buchanan to feel there was a need for a new approach. One initial question they hope to highlight is “What is the objective of The New Program?” In the future, as the research reports become available, we believe we can use this forum as the vehicle for their dissemination. As they work on setting this up, Messrs. Peart and Cordova have been working with college faculty and staff in order understand and resolve technical and organizational aspects.

The third activity, suggested by the two faculty members of the Steering Committee, tutors Steve Crockett and Howard Fisher, is the possibility of involving Graduate Institute students, either in a GI preceptorial or in informally convened study groups. They have talked to the two GI Associate Deans, and are working on other organizational details.

Request for Proposals: History of St. John’s College

The Steering Committee has issued a Request for Proposals to investigate the history of the college, and the college is actively seeking grants to fund the project.

Fundraising

As described in the Finance Committee meeting, efforts of college leadership, Santa Fe Treasurer and Collegewide Financial Officer Michael Duran, and Annapolis Treasurer Ally Gontang-Highfield, enabled the college to emerge from an extremely dangerous financial period with only a $500,000 deficit. However, this leaves no funds for the College History Task Force. Consequently, we have been working with the college’s fundraising staff to identify potential donors or grants that could finance this project. This work is ongoing.

Next Steps

We are happy that the Maryland State Archives have now reopened, which will allow us to commission Archive-dependent research (with student support). We are also investigating Oral History, in the hope of finding alumni with professional experience in the field. We are examining the processes that other institutions and cities have used as a guidelines for our Recommendation Phase. And importantly, we are actively seeking out the appropriate grants to fund our work.

Appendix A—Research Topics

Archive-dependent Research Topics

• King William School/St. John’s College ownership of slaves
• Slavery in construction of College buildings

Non Archive-dependent Research Topics

NON BIOGRAPHIC TOPICS

• Original inhabitants of Santa Fe campus land
• Original inhabitants of Annapolis campus land
• Slavery and the Economy in Maryland, 1696-1784
• Slavery and the Economy in Maryland, 1784-1830
• Slavery and the Economy in Maryland, 1830-1865
• SJC’s role in the 1906 Annapolis lynching [may require access to archives]
• History of the academic development of SJC (prep school → early college → military academy → Great Books School) [may require access to archives]

BIOGRAPHIC TOPICS (NAMED BUILDINGS)

• Slavery and John McDowell
• Slavery and Samuel Chase
• Slavery and Thomas Stone
• Slavery and William Pinkney
• Slavery and Hector Humphreys
• Slavery and William Paca
• Slavery and Charles Carroll of Carrollton
• Slavery and J. Wirt Randall
• Slavery and Levin Hicks Campbell
• Slavery and John Johnson, Jr., Chancellor
• Slavery and Charles Carroll the Barrister
• Slavery and Francis Scott Key
• Slavery and Henry William Woodward
• Slavery and E. Berkeley Iglehart
• Slavery and Paul Mellon

ORAL HISTORIES

• SJC students and the desegregation of Annapolis
• SJC students and the desegregation of Santa Fe (or similar)?
• First black students
• First women students

Appendix B–Transcription Test For Work Study Students

See the sample documents student applicants were asked to transcribe as an exercise.

Download Appendix B

College History Taskforce Report – October 27, 2021

Research

• The Steering Committee issued the RFP, but the response was disappointingly low. Discussion with members of the Annapolis History Consortium indicated that our honorarium was too small to adequately compensate for the amount of work required by the historians. Increasing the honoraria to the suggested level would result in a total cost similar to that of using one vendor ($50,000-$75,000). Since the Steering Committee consists of volunteers, and there would be no cost savings, we decided that it made more sense to use one vendor, rather than try to manage 20 separate ones. This would ensure uniformity of research product, and would make the process much easier to manage.
• Mr. Trevisan presented this development to the Faculties Subcommittee and Finance Committees at the Board of Visitors and Governors meeting. Due to the college’s five-year austerity measures aimed at balancing the budget, no funds could be made immediately available for this research as potential surplus funds are earmarked for salary increases for staff and faculty, whose salaries were frozen when the austerity measures began. The Steering Committee supports this decision and placed the Research Phase on hold until funding can be secured.

Work Study

• The work study students have continued to scan and transcribe the college’s early financial documents. To date no evidence of slave ownership by the college or gifts of slaves to the college have been found. Additional documents remain to be scanned and transcribed.

College History Taskforce Report – February 24, 2022

Research Phase

• On hold

Discussion Phase

• Mr. Trevisan presented the CHTF Steering Committee’s proposal for the Discussion and Recommendation Phase to the Facilities Subcommittee. The intention of the Discussion and Recommendation Phase is to divide the approximately twenty research topics between three or four discussion groups. Each group will consist of a faculty member from each campus, a student from each campus, a staff member from each campus, and alumnus/a from each campus, and will be led by a member of the Annapolis history establishment, e.g. a museum director, for a total of nine people. They would meet via Zoom or Teams to discuss each of their assigned topics and recommend to the Board of Visitors and Governors how the historical topic should be acknowledged by the college. These discussions will probably be long and complicated. In an attempt to ensure uniformity in the examination of the research and the discussion leading up the recommendation, the Steering Committee developed a template to guide the discussions of the Discussion and Recommendation Groups (attached). Comments from members of the college community and the Annapolis community will be solicited and gathered via a link on the college website to a Google Sheet-type document with one cell per step of the discussion template. Discussion group members will read these comments before meeting, and will take them into account in their discussions. The Steering Committee tested this template using Mark Leepson’s biography of Francis Scott Key, What So Proudly We Hailed. After several revisions, we agreed upon a final version, which Mr. Trevisan presented to the Facilities Subcommittee.
• The Steering Committee recommended beginning the Discussion and Recommendation Phase with a weekend-long in-person gathering on the Annapolis Campus. This would allow the following:
  • President Demleitner could welcome and thank the volunteers.
  • Discussion Group members from Santa Fe who have never been to Annapolis could see the campus and the buildings they will be discussing.
  • Discussion Group members who are alumni from the Annapolis campus who have not been back to campus in a long time could re-familiarize themselves with it.
  • All discussion group members could attend a lecture on the history of slavery in Maryland from 1696 to 1865 and ask questions. Slavery in Maryland changed in this 170-year period, and since discussion point #3 is “How unusual for the time was the person’s behavior?” the Steering Committee felt ensuring a standard base level of knowledge would assist the discussions.
  • Volunteers would have the opportunity to get to know one another in an informal setting before beginning potentially fraught discussions of slavery over Teams/Zoom.
• The Steering Committee recognizes the amount of effort and cost that structuring the discussion and kickoff in this manner would entail. However, our intention for the entire process is to encourage an open discussion where all members of the community will have an opportunity to understand the research and provide input. Our hope is that it will lead to results that all community members will at least understand if not agree with, and that this will make the entire process a positive one for St. John’s College rather than the negative experiences full of recrimination and turmoil that have resulted from the closed-door processes used at other institutions.
• Since this would occur at the end of the Research Phase and would require substantial amounts of staff time and funding, the Subcommittee took it under advisement.

Work Study

• The work study students continue scanning and transcribing the college’s early financial documents. No evidence of slave ownership has been found.

College History Taskforce Report – June 23, 2022

Research Phase

• On hold
• The Steering Committee recommends that interested members of the community read the recently released book, O Say Can You Hear: A Cultural Biography of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” by Mark Clague. It is a well-written book that in addition to describing the musical environment that produced the song, discusses how various views of the song have changed over time. This reading recommendation is in addition to the committee’s earlier recommendation that members of the community read Mark Leepson’s biography of Francis Scott Key, What So Proudly We Hailed.

Discussion Phase

• On hold

Work Study

• The work study students completed scanning and transcribing the college’s early financial documents. Fifteen boxes of documents, each containing approximately 12 inches of paper have been scanned, most of this number has been transcribed. No evidence of slave ownership by the college has been found. More than 70 boxes remain to be scanned and transcribed. These contain documents such as board minutes, reports of various sorts, correspondence, and miscellaneous documents.

  The college has provided funding for one work study student per campus to continue scanning and transcribing through the summer.

Other

• Tutor Steve Crockett led a GI preceptorial on slavery in the United States. While this was not a CHTF activity, Mr. Crockett’s participation in the Steering Committee sparked the idea to create it. Mr. Crockett has led preceptorials on Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass in the past, and sees this as a further step from those. The reading list included works by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Sojourner Truth, John C. Calhoun, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Nat Turner, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Karl Marx. Work is under way to have the readings post on the college website.

College History Taskforce Report – November 12, 2022

Research Phase

• The college applied for a grant from the Maryland Historical Trust (“the state agency dedicated to preserving and interpreting the legacy of Maryland’s past”) to fund the research portion of the CHTF project. We presented the request as an update and expansion of the description of the Annapolis campus contained in the Colonial Annapolis Historic District nomination, which was written in 1965. We are pleased to announce that the MHT granted us approximately half of our requested amount, so after discussion with the Cultural Resource Management (CRM) firm that will do the research, we have revised the grant request. The CRM will research and write reports on the following topics:
  • What relationship with enslaved people did the following individuals or their ancestors (source of wealth) have?
    • John McDowell
    • Hector Humphreys
    • William Pinkney
    • Samuel Chase
    • Thomas Stone
    • William Paca
    • Charles Carroll of Carrollton
    • Francis Scott Key
    • Henry William Woodward
    • E. Berkeley Iglehart
    • J. Wirt Randall
  • Was slave labor used to construct buildings on campus? Who were these slaves?
  • Can we identify any African Americans who worked at the college before 1865?
  • Were slaves housed for anytime on campus?
• We will submit the revised proposal to MHT, and assuming they approve, expect to receive draft reports before the end of 2023, with final versions following thereafter. The college will publicize the final reports to enable members of the community to read them in preparation for contributing to the Discussion and Recommendation Phase.
• We will continue to work with the college’s grants staff to apply for additional funding for the remainder of the research phase.

Discussion Phase

• On hold awaiting completion of the Research Phase.

Work Study

• The college has provided funding for one work study student per campus to continue scanning and transcribing documents.

Other

• The two student members of the Steering Committee graduated (with our congratulations!) and three new students have taken their place. Please see the list of Steering Committee members below.

College History Taskforce Update

The college has received generous research grants from the Maryland Historical Trust and the France-Merrick Foundation to fund the research portion of the project. The college engaged Washington, D.C.-based historic consultancy EHT Traceries to complete the project. Reports are expected in February 2024.

College History Taskforce Update

The college has received the first draft of the report from Washington, D.C.-based historic consultancy EHT Traceries and provided comments and suggestions. The college will continue to work with EHT Traceries and the Maryland Historical Trust on the report and expects to post it for public comment later this year.

The task force published its historic report and opened a comment period until December 12, 2024.

In February 2025, the College History Task Force provided their final report to the board on how to acknowledge the institution’s history and association with slavery. The task force’s recommendations, which will be taken under advisement by the presidents and implemented where funding is available, include: 1) expanding historical information on the website, reprinting historical books and articles, and including a short overview in freshman orientation 2) partnering with community organizations in Annapolis to increase the amount of academic support and community service opportunities for students 3) developing additional campus signage and self-guided walking tours 4) including college history in the New Program via lectures, preceptorials, faculty seminars, and student discussions 5) establishing an annual lecture on democratic citizenship and different legal topics 6) considering a second phase to research other historical topics identified by the task force but not included in this phase and applying for grant money to fund this research. Following this set of recommendations, the work of the task force is considered complete. With sincere gratitude, the college thanks the task force for their dedication and the more than 700 volunteer hours they put forth for this important project.