Spotlighting Duke's flawed histories

Blurring the line between history and literary fiction, "Native Guard" draws its power from empathetic imagination guided by meticulous archival research. The last few pages of the volume reference the many quotes and documents that Natasha Trethewey uses as a basis for her poetry.

Two weeks ago, I joined fifteen other students at the Franklin Humanities Institute to sit down with Trethewey, two-time US Poet Laureate, to discuss the writing process behind her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection at an event hosted by the Franklin Humanities Institute. "Native Guard" is based on the history of a regiment of black Union soldiers who guarded Confederate captives on Ship’s Island off the coast of Gulfport, Mississippi during the Civil War. Although the Confederate POW’s have a plaque of dedication at the entrance of the fort, the Native Guards—some of whom even wrote letters on behalf of the commemorated POW’s to send home to their families—are erased almost entirely from the physical landscape.

For the past two years, as part of a Bass Connections project to engage with University history organized by the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute, I’ve been sifting through archival collections, too, to uncover forgotten histories of Duke—“firsts” among women and students of color, measures won by students activists, as well as successful efforts by staff to improve their working conditions. Like that of the Native Guards, these community members’ contributions have been institutionally neglected, through either purposeful choice or the implicit bias of those in leadership, in favor of memorializing donors and white supremacists.

Trethewey’s work teaches us one way to resist these institutional erasures, by turning them into opportunities for artistic creation in the service of activism. Since writing her book, she has advocated for a memorial to be erected in recognition of the Native Guards on Ship’s Island, and the Atlanta Alliance Theater has also adapted the poetry collection into a play, staged in the Atlanta History Center right next to the museum’s Civil War exhibit.

We can learn from Tretheway. Recent conversations on campus, such as the Provost’s Symposium on American Universities, Monuments, and Legacies of Slavery last weekend, acknowledge Duke’s flawed and forgotten histories. However, these conversations should be a means to an ends, not the ends themselves. The University can continue to hold conferences and create task forces to address this issue, but until it creates sites for people like Oliver Harvey, who organized the first labor union for Duke staff, or the first five Black undergraduate students to enroll in a desegregated Duke—sites that rival Thomas Jefferson and Braxton Craven in prominence and size—then these efforts remain in vain.

Helen Yu is a Trinity senior.