 | Board of Visitors minutes February 9, 2007 |  |
THE UNIVERSITY ORIGINAL LABOR FORCE
At an earlier meeting of the Board, the President noted, he had informed Members of plans to commemorate the University original labor force. These plans have advanced with the appointment of two committees, both chaired by Brian Hogg, Senior Preservation Planner in the Office of the University Architect. The first of these committees has completed its work, which was to design a marker to honor the efforts of these anonymous workers, and to devise the wording and placement of the marker. The committee has proposed a slate memorial, to be placed in the brick pavement of the passage under the south terrace of the Rotunda, the passage which leads to the principal entrance of the building.
The second committee is charged with conducting research to identify the enslaved workers and other persons of color who participated in building the University original buildings and grounds. It is proposed that the names of these people and information about their roles be incorporated into a commemorative and interpretive site that will be part of Phase II of the South Lawn Project.
The President said the Buildings and Grounds Committee has approved the wording of the commemorative marker; the Committee resolution, which will be brought to the full Board for approval later in the meeting, and which includes the proposed wording, is as follows:
WHEREAS, the Board of Visitors wishes to acknowledge the contributions of the mostly anonymous women and men, free and enslaved, who constructed the first buildings of the University between 1817 and 1826;
RESOLVED, the Board directs the placement of a stone tablet, to be set in the pavement on the south side of the Rotunda at the point where the main passage into the Rotunda joins the walkway under the West Lawn colonnades. The memorial tablet is to be inscribed as follows:
"In honor of the several hundred women and men, both free and enslaved, whose labor between 1817 and 1826 helped realize Thomas Jefferson design for the University of Virginia.
| Board of Visitors minutes February 9, 2007 | |