By Luke Lattanzi | Staff Writer
With the ceremonial groundbreaking of the Memorial to Enslaved Persons set to take place in late February, Dr. Todd Copeland gave insights on the lives of Ann Freeman — a slave believed to have served the university’s namesake, Judge R.E.B. Baylor — as well as other slaves throughout the university’s early history.
Copeland, professor of English and director of advancement marketing, served on the Commission on Historic Campus Representations in 2020. In that role, he was responsible for providing historical information about the university, most notably its roots in slavery at its original campus in Independence. His research generally pertains to a time period spanning from 1865 to the mid-Jim Crow era, around 1920 or 1930.
“After the commission was done and I had some more free time, I thought, ‘I want to find out more about [Freeman] because she is the tip of the iceberg,’” Copeland said. “So that’s really just kind of what I have done over the last couple of years when I have time.”
Freeman was originally enslaved by the family of the university’s first president, Henry Lee Graves. Henry Lee Graves was one of four brothers, all of whom moved from Georgia to Independence. Freeman, along with her family (also enslaved), moved to Independence alongside the Graves brothers when she was just a child.
“She, in her own knowledge of what her past was, was originally owned by Henry Lee Graves, and then [she was] exchanged or sold to Judge Baylor to satisfy an old debt,” Copeland said. “That was the phrase that she used. And I have found in my research that all those Graves brothers who moved to Washington County had horrible financial problems, and they were all in debt.”
Copeland said the Graves brothers still have an impact on the Black community in Independence, as many slaves took their masters’ last name.
“These people all were pretty much slaveholders, so that’s a long-term project, but we’re interested in trying to identify those people,” Copeland said. “And so a lot of those people have the last name — or immediately after emancipation, they had the last name of Graves — because, like a lot of slaves, they took their masters’ surname out of convenience. And also, in order to help reunite with family members that might have been left behind in the deep South, they would know that they would call themselves Graves.”
After the Civil War, many formerly enslaved people lived in what were called freedom colonies — communities of former slaves that usually revolved around a school or a church. Copeland said after slavery ended in 1865, Freeman continued as a house servant to Judge Baylor in a community of former slaves in Gay Hill, which was where his residence was located and is now an unincorporated area of Independence.
In addition to Freeman, Copeland said he intends to focus on discovering individuals who were enslaved by other early Baylor leaders and trustees. Furthermore, he said the university’s history of slavery is a lot deeper than just the construction of its original campus in Independence.
“It’s not that they were just involved in constructing the university, the buildings,” Copeland said. “Enslaved people were integral to daily life on the campus, whether they were cooks or did laundry. It’s really honoring everyone who was part of the daily life of Baylor’s early history.”
The Memorial to Enslaved Persons will be created to recognize these individuals. It was originally named the Memorial to Unknown Enslaved but was renamed upon the discovery of the names of several enslaved individuals.
The Rev. Dr. Malcolm Foley, special adviser to the president for equity and campus engagement, said he would like the memorial to aid in cultivating a more comprehensive understanding of Baylor’s history.
Foley said the first stage of construction will be to add explanatory limestone blocks around the Judge Baylor statue in front of Pat Neff Hall. After that, the bulk of construction will take nine to 12 months to complete.
“There’s going to be seven fountains, and it’s all in limestone,” Foley said. “It’s going to be a really dramatic reshaping of that space. By the end of this project, this will be likely the most significant physical representation on Baylor’s campus.”
Foley said he hopes the memorial, while being primarily symbolic, will inspire the university to take more concrete actions to better deal with its past. With other Christian schools looking to Baylor, he said Baylor has a distinct opportunity to set a new standard.
“One of the purposes of race is fundamentally to divide, to exploit, to dominate, and as Christians, we have been given resources specifically to resist that,” Foley said. “Hopefully it will also jumpstart people’s imaginations [to think] about, ‘Hey, what might a community look like that is actually free of these evils? What might it look like for me as a student or me as a staff member?’”
