While schools like Georgetown University, the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary have been criticized for their ties to slavery, George Mason University and the man the school is named after have, for the most part, escaped the same level of scrutiny.
In 2021, the university plans to confront the man and the full breadth of his life with a memorial dedicated to the enslaved people whose labor helped Mason build his fortune.
Kye Farrow, 22, one of the students who worked on the project, hopes the research by students and faculty members will spark conversations about freedom in the United States. Americans in recent years have clashed — sometimes, physically — over what to do with schools, statues and other structures that honor Confederate soldiers, slave owners and anti-abolitionists.
A statue of Confederate Army Gen. Robert E. Lee was at the center of violent white supremacist protests that exploded in 2017, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from George Mason University, in Charlottesville.
“I was never one to say we need to change the name of the university because of this,” Farrow said. “I think it’s just something we need to learn from. It’s about embracing the past as opposed to distancing ourselves from it.”
Students started questioning Mason’s past in 2016 after reading the will he wrote for his children in 1773.
“It would list human beings in the same pages as farming instruments,” said Ben Carton, a history professor who participated in the enslaved peoples project. “He bequeathed enslaved people, often by age, grade to his children. He never emancipated a single enslaved individual.”
There are no markers on campus that tell their stories.