Wait a second. It’s not Sunday… why are you getting an email from Round the Triangle?! Well, this isn’t the usual weekly newsletter: it’s a new monthly podcast!
Starting now, I’ll be sending you a Round the Triangle podcast in the middle of each month that will dive into local history, culture, or whatever I find interesting about the Historic Triangle area.
For this inaugural episode, we are talking about James Blair, the co-founder of the College of William & Mary and, as it turns out, a slaveholder and advocate for institutionalized slavery in colonial Virginia. Despite this legacy, Blair is still honored today as the namesake of a local middle school and a hall on W&M campus.
James Blair Middle School used to be James Blair High School, where the first integrated class in the area graduated from in 1969. Last year at a screening of “Voices of Integration,” a documentary about the challenges faced by the first Black students to integrate at Williamsburg-James City County schools, I met Mary Lassiter, who recounts her experience as a student walking into James Blair High School and seeing a problematic mural in the video below.
Since I learned about this history, I’ve been doing some digging into James Blair and Confederate officer John B. Magruder, the namesake of Magruder elementary in York County (more on him in a future podcast).
It did not take me long to discover that James Blair was not only a slaveholder himself, but that he pushed for the Anglican church to adopt slavery in order to incentivize more English ministers to move to Virginia.
"Blair was convinced that making ministers slaveholders would 'be most effectual expedient for furnishing this country with a learned pious and diligent clergy; and for rewarding such a clergy with all suitable encouragements and securing them in the possession and enjoyment of them." - The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Jul., 1985)
In my research, I also came across an interview with history professor Jennifer Oast, and reached out to her to get her take on James Blair as a school name. Our conversation in this podcast scratches the surface of her research, but if you’d like to learn more about her work I’d recommend this story from the Virginia-Pilot.
I am not the first to raise the question as to why a school in our community continues to honor a slaveholder and slavery promoter. Many have spoken up before, but nothing has been organized to put real pressure on the school district to change the name of James Blair Middle School. I hope that this podcast helps to change that.
Mary and I are currently talking with local community organizations to start a campaign to change the names of James Blair Middle School and Magruder elementary. If you’d like to get involved in these efforts, let me know!
Show notes:
* The Bray School
* Institutional Slavery by Jennifer Oast
* “The Blair Statue: A Legacy Worth Interrogation Not Reverence”
* Gowan Pamphlet, American Baptist minister and freedman who founded the Black Baptist Church in Williamsburg, Virginia
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.roundthetriangle.com
