Carissa Chen, now a Rhodes Fellow at Oxford, spent two years as a bachelor, studying with Dr. Beckert, tracing the descendants of Harvard-related slaves. She had a list of 121 names. She found 50 living descendants of two of them, removed eight generations.
Ms. Chen estimated that if all the descendants were found, they could number 50,000.
She hopes that through the new initiative they will be discovered and will have the opportunity to tell their stories. “The thing about reparations is that because we haven’t looked for living descendants for so long, this is something we think about in the abstract,” she said. “The descendants themselves should be part of the conversation about what the university owes.”
Jordan Lloyd is one of the descendants. Ms. Lloyd, a 32-year-old former actress, worked as a waitress at the Harvard ART Theater without realizing how connected she was to the university’s past. She recalls that Ms. Chen contacted her during the protests over the police murder of George Floyd. “This information made me feel so centered,” she said. “I found a lot of calm and soundness in him and I was incredibly grateful.”
But she was also angry with Harvard for the delay. “It feels like they’re getting in a van,” she said. Still, she added: “If I’m the generation that will see some traction ahead, that’s fine. I’m glad to be a part of it. “
One of her ancestors, Cuba Vassal, was enslaved by Penelope Royal Vassal, described in the Harvard report as the sister of the slave-owning benefactor of Harvard Law School. The Royall family crest was adopted as a symbol of the law school until it was withdrawn in 2016 when students protested against the slave-owning association.
Ms. Lloyd ponders what Harvard owes its descendants: “Allowing our children to attend part of summer school,” she said, “working to help people find out who their ancestors are is like reparations.” She added: “There is an emotional reason to hear that your family has been enslaved; there is the economic outlook and the loss of capital from their work. “
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