Harvard: We Are Watching

Now that the students, faculty and alumni of Harvard Law School have awakened the School’s governing board, administrators and leaders to the error the Law School made in 1936 when it adapted a seal, based on the crest of a family of slave owners who had endowed a professorship, it will be refreshing to see what diversified and truthful historical image the Law School embraces to replace the old one. The challenge for Harvard Law School is to create a seal that reflects the truth and reality of its historical roots – without distorting or erasing the conflicted history of its own. Like the wealth that built the university and the nation, a diverse and wide group of people from slave owners to enslaved people produced the wealth that built the Law School.

On Monday, March 15, 2016, Harvard’s governing board responded to students and faculty by starting the process to correct the error made in 1936, a year when many people were not aware of the Law School’s endowers’ slavery roots, or did not care. At that time, reflecting diversity in the nation’s roots and the source of the nation’s wealth was not an issue, but it is today.

Harvard’s governing board informed the Law School that, going forward, especially as some have suggested toward its bicentennial in 2017, “the school will actively explore other steps to recognize rather than suppress the realities of its history.”

But acknowledging its roots is a major challenge, because even the students and professors who drew awareness to the issue by pointing out that slavery is at the root of the family depicted in the crest, selected an alternate image that showed the enslaved as broken-backed overburdened humans instead of strong courageous people who stood up for their rights and freedom. The people who built the wealth of the founding family were strong people.

The students who stood up to the Law School’ distorted history in its seal were strong, just like the enslaved ancestors who stood up to the slave owners who endowed the Law School were strong. The new seal must reflect both groups in its image if it is to be a true reflection of the school’s historical roots.

I know the extent to which enslaved Americans are unacknowledged by mainstream historians, so it will be momentous if Harvard Law School not only revokes the shield adapted from the crest of the 18th-century slave-owning family, as it has done, but if it creates a shield that also reflects the family’s enslaved people who produced the wealth.

The Law School’s symbol and seal, a shield with three gold sheaves of wheat, tied with a silver or white ribbon resting against a blue background, is discontinued. But what will replace that image? If we were to add emblems representing enslaved people in the Americas to the seals and crests of cities, states, institutions, corporations and nations that gained wealth from slave labor, the majority of these seals would be changed. Change would even appear on the seals of the origins of America’s money.

Harvard’s own research, done by Professor Daniel R. Coquillette in 2000, when he wrote about the university’s historical roots showed that the shield, the symbol representing the Law School was adapted from the coat of arms of the member of the Royall family who endowed the school. That family, Isaac Royall, Sr. (1677-1739) owned a sugar plantation in Antigua and a plantation in Massachusetts; his son and heir, Isaac Royall, Jr. (1719-1781) inherited the plantations. Isaac Jr. made a bequest in 1781 and the Law School’s first professorship was created 1815 after the 1,000 acres of his bequeathed Massachusetts lands were sold. That shield is revoked, so now we ask if the new shield will represent the people who built the wealth.

The motto on the Law School’s shield is Harvard’s motto, Veritas, meaning Truth in Latin. The shield, a blend of Harvard’s coat of arms and the Royall family’s, created in 1936, has three sheaves, each tied, mounted against a blue background. In heraldry, the blue background means truth and loyalty. The gold color of the sheaves means ambition, generosity, and elevation of the mind, and the silver or white ribbon tie, peace and sincerity. The sheaves represent the Royall family in America, a group of people, enslavers, who achieved peace and security from the generosity and labor of another, the enslaved.

So what can represent the enslaved? One ear of wheat symbolizes hard work, and a sheaf of wheat, three sheaves in this case, (“bringing in the sheaves” as we sang in the Gospel song in church), symbolizes that “the harvest of one’s hopes has been secured,” according to heraldic experts. A single sheaf of wheat would represent the enslaved’s hard labor.

The revoked shield was adapted from a crest of the Royalls who settled in America. But is not known if the crest was granted to the family officially or simply adapted. That crest is not the original shield of the Royall family of Britain. So we can ask, why did this 18th-century American Royall family change or adapt the symbol? The original Royall family’s shield from its roots in France (the Roisel family) and their migration in 1066 to England depicted a red bend, a band draped like a sash across a knight’s chest armor, stretched diagonally across the shield, framed by three red crosses. The bend or band symbolized defense and protection, and the red cross faith and Christianity. These were symbols of conquest and defense. The silver background symbolized peace and sincerity.

The original shield symbolized conquest, but it was changed by the American Royalls to symbolize harvest, security and wealth-building. The American family flaunted their economic security in their crest. But that American wealth was secured by slave labor of African American ancestors in Antigua and Massachusetts.

How can the Law School’s shield reflect the diversity of the people at its roots?

History reveals two enslaved persons who were owned by the Royalls embody courage and endurance – Belinda, an enslaved woman, and Hector, who rebelled in the 1736 rebellion in Antigua. Unfortunately, he was executed with 87 other resisters. In 1783 Belinda, then 63 years old, sued the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for compensation for her enslavement by the Royall family. (By then she was a free person.) Her story is portrayed in Part III of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ award-winning 2014 Atlantic Magazine’s article, “The Case for Reparations.”

Belinda Royall’s case in 1783 was “formed for the extirpation of vassalage, for the reward of Virtue, and the just return to honest history.” These symbols can be added to Harvard Law School’s new shield of its founding.

In my research of our ancestors, I found the names of our own African Americans who built wealth for others in the Americas. So Harvard students, faculty, administrators and alumni can find and recognize the names and records of the enslaved people who built wealth for the Royall family in Antigua and in Massachusetts and feature them in a new shield.

I am watching what Harvard does to recognize the unheralded and unsung wealth-workers in America’s history.

Like these enslaved people, some of my ancestors were men and women trapped on plantations where they labored for free, creating wealth for others, and could not escape. Some of the specific ancestors I located labored on seven sugar plantations owned by Leonard Vassal, a Massachusetts slave and plantation owner. They labored and created wealth for this New England merchant’s Content Sugar Plantation in the British Jamaican colony. In 1734, Leonard Vassal built a mansion in Quincy, Massachusetts where he and his family lived. As it is recorded in the history, in 1787, his descendants sold the seven-room mansion with servants’ quarters to John Adams, the first vice president of the United States.

When Adams became president he named the mansion purchased from Leonard Vassal’s descendants, Old House or Peacefield. Adams lived there during his presidency and his retirement. Four generations of the Adams family enjoyed the mansion, created by wealth by my Jamaican enslaved ancestors.

Like the Royall’s Belinda Royall and Hector, my ancestors were courageous and strong people. They were enslaved people who escaped ships and slave plantations, mounted numerous slave rebellions, won Maroon wars and survived for centuries in the tropical wilderness mountains. Their cousins were scattered across the Americas, in Virginia, Surinam and other places.

After researching my 18th century African American ancestors in Jamaica in the Caribbean and in Virginia and New York in the U.S., I traced them to 17th century Ghana in West Africa. I then researched our Scottish ancestors. Equipped with many records, I wrote to Scotland and informed them that while researching my African American ancestors, I traced them to specific families and names in Ghana in the 17th century and I found Scots on our family tree.

In the 1990s, I found an abolitionist Scottish ancestor whose brothers were slave owners. He owned no slaves and he left records of his mixed-race children in Jamaica. I sent the records to Scotland. They asked what I wanted on my coat of arms, because they said these Scots were nobles related to the Stuart royal family. I responded that I am descended from a blended group of ancestors, so the Scottish abolitionist related to nobles and his slave owning family, the Ghanaians who fought against slavery, and the Jamaican Maroons who rebelled against slavery all had to be represented on my coat of arms. I also included an image representing me, the African American who found these ancestors. I replaced several of the images on my Scottish ancestors’ 13th-century coat of arms with a more diversified image, representing the complexity and diversity of my roots in the Americas.

We anticipate Harvard Law School’s replacement. Will Harvard replace the crest’s oppressive slave owning image with one showing diversified people and their strength, courage, truth, virtue and honest history? Harvard, we are watching.