The Latest: Launch of the News Section, Growing the Project, Statement Against Anti-Black Oppression
On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger of the Union army delivered federal orders to a small crowd gathered in Galveston, Texas. These orders proclaimed the freedom of all previously enslaved people in the former Confederate state, the last state where slavery was still legal. From the second story balcony of Ashton Villa, Granger stated that “in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” This order followed President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation from September 22, 1862, which abolished slavery in the south. By 1866, people were celebrating June 19, or Juneteenth, as the day slavery was finally abolished in the United States. Obviously, this abolition did not stop the oppression of Black people and other minorities in the country, but it did mark an important step toward the freedom of enslaved peoples.
On June 19 this year, when African Americans and people of color are suffering disproportionate illness and death from COVID-19 and are still suffering from state-sponsored violence, we recognize Juneteenth by launching the News section for the The Baltimore Story website. These updates will present the latest information on the project and will spotlight valuable resources related to slavery and systemic racism, focusing on Maryland and Baltimore. Many of these resources will also be posted on the Recommended Readings page.
We also mark Juneteenth by announcing that we are growing the project by assembling an advisory board made up of community members, Loyola faculty members, students, and staff. The board will help us vision and grow the project in positive directions. Together, I believe that we can move The Baltimore Story to the next level of collaboration – getting more people from campus and community involved with the project to develop educational material for Baltimore students and adults; to develop community workshops that address literacy, technology, and financial disparities; and to build a stronger sense of community between Baltimore neighborhoods and Loyola.
Lastly, to mark Juneteenth as an important event in the struggle against racism, we are posting the Loyola writing department response to the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor. As a member of the writing department and as the Faculty Director for Community-Engaged Learning and Scholarship at Loyola, I believe that this statement eloquently explains our beliefs, and it outlines goals to do more to address systemic racism and violence against people of color.
LOYOLA UNIVERSITY MARYLAND WRITING DEPARTMENT STATEMENT AGAINST ANTI-BLACK OPPRESSION
The Loyola University Maryland Writing Department stands with members of the Black community as they mourn and protest the recent killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. We grieve with you. To our dismay, their violent deaths at the hands of current and former police officers are not aberrations, but part of larger patterns of anti-Black violence and oppression in the United States. Indeed, it has only been five years since Freddie Gray was fatally injured while in Baltimore Police custody, sparking an uprising that rightly shook our city. These patterns are the result of a centuries-long project in which American society has been structured to privilege the White few at the expense of Black and other people of color.
As writers and rhetoricians, we are well equipped to see the ways that anti-Black structures are created and maintained through language: how events are framed, which narratives prevail, whose words are heard and respected. As a department, we commit to identifying, and helping our students identify, language choices, patterns, and ideologies that perpetuate anti-Black oppression. We also commit to employing our academic and creative expertise to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy racist and white supremacist systems. Specifically, we commit to teaching courses that robustly include and even center Black voices, perspectives, and experiences, to furnishing students with the linguistic tools they need to construct a more just and equitable society for all, and to restructuring our spaces—classrooms, offices, the Writing Center, events—such that they affirm the dignity of Black people. In making these commitments, we ask that students, alumni, and friends of the department hold us accountable.
- Allen Brizee