On Wednesday, April 24th, students united through art at the “Mason Legacies: Listening to the Ancestors” event to highlight the lives of those enslaved by George Mason IV, the university’s namesake.
The event took place in the Johnson Center’s South Plaza and served as a continuation of the Enslaved Children of George Mason (ECGM) research. The ECGM project is a web-based exhibition that gives a glimpse of what life was like for African Americans at Mason’s Gunston Hall. The research has spawned numerous projects across campus, including a planned memorial in honor of those enslaved to be completed by 2021. The ECGM project is the culmination of multiple Honors College student contributions.
Honors College sophomore Madison Gaines is now one of these ambitious student researchers.
The idea to tell the stories of enslaved people through art began with Dr. Michael Nickens, better known as Doc Nix, and Dr. Wendi Manuel-Scott, who was one of the faculty advisors for the original research. While art may seem like an unusual approach to research, for Gaines, blending the two is valuable for understanding humanity’s emotional connections to historical and current issues.
“The arts make things accessible. Using those methods is what’s making research accessible,” said Gaines, who has conducted her own artistic research in the Honors College’s Multidisciplinary Research and Creative Projects Seminar.
Once Doc Nix and Dr. Manuel-Scott began putting their plan into action, they looked for students like Gaines who could bring their vision to life. The group of student performers at the Mason Legacies event was tasked with creating art to present for the event. Gaines, a Creative Writing major, chose poetry as her medium.
To prepare for what to include in her poem, titled “A Proper Education in IV Parts,” Gaines annotated documents and books pertaining to the ECGM project.
“I was looking for things that were forgettable,” said Gaines, explaining that people tend to erase the histories of enslaved people. Gaines made it a point to make one section of her poem just the names of some of the people enslaved at Gunston Hall, stating that she refuses to let herself forget these people and their stories.
Gaines used her poem as a lesson for her own personal history as well as the histories of these enslaved people. Gaines stated that she did not learn much of these narratives in her earlier education.
“I’m biracial, so this was an opportunity to delve into that side of my identity.”
Madison Gaines
“I’m claiming both sides of this [history]. My ancestors were literally going against each other,” Gaines continued, deliberately acknowledging and holding true to her biracial identity.
One goal that Gaines has for her poem and for the project’s impact on campus is to make people feel uncomfortable that they are motivated to address these important issues.
“Being complacent is unacceptable,” said Gaines, who summarized the project in her own terms with the last two lines of her poem:
“There is no mercy in a memory / There is no justice in the forgetting.”
Madison Gaines
For Gaines, the ECGM project breaks down the “false reality” that white supremacist and whitewashed understandings of history have created. She hopes that events like these keep the messages from the original research alive and get more people interested in learning the narratives of enslaved people.
Reporting by Zaria Talley. Photography by Leah Antler (coming soon).