Bloomfield College Designated as an Institutional Affiliate in CIC Project Exploring the Pervasive Legacy of Slavery
BLOOMFIELD, N.J. – Bloomfield College has been designated as an Institutional Affiliate on a multiyear project with the Council on Independent Colleges (CIC), “Legacies of American Slavery: Reckoning with the Past.” This initiative is designed to help CIC member institutions, their students and their communities explore the continuing impact of slavery on American life and culture.
“As New Jersey’s only four-year Predominantly Black Institution, our Bloomfield College community is excited to contribute to this important, historic project with both local and national implications,” said Marcheta P. Evans, Ph.D., president of Bloomfield College.
The Legacies of American Slavery project is directed by Pulitzer-Prize winning historian David W. Blight, Sterling Professor of American History at Yale University and executive director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (GLC) at Yale’s MacMillan Center. Blight describes the relevance of the project in a special essay commissioned by CIC: “Because slavery is so central to the history of the United States—its origins, economic development, society, culture, politics, and law—it has left in its wake a wide array of legacies that seem ever-present yet ever-changing in our world.”
As one of 12 Institutional Affiliates, Bloomfield College will play a foundational role in developing regional and national networks in support of the CIC project. The project is led by seven Regional Collaboration Partners who, along with Institutional Affiliates, will support campus-based research, teaching and learning as well as community-based programs about the multiple legacies of slavery while contributing to a national conversation about race, equity, freedom, political power and cultural resilience.
The Partners and Affiliates represent a diversity of institutional types and sizes around the country. Programmatic activities will begin this spring and build toward a series of regional conferences hosted by the Regional Collaboration Partners during the 2021–2022 academic year. The project is generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with supplemental funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
###
A comprehensive, liberal arts institution located in Bloomfield, New Jersey serving 1,600 students with inspiring stories, Bloomfield College offers over 40 academic programs, Division II athletics and diverse co-curricular clubs and organizations. The College is committed to enabling students, particularly those who have been historically excluded from higher education, to realize their intellectual and personal goals. More than half of the student body identify themselves as first-generation and are the first in their families to enroll in college. U.S. News & World Report recently ranked Bloomfield College highest in New Jersey and #42 nationally among 216 liberal arts institutions in its 2021 Best College’s ranking of the Top National Liberal Arts Colleges for Social Mobility.