Admissions Office Granite Slab
Item
- Legacies Classification
- Memorial Type
- Memorial Context
- Memorialized Subject
- Title
- Background and Context
- Physical Description
- Memorial Inscription
- Historical Period
- Campus Location
- Location: Institution, City, State
- Learn More About this Subject
-
Memorial Structure
-
Sculptural Memorial
-
Furman University Winnsboro Campus
-
Admissions Office Granite Slab
-
The Furman Admissions Office Granite Slab is a material that was used for the faculty residence in Winnsboro, South Carolina, one of our previous campus locations before the university’s current location. The Winnsboro campus symbolizes a failed experiment that attempted to create a utopian society where White students not only attended school but also worked over two hours in the field to continue to have the school function internally. Providing some context of the beginning of the experiments, Reverend Jonathan Davis was an extremely wealthy cotton planter, and because of his work, he was an enslaver who was tasked with finding a location for this new experiment of the next chapter of Furman’s history. It is also important to note when Furman was looking for new land; they relied on the expertise of Reverend Davis, a prominent member of the Baptist Church, who recommended the new land for the campus to continue its connection with the church and have the campus near the Fairfield Baptist Church. When beginning the new foundation, they started with an initial building and then a faculty residence down the road. The experiment failed because the students rebelled against farming fields side by side with enslaved labor and burned down the institution, killing a fellow student. This granite slab represents a failed institutional landscape of White privileged sons refusing to engage in farm labor. During discussions of moving the institution in the 1840s, future president McGlothlin stated the necessary move to a location with a "larger proportion of white people.” The institute would move to Greenville in 1850.
-
Length: 8'7"
Height: 8 in
Width: 25 in
-
This bench is constructed from a granite threshold of the Furman Academy in Winnsboro, S.C. Home to the school in the early 19th century, the building was demolished, but pieces of it have been salvaged and incorporated into architecture across campus.
Position: 664 (104 views)