Welcome
Founded in 1693, William & Mary is well known as an intellectual and cultural center in Virginia. The university is more than just a place of education, however. It has also been an important political and social force for the past 300 years, both reflecting and giving shape to ideas of freedom, slavery, race, equality, and citizenship in Virginia and the nation. While William & Mary’s role in the nation’s founding has been widely studied, it has only been recently that scholars have begun asking questions of the university's role in perpetuating slavery and racial discrimination. In 2009, after student and faculty resolutions calling for a full investigation of W&M's past, the Board of Visitors acknowledged that the university had “owned and exploited slave labor from its founding to the Civil War; and that it had failed to take a stand against segregation during the Jim Crow Era.” As a result, the Board offered its support for the establishment of The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation. The Project is named for Lemon, a man who was once enslaved by William & Mary. We cannot know the full dimensions of Lemon’s life or his relationship with W&M. In many ways, Lemon stands in the place of the known and unknown African Americans who helped to build, maintain, and move the university forward. The Lemon Project is a multifaceted and dynamic attempt to rectify wrongs perpetrated against African Americans by William & Mary through action or inaction. An ongoing endeavor, this program will focus on contributing to and encouraging scholarship on the 300-year relationship between African Americans and W&M, and building bridges between the university and Williamsburg and Greater Tidewater area. Lemon Project team members working on this project are Dr. Jody Allen, Robert Francis Engs Director of the Lemon Project and Assistant Professor of History, and Dr. Sarah Thomas, Associate Director of The Lemon Project.