On Thursday, October 23rd, I attended the ceremony dedicated to the art piece, With These Hands, which sought to memorialize the enslaved people who helped create Davidson College. The most striking part of the ceremony was the poem delivered by Clint Smith. It was so engaging because it created a narrative between the injustices of the past and the results that have been generated in the present. He shines a light on the invisible bodies who created the campus, and reveals Davidson’s true origins. The poem did not allow the audience to feel any semblance of comfort in the way Davidson was founded. This was done effectively by inspiring a sense of accountability: a step toward progress, in place of guilt, which traps people in the past. Smith was successful in his goal of unveiling invisible hands through deliberate naming and vivid imagery.

Smith begins the poem by establishing the exclusionary reality of early Davidson. In 1837, “the doors of a small Carolina college open for the first time”; however, they are slammed closed in the faces of black individuals. They were excluded from the benefits of the new institution, but were forced to be included in the harsh labors of its creation. They would “mold the wet earth by strength and sweat and transform it into stone.” This image’s power comes from the physical diction, which grounds Davidson’s existence in the blood, sweat, and tears of slaves. Slaves would form the walls that denied their entry, create the walkways they could not trek, and create an environment of learning that they were not allowed to be a part of. Each brick that forms the campus is a reminder of their exclusion from the very work they fulfilled. 

He then shifts into a more literal way of making the invisible visible by naming. Smith lists out names found in records, Tom, Joe, Lewis, Alex, to prove that they were here and have not been forgotten. More importantly, he recognizes that there are “so many names of men, women, and children we will never know.” This recognition of the incomplete shows the ultimate sacrifice so many enslaved people endured, disappearance. They were not treated as humans, and after their death, their humanity was forgotten. Smith listing out the names of those he could find, fights against this erasure actively. Each name serves as a symbol of remembrance, a battle against the disintegration of their memory.

The poem was absolutely successful in achieving its goals of resisting historical erasure and making veiled labor visible. Often times, slavery seems like a reality so far back in history that the impact of it is forgotten. Mentioning the “250,000 bricks that built this college” brings the effects of slavery into the present. In doing so, the audience was not asked, but instead forced to grapple with the history of the grounds we were standing on. Each individual brick holds the memory of an injustice that occurred, and Smith brought this reality to life through his imagery.

As a white student at Davidson, I recognize the limits of my understanding. I can never fully grasp what it means to attend a college built on the backs of enslaved people. This poem does not ask me to feel guilt for the crimes of the past, but rather, to “wake up and face it.” To let the names he breathed reshape my understanding of the institution I am a part of, and to never forget the history of the college.