Victoria Ferguson, member of Monacan Nation and director of Solitude-Fraction site, speaks during a cultural arts program at Moss Arts Center as part of the 1872 Forward: A Celebration of Virginia Tech event.
Virginia Tech’s sesquicentennial event 1872 Forward: A Celebration of Virginia Tech has been awarded a bronze medal in the Education, Art & Culture: Community Engagement category of the Anthem Awards.
This year’s Anthem Award winners were selected from a pool of over 2,000 submissions from 44 countries by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
“I am very proud of the work the Council on Virginia Tech History has done and is continuing to do,” said Menah Pratt, vice president of strategic affairs and diversity. “The council was initially established to create projects and events to help celebrate Virginia Tech’s sesquicentennial; however, our group always saw that as just the beginning. Many great works came out of this three-day event, and we are excited to continue building upon those outcomes.”
1872 Forward: A Celebration of Virginia Tech
1872 Forward: A Celebration of Virginia Tech was held March 22-24, 2022, and brought to life how the past shapes the present and leads the university into the future.
During the weekend, the Council on Virginia Tech History, in conjunction with the More Than a Fraction Foundation, affiliated with the Fraction family descendants of Africans enslaved on the Smithfield and Solitude plantations, provided programming to recognize 150 years of Virginia Tech’s history.
The events centered on the Native/Indigenous communities who call the land home, descendants of the African people who were once enslaved on the land, descendants of the European Americans who once owned the land, as well as the experiences of the students, faculty, staff, and alumni who have made Virginia Tech what it is today.
Lasting impact
Throughout the weekend, the council facilitated a free and open dialogue about Virginia Tech as an institution and as a community with an ever-growing knowledge of what it means to be a land-grant university. Participants shared stories and histories about experiences that may not have been widely known or were hidden, denied, or misunderstood as well as the history of the university’s growth since 1872.
The event opened a deepening conversation within the university community and beyond, leading to institutional change and accolades, including the following:
Chief Kenneth Branham of Monacan Nation and Virginia Tech President Tim Sands engaged in conversation about the financial burden of tribal members in relation to higher education, and the university created a new Virginia Tech Tribal Match Scholarship in response.
A documentary was made during the weekend, and it has been accepted and shown at several film festivals, including the Newark International Film Festival and the Richmond International Film Festival.
The work of the council in conjunction with the More Than a Fraction Foundation has opened doors with other universities with similar histories, and the organizations are in the planning stages of how to guide and collaborate with those universities as they look for ways to recognize and honor their marginalized histories.
Many other continuing conversations and works are taking place within the university, the community, and the descedant families.
“The past few years have been poetic really,” said Kerri Moseley-Hobbs, founder and executive director of More Than A Fraction Foundation. “Time has both flown by and crawled forward. We’re often asked how we feel about what we’ve accomplished so far, and what we plan moving forward as we continue to work with Virginia Tech. It’s a hard question to answer, because we often can’t really grasp the magnitude of accomplishments while those accomplishments are happening, and honestly, that is the brilliance of life. That keeps you humble and keeps you working. So that’s what we’ll do.”
Continuing council programming
The Council on Virginia Tech History is continuing to provide programming to the Virginia Tech community. On March 28, the council will host 1872 Forward: How Our History Can Shape Our Future. The moderated forum will discuss how universities — particularly Virginia Tech — utilize and integrate their histories into managing their present while planning for the future. This discussion will take place at 1:30 p.m. in Brush Mountain A in Squires Student Center.
Featured presenters will be Takiyah Amin, director of diversity, equity, and inclusion for the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design, and Stacey Wilkerson, assistant provost of administration and chief of staff for the Office for Inclusion and Diversity.
Anthem Awards
Launched in 2021 by the Webby Awards in partnership with the Ad Council, Born This Way Foundation, Feeding America, GLAAD, Mozilla, NAACP, NRDC, WWF, and XQ, the Anthem Awards honor the purpose and mission-driven work of people, companies, and organizations worldwide across seven core causes.
“The Anthem Awards were born out of the desire to amplify and celebrate the voices that are creating sustainable change and to inspire others to take action,” said Patricia McLoughlin, Anthem Awards general manager. “In a year where so much is at stake, it is incredibly important to recognize impact work and celebrate the progress happening globally. Congratulations to all of this year’s winners.”
Alexandra Pirkle for Virginia Tech
