(The Center Square) – Progress investigating how the establishment of Christopher Newport University may have displaced Black community residents has gained traction in recent months but will take a long time to complete, according to task force members.
The Commission to Study the History of the Uprooting of Black Communities by Public Institutions of Higher Education in the Commonwealth met Monday to hear an update on the findings and work of the Shoe Lane Task Force, assembled in April. Shoe Lane is a street that borders the university campus.
“As you all probably know firsthand, it has taken a little bit of time for us to get our legs under us – to figure out how to do our work, what we should be doing,” said university Provost Quentin Kidd, one of the vice chairmen of the task force. “So for the first, I would guess, four to five months of that time, we really were doing investigative work for ourselves.”
After hearing from subject matter experts and some Christopher Newport faculty that have researched the school’s history, the task force found its starting point.
“The first task that we’ve presented for ourselves was to understand the facts of the land,” Kidd told the commission. “We are on two paths. One is understanding property and everything we can know about that property and the other path is understanding the people who live there.”
Christopher Newport’s campus is approximately 2 square miles, according to Kidd.
“Within that 2-square-mile area is about 125 properties that we realized we need to know more about,” Kidd said.
Some members of the commission seemed skeptical that the task force was operating effectively. Commission member Cassandra Newby-Alexander, a Norfolk State University professor, historian and author, asked for more insight into the force’s newly identified direction.
“You gave us information about task one,” she said. “What are the other tasks that you’re planning to do? I mean, that’s a big job, task one, but what’s the second or third task?”
Kidd reiterated that the task force is in the early stages of its work but that his vision includes an online storyboard, accessible to anyone wanting to learn more about the university’s intersection with local properties and residents.
As the task force has begun researching property records and talking to affected, “we’ve intentionally not decided task three, four, five at this point because we just don’t know what we don’t know,” Kidd said. “The objective would be for us to produce what effectively would be a storyboard website where somebody could hover over every piece of property and see the story of that property.”
State Del. Karen Keys-Gamarra, D-Fairfax, wanted to know how the task force was communicating with the community and exhibiting transparency, a question that was later echoed by commission member Maureen Elgersman Lee, director of the William & Mary Bray School Lab. The task force had been accused of operating in “near secrecy” by a local pastor and community leader.
“Can you describe for us how you are providing notice to the community of these efforts and how you are communicating with them with respect to where you are and how you’re moving forward?” Keys-Gamarra asked.
Kidd responded that the college and the city work together on communications and that the college ultimately issues a press release every month to six weeks.
Despite some of the commission’s apparent concerns, several commission members to include its chairwoman, Del. Delores McQuinn, D-Henrico, expressed appreciation for the work the task force was doing, as it’s the first in the commonwealth.
“They’re here and they’re presenting to us the road that they are traveling to get to the destination,” McQuinn said. “They’re creating the blueprint.”
The commission plans to send a letter to 43 Virginia colleges and universities that may have similarly affected Black communities in their growth or founding, according to McQuinn.
