The University of Delaware Anti-Racism Initiative — a grassroots effort that emerged during the 2020 nationwide conversation about race and social justice — is taking on several projects this year as it continues to become a more established presence on campus and in the community.

Three new UDARI faculty fellows have been named to help raise awareness of diversity, inclusivity and anti-racism through their scholarship, resource gathering and community outreach efforts. Also, a team of faculty and students supported by UDARI are working on a research and community engagement project about the history of school desegregation in Delaware. Additional programs and projects are being planned for the coming year.

“We are continuing to build on UDARI’s core strength with campus-wide presence and engagement from a large number of students, faculty and staff,” said Michael Vaughan, vice provost for equity, who is providing administrative support for the initiative. “To do this, we will continue to seek diverse input and oversight, ensuring continuity in the initiative’s purpose and impact.”

UDARI was formed by students, faculty and staff who were concerned about systemic racism and injustice in society, issues that came to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers and several other racially charged incidents in other cities. Demonstrations  — both peaceful and violent — sprung up around the country as people grappled with how to address long-standing issues of prejudice and discrimination. 

Alison Parker, Richards Professor of American History and a co-founder of UDARI, has led the initiative since 2020 along with the recently retired Lynnette Overby, professor of theatre and dance and director of the Community Engagement Initiative. They are thrilled to see a new leadership team put in place to move the initiative forward.

UDARI committee members – faculty and students – have studied the history of slavery in Delaware, the impact of UD’s land-grant status on Indigenous communities and other topics.

The new UDARI Faculty Fellows are Noel Archambeault, associate professor in the school of music; Mellissa Gordon, associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences; and Anu Sivaraman, assistant professor of business administration and director of the Lerner Diversity Council. Their commitment as UDARI Faculty Fellows will be up to three years.

“When our students, faculty and staff think about anti-racism and inclusivity, we hope that the ongoing work of the UDARI will be at the forefront of their minds,” Archambeault said. 

Gordon said the fellowship program shows how anti-racism scholarship can strengthen and be incorporated into every academic discipline at UD.

“We each get to bring our unique strengths and perspectives to this appointment,” said Gordon. “Being a UDARI Faculty Fellow allows us the opportunity to leverage all of our past experiences in ways that are going to be beneficial to the UD community.” 

The opportunity to continue to have a long-term impact on the University is what drew Sivaraman to the fellowship opportunity.

“In some way, we all want to leave this world better than we found it,” Sivaraman said. “I want anti-racism and inclusion to be woven into the fabric of UD.”

UDARI’s most recent community engagement project involves Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision instructing public schools to racially integrate. One of the five cases at the heart of that ruling involved Black students Ethel Belton and Shirley Bulah, who had sued the Delaware State Board of Education in 1951 for the right to attend white-only public schools.

Two years ago, the Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park Expansion and Redesignation Act expanded the national park to include the three Delaware sites involved in the case: Howard High School, Hockessin Colored School #107c and the former Claymont High School.

Funded by a grant from the National Park Service, Hannah Kim, associate professor of history, and Bonnie Lewis, assistant professor of history, partnered with Anton House, assistant professor at Delaware State University, to write a research study on Delaware’s role in school desegregation. 

“We really believe there's a national audience for this,” said Kim. “Delaware is a very interesting state. It's like a perfect microcosm of the United States in this one little state.”

Lewis and Kim, both active UDARI members, coordinate the University’s Social Studies Education program. Their efforts to document the stories associated with the new national park sites will be used to draft a Black history curriculum for Delaware schools, as mandated by state House Bill 198, passed in 2021.

“Even though it's a Delaware story,” said Lewis, “it's part of a national story about desegregation and an ongoing story because educational equity is still an issue in Delaware.”

This summer, undergraduate students Libby Bowen and Alani Davila were funded as UDARI Summer Scholars to assist with the project. The students combed through material in libraries and archives to learn more about the history of the case and the implementation of — and resistance to — integration in Delaware. 

Bowen, a senior with a double major in political science and history, had experience working with historical sources from an earlier era, so she appreciated studying this period of American history. 

“The sheer number of sources and types of sources that are available for the 1940s and 1950s is so exciting,” Bowen said. “But it can also be overwhelming because there's so much that you have to sift through.”

The students also helped to organize a community advisory board meeting over the summer at Hockessin Colored School #107c, where the researchers heard from community members like James “Sonny” Knott, who attended the segregated school for six years, and Ivan Henderson, executive director of the Delaware Historical Society. 

The researchers will continue engaging the advisory board to ensure community voices shape the final product. 

“This study [can] educate more people on the rich history that's held so dear and close by all those Community Advisory Board members,” said Davila, a junior sociology major with minors in Legal Studies and Spanish, “not only those who are directly affected by it, but the ones who want to help keep it preserved.”