Commissioned with support of Stories Yet to be Told: Race, Racism, and Accountability on Campus and the Bacca Visiting Artist Lecture & Fund
In 2017, Davidson professor, Dr. Joseph Ewoodzie taught a course titled The Sociology of Beatties Ford Road in collaboration with Johnson C. Smith University (JCSU). A group project involving Ebony Hill (JCSU) and Grace Woodward (Davidson College) uncovered a remarkable truth: Hill is the great-great-great granddaughter of a man named “Robert,” formerly enslaved by David Alexander Caldwell, one of the original Trustees of Davidson College and owner of the Glenwood Plantation properties around Davidson. Robert’s brothers were owned by Woodward’s fifth-great grandfather Major John Davidson, owner of the Rural Hill plantation in northern Mecklenburg County.
This is the history that has opened space for the stories of Hill and her family; here we can point to the college’s complicity by way of one of its trustees and begin a conversation about accountability. We invited Hill’s mother, self-taught artist Nellie Ashford Rawls, to tell the story and help challenge the Davidson College community to confront and commemorate this history.
Ashford Rawls created The Deed of Transformation to declare: “Once upon a time, people were enslaved here. Some of those enslaved people were relatives of mine. We must honor and remember them.” It is a large, collaged artwork containing photographs of “Robert,” the artist as a child, and her great grandfather. Additional photos show Elm and Oak Row – two of the first buildings constructed on the campus in 1836-37, most likely constructed by enslaved people, using bricks made on nearby plantations.
Ashford Rawls, an alumnae of North Carolina Central and Shaw University, is a self-taught folk artist from Mecklenburg County, NC. Her mixed-media works depict the experiences of Charlotte’s African-American community, especially during the Jim Crow era. Her work has been exhibited in many group and solo exhibitions including at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Charlotte, NC, for which she earned the Curator’s Recognition Award; Mint Museum Charlotte, NC; Delta Arts Center, Winston-Salem, NC; and Gaston County Museum, Dallas, NC. During the 2012 national election campaign, 11 of her works were featured at the Democratic National Convention Committee headquarters in Charlotte. She is a four-time recipient of the Actors Theatre of Louisville Award and a recipient of the Priscilla Literary Award. Most notably in 2007, she was named the Gantt Center’s Artist of the Year and has received numerous recognitions since. Recently, Ashford Rawls was awarded a major commission for two monumental works in the new terminal at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
