The Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies (CICS) has been given a $400,000 grant by the State of Illinois to study the African slave trade.
CICS is now the fiscal agent of a grant that will allow the university to set up this study. This was in addition to the standard funding Northeastern gets from the state government. This was especially directed to the Carruthers Center.
The state politicians that commissioned the bill were Representative Eddie Washington and Senator Mattie Hunter. The proposal was initiated in a recent assembly of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The item then became known as the “Commission to Study the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its Past and Present Effects on African-Americans.”
The grant was commissioned for Northeastern and signed by President Salme Steinberg, according to Dr. Conrad Worrill, director of the Carruthers Center.
The grant amount for the study is “$400,000 for 397 years of history,” according to Dr. Worrill. It will cover the period of enslavement in the colonies and United States from 1619 to 1865.
According to a copy of the joint resolution, one of the motivations for doing this study is because “sufficient inquiry has not been made into the effects of the institution of slaver on living African-Americans and society in the United States.”
The commission will study several areas in the history of U.S. colonial enslavement. These areas include the “capture and procurement of Africans” and the “treatment of African slaves in the colonies and the United Stares.” The study will also study laws that served to discriminate against freed slaves and their descendants, including their effect on the present.
Worrill cited the “long reputation of faculty in academic programs in the inner city” as the reason for Northeastern being chosen to receive the grant. In addition to the academic reputation, that the faculty has established themselves as experts in the history of the slave trade.
Dr. Anderson Thompson of the Educational Development and Leadership Department at CICS will be a part of this project.
The study was originally expected to be completed by December, but is now slated to conclude in the spring of next year.