August 11th 2026
Black History At Hollins
by Elani Spencer
Often described as an overnight summer camp due to weekly bingo nights, frequent arts and crafts, and a persevering sense of community, Hollins University is a place full of laughter, love, and acceptance. However, many students and community members aren’t aware of the dark past Hollins carries, since most of the stories are buried deep within the archives of Wyndham Robertson Library. Additionally, there is an ongoing and widespread shame that prevents people from discussing the unsavory history that haunts this campus. These feelings are valid, and our community needs an important backdrop to understand our origins. Learning from the past is essential to continue to create safe spaces and promote diversity and inclusion.
Valley Union Seminary
Before the existence of Hollins University, this campus was the site of “Botetourt Springs”, a health resort that ran through the 1820s and ‘30s. In 1842, it turned into “Valley Union Seminary,” a coeducational college that directly utilized enslaved labour. Not only did students bring their personal enslaved servants to wait on them while attending school; there was an entirely separate group of enslaved staff who completed chores, such as laundry, cooking, cleaning, and maintenance of the grounds. These students fully relied on indentured servitude while at school. The enslaved population of this time was known as the Oldfield Community, who lived in small, stone houses on the outskirts of Hollins campus, where the graveyard is now located. Today, the formerly enslaved people and their descendants are a part of the Hollins Community. Many descendants still work for the university as faculty or staff members, and more still live in the Roanoke area.
The founder of Hollins, Charles Lewis Cocke, decided to buy enslaved people because he had a labour shortage after purchasing nine hundred acres of land from William Carvin, the first European settler in the Hollins area, who received the land in 1746. There was a misconception that Cocke was a “good master” because he allowed the enslaved people to be educated at a smaller institution that was built just for them, where he guaranteed meals and decent clothing. However, this was only due to the conditions of other enslaved people in the South being horrible, so Cocke was raising the bar for just doing the bare minimum. The public said he was the “farthest removed from their white skinned brethren” because of this skewed perspective. Thanks to this, Charles Lewis Cocke continues to be memorialized in the naming of our President’s Office despite the trauma he caused.
Many members of the Oldfield community were prominent figures on the Hollins campus. For example, Caesar Morton was enslaved at Hollins for sixty-seven years and worked as head chef for fifty of those years. Morton was featured in the Roanoke World News and the New York Times, which said: “The secret of his amazing popularity was his abounding interest in other people, his unfailing good humor, and his own – his very own – smart, quaint, and penetrating ways of expressing himself.” In other words, Morton won the hearts of students and staff for his charm and good wit. Although their admiration for him couldn’t be deemed genuine, considering the power dynamic. Morton was the father of four children, eleven grandchildren, and had a wife named Betty Morton. He and his brother, Nathan Morton, were the first enslaved people from the Hollins community to buy and own land in Roanoke County.
Another important figure was Clem Bolden, who was enslaved by Cocke at the age of eleven years old. He was enlisted in the Civil War and had to work under the Confederate forces. His job was to drive the wagon that transported dead soldiers, whom he would bury after the battle. When Bolden returned to Hollins, he became the head gardener, and he handled seeding, planting, harvesting, and educating the biology department on different plant species.
Though there was a significant amount of information made available on many of the enslaved men, the same cannot be said for the enslaved women in the Oldsfield community. The only thing located within the Hollins’ archives is fuzzy photos in the Spinsters’ 1903 yearbook and a single name in a ledger from January 1865 to 1868: Eliza. These enslaved women were known as “washerwomen” or “laundresses,” and they were often pictured balancing laundry baskets on their heads full of white linens. The lack of records on the enslaved women at Hollins shows the disparity between genders that placed Black women at the bottom of the hierarchy, despite all Black people being in the lowest social rank. This difference between sexes can still be seen today in our society, with the existence of women not being acknowledged in many personal and professional spaces. This is ironic considering their enslavement would be the last thing these women would want to be recognized for, and yet they still became nameless.
Speaking of names, although there are hundreds of graves in the Hollins graveyard, many of them are unmarked. The majority of these graves belong to enslaved people, and their stories and legacies have been lost due to their enslavers’ neglect to honor their deaths. Thankfully, many people have worked hard to bring the Hollins community into the light and give them the recognition they deserve.
One of these people is Ethel Morgan Smith, a Hollins alumna and the author of From Whence Cometh my Help: the African American Community at Hollins College (2000). Besides tracing genealogy and researching, she interviewed several people who were staff members at Hollins in the mid-20th century, including their experiences, in her book. One interviewee was Ms. Mary Emma Bruce, who was a chemistry lab assistant for forty-six years. Besides setting up experiments, she sat in on classes and took exams with the rest of the students. Despite getting straight A’s, Bruce wasn’t allowed to attend Hollins officially because it was still segregated. However, in 1976, she won “The Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award” for members of the community who demonstrate love and generosity. Also, in 2004, Hollins University awarded her an honorary degree. She was ninety-five years old at the time, but late is better than never.
Another one of Smith’s interviewees was Cecelia Long, who graduated in 1970 and did business and social work. She was also a member of the Alumnae Association Board of Directors and Board of Trustees. Besides her, there was Pamela Meade, the great-grandchild of Ceasar Morton, and the first black graduate from the Hollins Community in 1984. She has single-handedly carried on her family’s legacy despite every action to erase them, and made them proud by getting her education at the same place that degraded and denied the Morton Family.
In addition to Smith, there was Brittney Flowers, an alumnus of Hollins University who graduated in 2017 with a bachelor’s in Sociology and English with a concentration in creative writing. She conducted extensive research on slavery at Hollins, including genealogy work, which every other figure in this article used as a guide for their own exploration. Flowers was inspired by Smith’s work and dived into this work out of pure curiosity as a Black woman at a predominantly white institution (PWI).
Aside from Smith and Flowers, another individual spotlighting the Hollins Community is China Moore, a Hollins theater major who graduated in 2024. She wrote and directed “The Hollins Living History Play,” which was her senior thesis in the Spring of 2024. This play was a theatrical telling of Hollins’ history with slavery, and it imagines the ancestors returning to modern day to inform the audience of their experiences and the truth that has been hidden. All the actors dressed up as washerwomen and gave a tour of the front quad while chanting the names of enslaved people. They began on the theater steps and stopped at each building: Cocke, West, Main, and East to introduce the enslavers they were named after and to describe the different events that occurred at each place. I personally acted as an ancestor and was completely moved by the piece as a whole.
The “Hollins Living History Play” received a lot of good feedback from both the Hollins and Roanoke communities. Many of the descendants of the Oldsfield community were present for the performance and appreciated their history being told in this way for the first time. Moore did extensive research in the archives room, interviewed many people in the Hollins Community, and utilized the work of Smith and Flowers to guarantee that her play was accurate and authentic. It definitely hit the nail on the head because she was invited to show a snippet of the play at the Roanoke Arts Pop and presented it at the Southeastern Theater Conference. Moore hopes to make her play a part in first-year orientation, so Hollins students learn the history before they even start classes. This way, it will no longer be a mystery, but a known and accepted fact. This is important because we cannot ignore history, or we will fall back into the same patterns.
Even though there were many great Black contributors in the 18th and 19th centuries, there are even more majorly successful Black staff members at Hollins in modern day. For example, Dr. Thomas Jefferson (TJ) Anderson, an English and Creative Writing professor, was the first Black faculty member to receive tenure at Hollins in 1998. He conducts research in and teaches jazz poetry, African American literature, and much more. He is the author of Devonte Travels the Sorry Route, At Last Round Up, River to Cross, and many other prestigious works. He appeared on WDBJ7’s Black History Month Special: Voices of Virginia, studied Egyptian music, and taught at Cairo University in Egypt. According to an article in the Colors magazine in 2020, Anderson chose to teach at Hollins because it felt like an ancestral calling. His family originated from Lynchburg, so he believed taking this teaching position would be a good way to connect to his African roots. Anderson says, “Always honor the ones who have come before you…There are black folks, ancestors, who have experienced tremendous loss…those losses cannot be forgotten…and those ancestral voices always have to be honored.” This advice needs to be heeded because there is a lot to learn from our ancestors, and their contributions are essential to our current atmosphere.
Also, Esther Vassar, Assistant Dean of Students and who taught English in 1972, was the first Black school administrator. She received her bachelor’s from Hampton University and her master’s from the University of Virginia. In addition, in 1973, Judith Hunter was the first full-time Black faculty member and was an assistant professor of social work. She got her bachelor’s from Fisk University and her master’s degree from NYC University School of Social Work. Furthermore, Dr. Cynthia Hale, a member of Hollins Board of Trustees, was the founder and senior pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church. She served as a member of the Board of Visitors for the Divinity School at Duke University, and she was the president of Hampton University’s Ministers Conference, among other leadership roles. Also, she is the author of I’m a Piece of Work: Sisters Shaped by God.
Last but not least, President Mary Dana Hinton became the first Black president of Hollins in 2020, making her the 13th president of the university. She originally was the president of College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, and has since become president emerita (meaning she continues to hold the title out of honor). Hinton received her doctorate in religious education from Fordham University, a master’s degree in child psychology from the University of Kansas, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Williams College.
In 2021, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences because of all the honorary doctorates she received from Misericordia University, the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and Mount Saint Mary’s University. She is the author of Leading from the Margins: College Leadership from Unexpected Places (2024) and The Commercial Church: Black Churches and the New Religious Marketplace in America, and another forthcoming in 2026. She is on the Board of Directors for multiple organizations, including: American Association of Colleges and Universities and the Council of Independent Colleges of Virginia. Besides this, she travels across the United States giving speeches on international issues concerning the liberal arts and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
All of these staff members, alumni, and leaders at Hollins throughout our history have created a positive impact on our community. Without the guidance and support of these individuals, Hollins wouldn’t be where we are today. Despite the terrible treatment of Black people on this campus since Hollins’ founding, the enslaved people, their descendants, and other people of color in Roanoke still helped Hollins flourish into a thriving campus. They donated their time, wisdom, money, and creative projects for students to receive a well-rounded education. Thanks to them, according to 2023 data, 94.1% of Hollins students are employed or continuing their education six months after graduation. This is an outstanding statistic that many universities in the United States cannot claim. Hollins is rare because of people like Clem Bolden, Caesar Morton, Ethel Morgan Smith, Dr. Cynthia Hale, TJ Anderson III, and President Mary Dana Hinton.
Despite there being many documents still tucked away in the archives, and though it may seem easy to avoid the shame of the past, please continue to educate yourself on the living histories of African American and Black voices at Hollins. There are many resources out there that can give you more information, including a presentation from Hollins Working Group on Slavery, an organization that is dedicated to discussing the legacy and future of Founder’s Day at Hollins, researching Hollins’ connection to enslavement, tracing genealogy, and analyzing how this history of slavery impacts Hollins today. They formed in response to the campus not sharing the full truth about Charles Lewis Cocke and his administration during the annual Founder’s celebration.
In 2017, they created a report titled “The Legacy of Slavery at Hollins,” which provides a complete historical breakdown. There is also a brochure with the bios of important figures and the working group’s mission located here. For further reading, copies of Ethel Morgan Smith’s book, From Whence Cometh my Help: the African American Community at Hollins College, are available in Wyndham Robertson Library. In addition, Brittney Flowers has a great article in The Roanoke Rover called Hollins, The Hollins Community, and the Path Between Them” (2015).
Once you educate yourself, pass the information along to your friends, your peers, and your professors. Please make sure everyone is informed so we can have a community that is enlightened, thoughtful, and ready to protect the inclusive campus that we have built thus far.
Looking back, Hollins University’s history is not-so-pretty. It wasn’t always the “climbing up Tinker Mountain in Tutu’s sisterhood” like we thought; there were much darker things happening beyond the pristine trees and inside the beautiful brick buildings. However, our past does not have to be Hollins’ legacy. As the current student body and faculty, we can write our story and show the world who we really are and what we stand for. Although it’s essential to know our history, we will not let it define us. We don’t need to bury the documents or only whisper about it behind closed doors; we just need to be open and honest. Once we acknowledge what happened, we can move on from it and find ways to honor and heal by giving back to the communities that were affected, making amends, and reflecting collectively on how we can make a positive change.
In the age of book bans, school curricula censorship, and parents covering their children’s ears in the wake of any conversation about politics, race, or gender, our ability to be open-minded, thoughtful, and critical is important now more than ever. Let’s show our federal government, the Virginia Commonwealth, and the whole of American society that Hollins will not stand for censorship. We will fight for our freedom of speech and our right to be educated by any means and to the fullest capacity with accurate historical facts—Let’s show them that we are Hollins!
Go Green, Stay Gold.
Elani Spencer, junior creative writing major
Edited by Chris McIlhany
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