History of Meredith College by Mary Lynch Johnson
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- Location: Institution, City, State
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Memorial Object
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Object
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Meredith, Thomas
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History of Meredith College by Mary Lynch Johnson
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The official institutional History of Meredith College written by Mary Lynch Johnson, a long time English faculty member and campus historian, obfuscates Thomas Meredith's life as a slave holder and proslavery advocate. Johnson's biographical appendix on Thomas Meredith declares "Slavery he held to be 'an evil of great magnitude,' which he would rejoice to see removed." This claim flies in the face of Meredith enslaving at least eleven people throughout his time in North Carolina and his vigorous defense of slavery in multiple publications. Johnson's misrepresentation of Meredith's views and involvement with slavery skewed the interpretation of his life in multiple twentieth and twenty-first century biographical portraits in both print and digital forms. Johnson's misrepresentation of Meredith's life is consistent with Lost Cause interpretations of the antebellum and Civil War eras which downplay the importance of slavery for the region. Campus members of the Universities Studying Slavery team at Meredith College have worked to correct this misinformation where it appears in digital form online but Johnson's inaccurate portrait lives on in multiple entries in dictionaries and encyclopedias that exist both in print and online.
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Published book; 1st edition 1956; 2nd edition 1972
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1956
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1972
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Johnson, Mary Lynch & Meredith College
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