Staff Writer Morgan Blair spoke with Stephen Poulson, a sociology professor whose research has led him to finding racist depictions and imagery in college yearbooks, including at JMU. Experts say
Racism on Campus: Yearbook Pictures From Prominent Virginia Colleges (1890-1930) by Stephen C. Poulson, Hailey S. McGee, and Tyler J. Wolfe | March 7, 2021 | Fall 2020
Photo by Kimberly Farmer (Source: Unsplash).
Trigger Warning: Images and words in this article may be triggering to some of our readers as some of the photos feature racial slurs and anti-Black violence. As disturbing as these images and words are, Contexts Magazine aims to be transparent about the historical and current ways that racism manifests in the United States and around the word. This is one such example.
What do college yearbooks tell us about the social histories of universities? We asked this question during a political scandal following the discovery that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s personal page in his Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook (below) featured a man in blackface standing beside another dressed as a member of the KKK.