To
President Claire E. Sterk,
Office of the President
President-Elect Greg Fenves,
Office of the President-Elect
Interim Provost Jan Love,
Office of the Provost
Vice President and Dean of Campus Life Enku Gelaye,
Office of the Vice President
And to the Emory Student Body
A number of statements have been circulated within the Emory Community on the subject of routineized and systematized black death, solidarity, allyship, and mobilization since the egregious murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. Though the sentiments of these expressions are laudable and heartfelt, these immaterial affirmations of allyship and “empathy” are insufficient to the task of addressing material anti-blackness. There is no remedy to the historical experience of racial trauma. There is no redress to the malignancy of a “past, not yet past, but present.”[1] There is only the sounds of our wails-- our bellows of mourning and grief. Make no mistake, however. There is power in our cries. Our slave-mothers and slave-fathers bellowed our people into modernity, and so shall we bellow ourselves into the future. That future can only be realized, however, by willing ears…
To the hundreds of Black students at Emory University, this Coalition represents the continued and renewed commitment to amplifying your cries. This Coalition recognizes the value and validity of distinctively Black ways to mourn and ask that you continue to meaningfully direct the powerful energies of your disaffection through the multiple and varied forms of your activism. More importantly, we ask that you seize whatever moments of peace, rest, and comfort you are able to during these trying times. Tend to yourself, tend to your revolution.
As this Coalition mourns with the hundreds of families who have lost loved ones to gratuitous police violence, we think it necessary that the University scrupulously assess the multiple ways in which it is itself culpable for the persistence of anti-blackness. Following the “Letter to the Emory Administration,”[2] issued to the University in late May detailing the concerns of the broader Emory Community, demanding accountability from the Emory Administration, President Sterk regaled us with her hopes of an operational campus this fall and President-Elect Fenves’s statement of solidarity amounted more closely to a condemnation of particular resistance strategies. These statements, issued by the highest ranking members of the Emory Administration, are indistinct and indeterminate on the issue of Black livability and survivability in the contemporary moment and are very clearly strategies of corporate placation. The immediacy of this national crisis demands the University’s decisive assurance that its Black student population is, and will remain, a high priority. The following are the several demands of the Black student population endorsed by the enumerated signatories.
We demand that Emory University be a willing ear and issue a public apology for the University’s history of racist violence, particularly towards its Black student population.
We demand that Emory University be a willing ear and undedicate residential spaces and other University properties to Confederate slave holders, acknowledging their notorious and well-documented histories of deriving wealth from the enslavement, abuse, forced labour, and general subjugation of African American peoples.
We demand that Emory University be a willing ear and, with the findings from the NAACP’s Assessment Survey on the Utility of Emory Police Department and Atlanta Police Department[3], reassess the ways in which EPD and APD affect Emory’s learning and residential environments and immediately take actions to 1) disarm Emory Police, and 2) defund the Emory Police Department, reallocating subsidized funding to better equipped crises-prepared professionals.
We demand that Emory University be a willing ear and, with the findings from the NAACP’s Assessment Survey on the Experience of Racial Violence in the Classroom[4], immediately take action to reassess its policies on Open Expression to better prosecute student experiences of rhetorical discrimination by the University’s faculty.
Following from the aforementioned, we demand that Emory University be a willing ear and provide frequent diversity and sensitivity training to better verse faculty in the nuances of issues of identity (including, but not limited to issues of race, gender, sexuality, religion, socioeconomic status, etc.).
We demand that Emory University be a willing ear and establish a suretyship with this Coalition to guarantee the protection and preservation of designated Black spaces where Emory Students could be educated on the histories and contributions of Emory’s, and more broadly, America’s black constituency.
We demand that Emory University be a willing ear and acknowledge AND resolve all the demands of Black students issued in the:
Black Student Alliance’s Demands of 1969[5]
Students Against Racial Inequality’s Demands of 1990[6]
Black Students of Emory’s Demands of 2015[7]
Black Lives Matter Letter of Actionable Items of 2020[8]
We ask that the applicable demanded provisions of this list of actionable items be extended to the entire Emory University System in consultation with representatives from this Coalition.
We demand that Emory University be a willing ear and regularly meet with the leaders of Black organizations at the University to 1) hold the University accountable for a high degree of transparency as it relates to the demands of the Black student population and 2) ensure these and future demands are attentively acknowledged, resolved, and enforced.
We demand that Emory University be a willing ear and respond to each of the enumerated demands in writing within 48 hours. A sufficient response will include a statement of advocacy from the University and a detailed plan of action supplemented by a time frame, subject to the approval of this Coalition.
Yours in Resistance,
Emory University NAACP Collegiate Chapter,
in Authorship
Organizations/Clubs
Emory’s Black Student Alliance
Emory’s Black Pre-Law Society
Emory’s Black & Latinx in STEM
The Alpha Tau Chapter of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.
The Gamma Beta Gamma Chapter of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.
Emory’s Black Men’s Initiative
Emory’s Ngambika
Caucus of Emory Black Alumni
Emory’s Black is Gold
Emory’s BLACKSTAR* MAGAZINE
Emory’s African Student Association
Emory’s Brotherhood of Afrocentric Men
BlackOUT Queer Discussion Group
Goizueta’s Black Student Association
Emory’s BLOOM*
Emory’s Melanin Essence
The Mu Alpha Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
Individual Signatories
Ronald Poole II, 23C
Zakiya Collier, 21C
Marie Roc, 23C
Myles Dunn, 23C
Destini Renard, 23C
Aaron Campbell, 21C
Anne Marie Odney, 23C
Solana Rivera, 23C
Beyonce Brice, 23C
Jalyn Radziminski, 18C
Jamaiica Hurston, 22C
Koluchi Odiegwu, 23C
Rejoice M. Jones, 11C
Samaia Hill, 23C
Ivy Kilpatrick, 17C
Krysten Nedd, 22N
Helena Zeleke, 23C
India Stevenson, 22C
Charlese Blair, 22C
Peter Nicholas Cooke, 23C
Sarah Naseer, 19Ox 21C
Samantha M. Ketant, 06C
Isbah Kapadia, 19Ox 21C
Selma Sheikh-Khalil, 19Ox 21C
Ja’Mya Yancey, 23C
Rejoice M. Jones, 11C
Faith Muyoyo, 21C
Kira Tucker, 20C
Ernst Jourdain, 22B
Muna Nour, 22C
Timothy Richmond, 20C
Leelt Ermias, 22C
Heather-Destiny Konan, 22C
Ashley Morel, 23C
Vanessa Sogan, 24C
Amon Pierson, 22C
Vanessa Ishimwe, 20C
Layhana Mopono, 24C
Ankita Moss, 20C
Christina Hardaway, 09C
Coumba Diao, 22B
Taylor Jones, 23C
Destiny Augustine, 22N
Edmund Acquaah Jr., 23C
Emily Gardin, 21C
Chloe Camp, 21N
Ayana Dickens, 20C
Lindsey Burton-Anderson, 21C
Amala Ozumba, 22C
Mekurab Samuel, 22C
Merveille Oluoch, 22C
Laila Nashid, 23C
Daniel Gebrekidan, 22C
Ja’Kyla Kellem, 22C
Leila Ransome, 22C
Lauren Jones, 21C
Morissa Wisdom, 22C
DeJuan Charles, 22C
Desiree Chea, 22N
A’Janae Williams, 20C
Jalista X., 22C
Iris Li, 22C
Kedhejah Kelley, 22C
Touré Jones, 21C
Preye A. Jituboh, 21C
Oliver Niyibizi, 21C
Teffin Benedict, 21C
Zoe Price, 22C
Julius Pugh, 24C
Amari Sutton, 20C
Alexis Young, 22C
Zion Billey, 24C
Lois Teye-Botchway, 23C
Dominique Jones, 24C
Marcia Petis, 23C
Jocelyn Stanfield, 20C
Leslie Owusu, 22C
Jery Villaman, 23C
Dynasti DeGouville, 22C
Alisia Moore, 21C
Nina Thompson, 21C
Christopher Lawrence, 23C
Matthew White, 22C
Natalia Thomas, 23C
Channelle Russell, 22C
Zariah Jenkins, 21C
Jonna Austin, 23C
Dayan Dorestin, 22Ox 24C
Fatima Elfakahany, 18Ox 20C
Destiny Riddick, 23C
Tai Harriott, 23C
Tiera Ndlovu, 19Ox 21C
Reina Ambrocio, 22C
Drew Wood-Palmer, 21R
Vivian Muhumuza, 21Ox 23C
Kyra Mitchell, 22C
Sierra Stephens, 22N
Kaitlin Mottley, 23C
Lonzie Portis, 23C
Maya Wright, 23C
Hayat Geresu, 21C
Niara E. Foster, 22C
Alvaro Perez Daisson, 23C
Julia Francois, 23C
Michelle Mugo, 18Ox 20C
Danielle McKee, 21C
Camille McClain, 23C
Christina Chance, 22C
Adrianna English, 23C
Julian Portis-Escoto, 23C
Mekhi George, 21B
Joy Knowles, 22C
Iman Ali, 19Ox 21C
Malcolm Phillips, 23C
Latreese Lovence, 21C
Layan Ibrahim, 21C
Cameron D. Warren, 20C
Lucinda Jeune, 23C
Ryan Diedonne, 23C
Kyle Chan-Shue, 23C
Hawa Larissa Jagana, 21C
Shantinque Bailey, 23C
Mikaelle Pierre-Paul, 23C
Julio Ceballos, 23B
John Walker-Turner, 20C
Obinna Megwa, 22C
Leo Lee, 23C
Jerusalem Tsige, 23C
Jordyn Elyse Turner, 22B
Anya Solomon, 21C
Abel Girma, 21C
Kayla Williams, 22C
Delon Canterbury, 09C
Andrea Catchings, 99Ox 01C
Joyce Korir, 23B
Robel Betre, 21C
James Kendrick Cooper, 22B
Abdullah Muzeyen, 21C
Evan Amaral, 21C
Marvin Richards, 19Ox 21C
Phoebe Han, 20C
Julianna Heller, 21C
Chris James, 21C
