Slave Labor on Campus

Slave labor was integral to the functionality of the early University of Georgia. The University of Georgia hired enslaved people to work as manual laborers on campus for a variety of tasks. Some of these jobs, recorded in the Board of Trustees Minutes, the Prudential Committee Meeting Minutes, and Augustus Longstreet Hull’s Annals of Athens, included cleaning students’ rooms, building maintenance and repair, supplying water to the campus, and working in the Botanical Garden. Most of these workers are unnamed in these records, however, in several instances the names of these enslaved people have been documented. For instance, a man named Bill Hull worked as the college carpenter, while Dick Cary and Sam Harris both worked as bell ringers on campus.