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And so the Brown University Committee on Slavery and Justice went to work and just released a 100+ page report, including footnotes, on the University's historic ties with the slave trade. But President Simmons also asked the Committee to "reflect on the meaning of this history in the present, on the complex historical, political, legal and moral questions posed by any present-day confrontation with past injustice" (p. 4). The Committee Report, like Gaul, is divided into three major parts: (1) the historical experience of the University's founders with the slave trade; (2) comparative perspectives on past injustice; and (3) the reparations question. Since the Committee wasn't charged with recommending whether and to whom reparations were proper, it didn't address that question directly. It did, however, in the third part, describe the history of efforts to deal with reparations and other strategies to redress past injustices. The purpose of this essay is only to begin where the Committee began, in a second floor office of University Hall, and to celebrate with you what I consider to be the most two brilliant and evocative pages of the report--the beginning of the Introduction.

Esek Hopkins's Clock

As the Committee did its work it became cognizant of an antique clock in its meeting room with a silver plaque identifying it as "The Family Clock of Admiral Esek Hopkins." Esek was the lesser-known brother of Governor Stephen Hopkins but still a very important force in the early days of Brown, having served as Trustee from 1782-1802. His naval experience might make us think of heroic battles agains the British, of which he had some, but the Committee rightly pointed out that Hopkins got his start in the employ of the Brown brothers and, indeed, was the captain of the ill-fated slave ship Sally from Sept. 1764-Dec. 1765. In that fifteen-month journey, typical goods were transported from New England (rum--17,264 gallons, to be precise--spermaceti for candles, guns, etc.), 196 slaves were loaded on the Sally in West Africa and then, through revolt, sickness, depression and suicide and other horrendous circumstances, only 109 slaves arrived alive in Antiqua in the late Fall of 1765. Little money was obtained from their sale, the Brown brothers lost considerable money in this venture and it, more than anything, led to an ultimate dissolution of the Brown brothers partnership in the next few years.

The tall-case clock was made by Samuel Rockwell (1722-73), a Providence clockmaker, and it was donated to the college by Elizabeth Angell, Esek Hopkins's granddaughter, in 1855. The Angell's, too, were noteworthy benefactors of Brown University. So, for 151 years that clock has been in the possession of the university, and its 250 year history bears mute testimony to the entire length of Rhode Island's history as a State. As I was thinking of this striking story, I stopped reading and was almost overwhelmed by the symbolism of the Hopkins clock.

The Symbolism of the Clock

1. The most striking thing that came to mind immediately was that the owner of the clock, Esek Hopkins, embarked on the ill-fated slave trading trip on the same year that Brown University was founded. The Scriptures say that from the same fountain cannot come both fresh and brackish water, but from this same year came both the birth of one of America's great universities and one of the founders' of that universities greatest sins. Both were birthed in the same womb, as it was, within months of each other. Maybe the story of Jacob and Esau is more to the point.

2. Then there is the issue of what a clock does--it marks time. As the Hopkins clock marked the time of the Committee's work, it created a sort of link or bond with the first owner of the clock, a sense perhaps that he was there in spiritu, maybe even with bated breath, to see what his descendants would say about him and about his life. The clock marks time, but it never goes more quickly or slowly, despite the intensity of events that happen outside of it. It is the neutral adjudicator of all things, simply marking the passage of our days, until we grow silent while it keeps working.

3. But the clock also teaches us complex issues about ownership and responsibility. For, indeed, it was Esek Hopkins's clock but it became the clock of Elizabeth Angell. It was paid for by proceeds of a man who commanded slave ships, among other things, but it was gifted to the University by someone who was removed from that world. So, is the gift from a slaver? Or, is the gift from someone who just happened to be the granddaughter of a slaver but who had, by her life, sort of transformed that gift to purer purposes? Is she responsible, in some way, for the conduct of her grandfather? And, if she is not, are we, who attended Brown?

4. Then there is the way in which the Hopkins clock was "discovered." The Committee never mentions how the importance of the clock dawned on it, but they do give the impression that it sat in their midst for some time before they "discovered it." That is another symbolic lesson of the clock. It is right in front of us to see, yet its meaning escaped generations of students and laborers at the University. It is a testimony to our own blindness, our preoccupation with the present, with the complex webs of our own lives, our tendency to see things only according to our preconceived commitments of what knowledge "is"--it is all these things that the clock teaches us. Maybe the clock really wanted to be discovered all these years, but had no takers because the whole Brown community was so intent on making a name for itself that it never stopped to hear the story of the clock.

Conclusion

And so the clock keeps on ticking. It ticks and tells us that our work on issues of study of the past, of judging the past, of considering reparations or other acts of restorative justice, is not done. The clock teaches us so much about ourselves and about another time. It would seem to be unjust if we are too harsh to an object, or the giver of an object, that teaches us so much about ourselves.

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