This critical question posed by Furman graduate, Marian Baker, in an op-ed written for The Paladin, becomes a call to the Furman community to honest dialogues, reflections, and actions on their own understanding of the history of their institution.

For Baker and for many members of our community, it was essential to take responsibility for a history that has profoundly affected our institution and what it stands for. This legacy is a pervasive one that has trickled down to generation after generation, through historical periods and processes that include the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow Era, the Civil Rights Movement, desegregation, Black Lives Mater, up until the unsettling times we are experiencing right now. Baker appeals to our community to engage in an introspection within the University, to renounce its founders' slaveholding attitudes, and to activate a reckoning process that would allow all of us to equally move forward.