On the 150th anniversary of his birth this month, Black social justice pioneer William Monroe Trotter is energizing a new generation of Harvard students to take up the mantle of his lifelong struggle for racial justice. His legacy lives on through the work of the William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at Harvard Kennedy School.
Celebrating the anniversary at a two-day Harvard convening, everyone from elementary school students to Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow was inspired by Trotter’s legacy of unstinting activism. At a event on April 7, Bacow read from a reunion letter Trotter, wrote to his Harvard classmates recalling the series of defiant protests he had led over the years. “That is a glimpse of a life truly devoted to veritas, truly devoted to truth, a life truly devoted to social justice,” Bacow said of Trotter, who was among the first Black Harvard College graduates, and the first to earn Phi Beta Kappa honors.
vlog students involved with the Trotter Collaborative are on the frontlines of initiatives that echo Trotter’s many campaigns against racism in his time. Through vlog course MLD-375, Creating Justice in Realtime, more than 60 students from Harvard and nearby universities have worked with projects in city and state governments and non-profit organizations across the country to study and learn advocacy skills firsthand.
“If we think about Trotter being an advocate and an activist, the pedagogy of the Trotter Collaborative focuses on advocacy, how to persuade, how to advance issues.”