GW Day of the Dead

Moderator: Rachel Riedner, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies

Host: Phillip Troutman, Assistant Professor of Writing and of History, GW Working Group on Slavery and Its Legacies

Did you know that GW has a burying ground? Before the Civil War, several students, faculty (and their children), were interred in Columbian College's burial ground on the original 1821 campus in Columbia Heights, along with major donor John Withers, who figured into DC's Snow Riot of 1834. The bodies were moved and reburied in 1866, and then again in 1884 to Oak Hill in Georgetown. Some were left behind, however, including the “boy in the iron coffin,” a mummified body re-discovered in 2003 and identified by the Smithsonian. Finally, there's the grave of Cloyd Heck Marvin, who oversaw GW's explosive growth in Foggy Bottom (1927-1959), all the while unapologetically defending GW’s policy of racial exclusion. Here lies history! This virtual field trip includes an audio-visual overview and live-stream Q&A from GW's plot in Oak Hill Cemetery.