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Since its inception in 2021, the DeLaney Center has served as an interdisciplinary academic forum to promote teaching and research on race and Southern identity. It serves as a resource for students and faculty in all three of the university’s academic units — the College, the Williams School of Commerce, Economics and Politics and the School of Law. Through their newly established endowment, Dr. Jeff Lawson ’68 and his wife, Mary, hope to position Washington and Lee at the forefront of research and teaching on Black history in the South.

The Jeffrey G. Lawson ’68 Endowment for the DeLaney Center will fund the center’s new Undergraduate Fellows Program for students serving in leadership roles. The fund will support students engaged in a variety of learning experiences ranging from research projects, organizing student conferences and symposia, internships, travel to conferences and career or graduate exploration opportunities.

“We have set an idea in motion,” Lawson says, “that will have a big impact on Washington and Lee’s future.”

Michael Hill, director of the DeLaney Center and chair of Africana studies, says his goal is to hire up to 12 undergraduate fellows for the 2024-2025 academic year who will be tasked with assisting with DeLaney Center faculty research initiatives, compiling digital content from events and ongoing work on the Black Women in Desegregation project, which chronicles the experiences of Black women on W&L’s campus during the first three decades of coeducation. Hill said the DeLaney Center’s prior work and departmental collaborations across campus have provided a roadmap for how to expand the center’s scope. This expansion would not be possible without the help of the new endowment.

“As an institution of higher education, W&L is evolving as it should,” Hill says. “A lot of partnership and collaboration is being put in place that is going to yield fruit for decades.”

Learn more about the DeLaney Center’s programs and initiatives.