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The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to honor Gabrielle Tayac with the 2022 Faculty Civic Excellence Award.  Tayac is a public historian, curator, and community engaged scholar committed to empowering Indigenous perspectives.

Slaveholders compelled enslaved girls and women to give birth to children. The mothers and their babies lacked legal and moral rights to their bodies. To see the clear link between this statement and George Mason IV, a typical slaveholder who worshiped at the nearby Pohick church, consider his words on the campus statue: “I give and bequeath unto each of my four Daughters, Ann Mason, Sarah Mason, Mary Mason, and Elizabeth Mason, and to each of their heirs for ever, ... the following Slaves with their Increase, respectively from the date of this my Will.... I confirm ...a Negro Girl named Penny to my Daughter Ann.”

“Geographies of Inequity: Exploring the Hidden Lives Next Door,” draws on the Center for Mason Legacies’s Black Lives Next Door project, which was launched in 2021 OSCAR, and Mason researchers George Oberle, LaNitra Berger, Benedict Carton, and Wendi Manuel-Scott.

"Gabrielle Tayac, a Native American scholar and historian, still remembers as a girl hearing from her father the oral history passed down in his family for over 100 years: How the town of Indian Head and the highway through it got named..." Read more from the recent Washington Post article; photo by Julia Nikhinson/For The Washington Post.

George Oberle and Tony Guidone deliver a presentation to the Fairfax Resolves and George Mason Chapters of the Sons of the American Revolution on 14 May 2022.

George D. Oberle III – history librarian, director of the Center for Mason Legacies, and assistant term faculty with the department of history and art history – has been selected to receive the 2022 Distinguished Library Faculty Award. With this award, he is recognized by his library faculty peers for his exemplary professional accomplishments and his dedication as a librarian, historian, scholar, and mentor. The award will be presented officially to Dr. Oberle at Mason’s annual Celebration of Teaching Excellence ceremony, hosted by The Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning. This year’s ceremony is scheduled for May 2, 2022.

The Enslaved People of George Mason Memorial, the newest addition to Wilkins Plaza and the outcome of a pivotal interdisciplinary research project including CHSS students and faculty, was dedicated on April 4th as part of Mason's 50th Anniversary Celebration.

The Center for Mason Legacies was proud to be part of the official dedication of the new memorial on Monday, April 6. Coverage from The George, The Washington Post, and CNN.