Beyond Kitty’s Cottage

This paper explores the containment of the history of enslavement at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in a site called Kitty’s Cottage located in Newton County, Georgia. This paper examines the history of the physical site from its cultivation in 1844 after Bishop Andrew received pressure from the United Methodist Church to free his enslaved persons, resulting in a split in the church to the site’s physical movement in 1939 to the Salem Campground where it served as a white nationalist museum commemorating the Confederacy until 1993. Emory University perpetuates this containment of history by only acknowledging slavery through the fragmented narrative of Catherine “Miss Kitty” Boyd through a 2011 conference, thus neglecting the voices of other Black people enslaved by those affiliated with Emory University. By neglecting other facets of its history with slavery, the university reiterates the same white supremacist ideologies that sustained the cabin during Catherine’s lifetime and after her lifetime when it served as a museum at the Salem Campground. The paper also critiques more recent efforts by the university to publicly acknowledge its complex history.