Faces in Watercolor

By Kaiya Downs

Growing up, it was rare to see black faces in my history books. They were there, but often they were a suffering collective, not the grand figures we were shown with the founding fathers or the oft talked about war heroes. Being biracial, it was disheartening to see faces like my own reduced to a blurry sea of faces like a watercolor painting. It did not help that biracial figures within history are often erased entirely or reduced to a footnote. As a result, despite my love for history, it was always distant.  

That distance also stemmed from the nature of academia. When you learn from textbooks, journals, and articles, the history is organized and straightforward; however, there is a vast separation between student and subject that results from it that is inherent to the way it is taught. While this is not wrong and I do not mean to portray it as such, it is an unfortunate side effect that this aids in the distancing between student and subject. Personally, I believe this is why so many of my peers found history to be so dry, as there is much less active engagement compared to other subjects, even math. It is difficult to care about something that you believe does not matter to you or does not require much effort aside from absorbing the information.  

Kaiya Downs working on the William & Mary Bray School Lab Records Project. Photo courtesy of Grace Helmick.

Upon joining the William & Mary Bray School Lab, that distance all but evaporated. Instead of seeing these larger-than-life figures or blurry masses of people, there were lists of names, individual stories of students that attended the school and records of their existence. Instead of textbooks with sparse details and descriptions, more focused on events and leaders, I was met with singular people with their own lives in the minutia of eighteenth-century Williamsburg.  

My position within the Lab is working on the Records Project, where several others and I transcribe letters associated with the Associates of Dr. Bray. The letters that I have transcribed have been between the Associates and ministers stationed in Virginia. While it is disappointing that I have not come across any letters from students at the Bray Schools, the letters still provide me with an interesting insight, as all these men genuinely and wholeheartedly believe in what they are doing. Before joining the Lab, I researched the Williamsburg Bray School and the Associates of Dr. Bray, through which I learned their cause: teaching enslaved persons basic skills while also teaching them Christianity and the belief that God ordained their treatment under their enslavers. When I read about this, I was horrified and disgusted, but that distance was still there. I had wondered to myself how someone could believe these things. The Associates of Dr. Bray became faceless to me, a collective entity instead of individual men advocating for this.  

However, upon reading these letters, some of which mention the slaves these men owned within their letters, it became horrifyingly real. To these men, this was a cause they had to champion and something they felt they were doing out of the “kindness” of their own hearts. It was “God’s will” or a “good deed” or the acts of a “righteous man.” But their letters also detail their travels, their friends, their goals, all things that would not be out of place in an exchange between the average person today.  

This was sobering to me, as it was easy for me to image the Associates as an evil collective that sought to do harm, but no. They were a group of men who thought that what they were doing was right because they genuinely believed what they were saying. They believed that people of color were below them. They believed that what they were doing was God’s will. Not because of some “evil instinct” in them but simply because that was what they believed. As a result, they never paid any attention to it. They never thought to question the effect they were having because they believed they already knew.  

Upon having this realization, I was angry, and it was difficult to walk the brick pathways of Colonial Williamsburg without being reminded of that. However, when thinking about it further, I came to a seemingly obvious realization: they were all human. Everyone, from the Associates to the enslaved people they callously harmed, was a human being. Each of these people had their own lives, families, hopes, and dreams. Instead of blotchy watercolor, each face was defined and put into focus, with individual lives colliding with each other and building these spider webs of connections that we can only hope to find through our research.  

That day, I gained a new appreciation for what we at the Lab do; instead of just viewing the painting, we are the ones helping to restore it. Whenever we read and transcribe a letter, we add more details until we find the finished masterpiece and I will always be grateful for the opportunity to be a part of that. 

Kaiya Downs’ working notes, used with permission.

Kaiya Downs is currently a sophomore majoring in Classical Studies, with plans to minor in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and has served as a Student Thought Partner at the W&M Bray School Lab since the fall of 2023.

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