Mr. Michael A. Allen, a 1982 graduate of South Carolina State University with a degree in history education, has been selected as a member of the Legacies of Enslavement Advisory Panel.
The Scott Trust Legacies of Enslavement program is a 10-year restorative justice initiative launched in March 2023 in response to the Guardian founders’ connections to transatlantic enslavement. It is being designed and carried out in consultation with descendant communities in the US, Jamaica, the UK and elsewhere, centered on long-term initiatives and meaningful impact.
The initial act of the program was an apology, in recognition of the role the Guardian founder, John Edward Taylor, and his business backers played in slavery, which was a crime against humanity.
The program will incorporate a range of restorative justice
actions focused on descendant communities and spanning apology and acknowledgment, truth-seeking and telling, and reparative actions.
Allen joins such eminent researchers as Professor Olivette Otele, a distinguished research professor of the legacies and memory of slavery at SOAS, University of London; Dr. Matthew Smith, professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at the University of London; and Professor Keith Magee, a senior fellow and visiting professor in cultural justice at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.
Allen grew up in Kingstree, South Carolina, and began his public career with the National Park Service in 1980. He served as the education specialist and site manager for
