When the Virginia college sold the cotton fields in the early 1800s, Lemon was one of the few out of the 17 slaves who worked the fields redeployed to the college campus in Williamsburg. The others were sold. Lemon presumably worked there until his death in 1817.
Little else is known about him. Not his last name nor his survivors.
But a few years ago when William and Mary, the nation’s second-oldest university and, for centuries, the leading intellectual champion of Southern causes, including slavery and segregation, decided to atone for its past deeds, college officials picked Lemon as a symbol.
