With These Hands: A Memorial to the Enslaved and Exploited is a monumental public sculpture anchoring the historic core of the Davidson College campus. Designed by renowned artist Hank Willis Thomas in collaboration with the architectural firm Perkins & Will, the large-scale cast bronze artwork serves as a solemn site of reflection, reverence, and gratitude. The monument represents the college's formal institutional commitment to learning from its past, reconciling with its history of exploitation, and bringing previously excluded community members directly into the official Davidson narrative. It explicitly honors the enslaved and exploited individuals whose unrecognized physical and emotional labor built, served, and sustained the college across generations.

The physical design of the memorial is deeply intertwined with the landscape and history of the campus. Situated prominently on the front lawn between Oak Row and Elm Row—two of the college's earliest surviving structures—the monument features two large, gender-ambiguous hands rising directly from the earth. The bronze is finished with a distinct, weathered patina to evoke a work-worn texture that symbolizes heavy toil and resilience. This artistic choice was directly inspired by the surrounding historic infrastructure, specifically the early campus bricks that still bear the visible thumbprints and fingerprints of the enslaved laborers who shaped and baked them. By placing these monumental hands at a highly visible campus crossroads near Main Street, the sculpture creates a literal and metaphorical connection between the labor of the enslaved and the very soil of the institution.