Slavery at American colleges and universities information
Historical investigation and controversy
In 2020, researchers discovered Johns Hopkins University's founder and namesake, Johns Hopkins, had enslaved at least 4 people.[1]
The role of slavery at American colleges and universities has been a focus of historical investigation and controversy. Enslaved Africans labored to build institutions of higher learning in the United States, and the slave economy was involved in funding many universities.[2] People, forced to labor and seen as less than human, were used to build academic buildings and residential halls.[2] Though slavery has long been presented as a uniquely Southern institution, colleges and universities in Northern states benefited from the labor of slaves.[3][4] The economics of slavery brought some slave owners great wealth, enabling them to become major donors to fledgling colleges.[5] Many colleges founded in states with legalized slavery utilized enslaved people and benefited from the slavocracy. Slaves were also sold by university administrators to generate capital, notably Georgetown University.[6] In some parts of the nation it was also not uncommon for wealthy students to bring an enslaved person with them to college.[7] Ending almost 250 years of slavocracy did not end white supremacy, structural racism, or other forms of oppression at American colleges and the legacy of slavery still persists in many establishments.[8][9]
In 2004, Ira Berlin wrote that the study of slavery at universities can be controversial and can lead to tense debates.[10] "Accompanied by the charge that the interpreters have said too much (why do you dwell upon it?) or too little (why can't you face the truth?)."[10]: 1260 He contends that by reckoning with slavery, “Americans—white and black—can have a past that is both memorable and, at last, a past.”[10]: 1268
In 2006, Brown University became the first university to publish a report detailing its ties to slavery.[11] Over the following decades, a number of American colleges and universities have made efforts to research, address, and teach about their historical connections to slavery. In 2014, a number of institutions led by the University of Virginia established Universities Studying Slavery (USS), an informal working group and later consortium dedicated to investigating institutional histories as they relate to slavery or racism.[12] Efforts and calls to address historical connections to slavery and enduring racism at American universities were renewed in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests.[13][14]
^Cite error: The named reference :4 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ abJennifer Schuessler (March 5, 2017). "Confronting Academia's Ties to Slavery". New York Times. Archived from the original on December 15, 2018.
^Fuentes, Marisa J.; Gray White, Deborah, eds. (2016). Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9780813591520.
^Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "MIT and Slavery". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Archived from the original on 2018-10-05.
^Holly Epstein Ojalvo (February 13, 2017). "Beyond Yale: These other university buildings have ties to slavery and white supremacy". USA Today. Archived from the original on March 27, 2019.
^Swarns, Rachel L. The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold To Build the American Catholic Church. New York: Random House
^Wilder, Craig (2013). Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's History. Bloomsbury Press. p. 113.
^Hrabowski III, Freeman; Henderson, Peter; Tracy, J. Kathleen (24 October 2020). "Higher Education Should Lead the Efforts to Reverse Structural Racism". www.theatlantic.com. Archived from the original on 9 June 2021. Retrieved 9 June 2021.
^Lucey, Catherine Reini; Saguil, Aaron (March 2020). "The Consequences of Structural Racism on MCAT Scores and Medical School Admissions: The Past Is Prologue". Academic Medicine. 95 (3): 351–356. doi:10.1097/ACM.0000000000002939. PMID 31425184. S2CID 201100182. Retrieved 9 June 2021.
^ abcBerlin, Ira (2004). "American Slavery in History and Memory and the Search for Social Justice". The Journal of American History. 90 (4). Oxford University Press: 1251–1268. doi:10.2307/3660347. JSTOR 3660347.
^Krantz, Laura (February 12, 2018). "Looking into its past, MIT finds its first president once owned slaves - The Boston Globe". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2022-01-26.
^"Universities Studying Slavery (USS)–The Birth of a Movement". President's Commission on Slavery and the University. 2017-02-03. Retrieved 2022-01-26.
^"From slavery to Jim Crow to George Floyd: Virginia universities face a long racial reckoning". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2022-01-26.
^Medina, Eduardo (2021-11-23). "Georgia's University System Will Not Rename Buildings With Ties to Slavery". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-01-26.
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