Harvard's searing and sobering indictment of its own long-standing
relationship with chattel slavery and anti-Black discrimination. In
recent years, scholars have documented extensive relationships
between American higher education and slavery. The Legacy of
Slavery at Harvard adds Harvard University to the long list of
institutions, in the North and the South, entangled with slavery
and its aftermath. The report, written by leading researchers from
across the university, reveals hard truths about Harvard's deep
ties to Black and Indigenous bondage, scientific racism,
segregation, and other forms of oppression. Between the
university's founding in 1636 and 1783, when slavery officially
ended in Massachusetts, Harvard leaders, faculty, and staff
enslaved at least seventy people, some of whom worked on campus,
where they cared for students, faculty, and university presidents.
Harvard also benefited financially and reputationally from
donations by slaveholders, slave traders, and others whose fortunes
depended on human chattel. Later, Harvard professors and the
graduates they trained were leaders in so-called race science and
eugenics, which promoted disinvestment in Black lives through
forced sterilization, residential segregation, and segregation and
discrimination in education. No institution of Harvard's scale and
longevity is a monolith. Harvard was also home to abolitionists and
pioneering Black thinkers and activists such as W. E. B. Du Bois,
Charles Hamilton Houston, and Eva Beatrice Dykes. In the late
twentieth century, the university became a champion of racial
diversity in education. Yet the past cannot help casting a long
shadow on the present. Harvard's motto, Veritas, inscribed on
gates, doorways, and sculptures all over campus, is an exhortation
to pursue truth. The Legacy of Slavery at Harvard advances that
necessary quest.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!