US Universities with Ties to Slavery

Recent revelations show that a growing group of institutions (Colleges and Universities) not only benefited from the labor of enslaved people, but their founders were themselves enslavers. Many Colleges and Universities including Ivy League institutions used slave labor to build campuses, depended on slave traders and owners for money and students, and developed the intellectual arguments that nourished slavery. Below are nine colleges who have ties to slaveholders:

Yale University

In 1718, trustees of what was then known as the Collegiate School received a gift from the Welsh merchant and slaver Elihu Yale. Some cash, 400 books, and a painting of George I — for this bequest, the board renamed the school after him. In 1722, Yale built a house for its rector in part by getting the General Assembly of Connecticut to tax slave-produced rum imported from the West Indies. Not long after, the Rev. George Berkeley, an adviser to several American colleges, gave Yale a small slave plantation whose rents funded its first scholarship and graduate-level courses.

John Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University confirmed that its namesake benefactor owned enslaved people. Hopkins, the descendant of Maryland planters, largely derived his wealth from real estate, railroads, banking — and by being party to slavery’s crime against humanity. The historical record makes clear that Hopkins claimed four men as his property on the 1850 Census and, before that, his business dealings included transactions in which Black Americans were among collateral for a loan.

Georgetown University

In 1838, a slave sale organized by the Jesuits, gave them the funding needed to keep the institution afloat to become what it is today. At Georgetown, slavery and scholarship were inextricably linked. The college relied on Jesuit plantations in Maryland to help finance its operations, university officials say. (Slaves were often donated by prosperous parishioners.) And the 1838 sale — worth about $3.3 million in today’s dollars — was organized by two of Georgetown’s early presidents, both Jesuit priests. At the time, the Catholic Church did not view slaveholding as immoral, said the Rev. Thomas R. Murphy, a historian at Seattle University who has written a book about the Jesuits and slavery.

University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was founded in the midst of a slave society by slaveholders. Enslaved people were present on campus from the laying of the cornerstone of Old East in 1793 until the end of the Civil War in 1865. Enslaved people built the earliest structures on the campus, many of which still exist. Old East, Old West, Gerrard Hall, South Building, Steward’s Hall, Person Hall, Smith Hall, and the original President’s House all took shape under the skilled hands of enslaved people owned or hired by the University’s trustees, employees, students, architects, and the townspeople of Chapel Hill. Enslaved people made repairs, provided supplies, and attended upon students and faculty as servants.

Rutgers University

Before an abolitionist family bought Sojourner Truth’s freedom for $20, the famed anti-slavery crusader and women’s rights activist was owned by the family of Rutgers’s first president, Jacob Hardenbergh. One of thefounders of the New Jersey research university, Philip Livingston, was a slave trader, and the family of its namesake, Henry Rutgers, also owned slaves. The slavery ties were “neither casual nor accidental — nor unusual,” a university website states. “Like most early-American colleges, Rutgers depended on slaves to build its campuses and serve its students and faculty; it depended on the sale of Black people to fund its very existence.”

The University of Cincinnati

When Charles McMicken died in 1858, his will bequeathed nearly $1 million in real estate to the city of Cincinnati, with instructions to start a university for “white boys and girls,” according to the University of Cincinnati’s research. McMicken amassed his fortune by investing in flour, cotton, sugar, indigo, and real estate. For at least part of his life, McMicken owned a plantation and enslaved people in West Feliciana Parish, La. In 2019, the university’s Board of Trustees voted to drop McMicken’s name from the College of Arts and Sciences, though it’s still displayed on parts of the campus. The board also voted to add digital displays to contextualize McMicken’s legacy.

Sweet Briar College

The bucolic land that Sweet Briar College rests on — once a farm owned by the father of the college’s founder — was tilled by Elijah Fletcher’s slaves, reportedly 140 or so at the time of his death, in 1858. Fletcher originally opposed slavery but by 1813 had been given two slaves from his new in-laws, according to the college, before buying the Sweet Briar Plantation in 1830. Fletcher gave the farm and a portion of the people he enslaved to his eldest daughter, Indiana Fletcher, providing her with the income she needed to start the liberal-arts college for women in Virginia.

Furman University

Furman University, a private institution in South Carolina, is named after Rev. Richard Furman, a Baptist pastor who promoted education and argued that slavery was justified. The campus’s first president, James C. Furman, Richard’s son, was an advocate for slavery who co-authored a newspaper editorial that read, in part, “We detest Abolitionism because it trespasses upon our rights of conscience.” In 2019, Furman’s Board of Trustees voted to rename James C. Furman Hall to Furman Hall, and create a statue and celebration day in honor of the campus’s first Black student, Joseph Vaughn. Additionally, the campus expanded its scholarship named after Vaughn to $1 million.

George Mason University

Though the university was founded in the 20th century, it’s named for a man with a checkered legacy. George Mason IV authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights, a precursor to the Declaration of Independence. And like many of America’s founding fathers, he proclaimed to yearn for freedom while enslaving Black people. Though he voiced opposition to the slave trade, he owned more than 100 enslaved people. In recent years, a university research project called “The Enslaved Children of George Mason” has sought to tell the stories of those people, and an on-campus memorial for them is planned for 2021.