Slavery funded colleges, built campuses, and paid the wages of professors. Later, the slave economy and higher education grew up together, each nurturing the other. The earliest academies proclaimed their mission to Christianize the savages of North America, and played a key role in white conquest. Many of America’s revered colleges and universities-from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to Rutgers, Williams College, and UNC-were soaked in the sweat, the tears, and sometimes the blood of people of color. In Ebony and Ivy, Craig Steven Wilder, a rising star in the profession of history, lays bare uncomfortable truths about race, slavery, and the American academy. But Brown’s troubling past was far from unique. A 2006 report commissioned by Brown University revealed that institution’s complex and contested involvement in slavery-setting off a controversy that leapt from the ivory tower to make headlines across the country.
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