Harvard & Slavery

HARVARD AND SLAVERY Seeking a Forgotten History by Sven Beckert, Katherine Stevens and the students of the Harvard and Slavery Research Seminar HARVARD AND SLAVERY Seeking a Forgotten History by Sven Beckert, Katherine Stevens and the students of the Harvard and Slavery Research Seminar introducTION About the Authors Sven Beckert is Laird Bell Professor of history Katherine Stevens is a graduate student in n the fall of 2007, four Harvard undergradu- surprising: Harvard presidents who brought slaves at Harvard University and author of the forth- the History of American Civilization Program ate students came together in a seminar room to live with them on campus, significant endow- coming The Empire of Cotton: A Global History. at Harvard studying the history of the spread Ito solve a local but nonetheless significant ments drawn from the exploitation of slave labor, of slavery and changes to the environment in historical mystery: to research the historical con- Harvard’s administration and most of its faculty the antebellum the U.S. South. nections between Harvard University and slavery. favoring the suppression of public debates on Inspired by Ruth Simmon’s path-breaking work slavery. A quest that began with fears of finding at Brown University, the seminar’s goal was nothing ended with a new question —how was it to gain a better understanding of the history of that the university had failed for so long to engage the institution in which we were learning and with this elephantine aspect of its history? teaching, and to bring closer to home one of the The following pages will summarize some of greatest issues of American history: slavery. But the findings of the students’ research. They show no one sitting in that room on that beautiful late that the history of slavery is also local history: summer day had any idea what we would find. Harvard, like most institutions in the United With much of the literature on Harvard’s history States whose history stretches back to before 1865, silent on slavery, it was unclear whether Harvard had the labor, products, and profits of slavery had any links to slavery, and if so, what they were. woven into its very fabric. But perhaps the most As the story that follows makes abundantly important lesson we learned in the seminars was clear, the students’ curiosity in the face of that there is yet so much more to find out. We the unknown and their impressive mastery of the only understand some small parts of the story, arts of historical detection were rewarded and it will be up to future generations of student with a treasure trove of findings, many of them researchers and others to explore this history. disconcerting. The 32 students who participated Still, now is the moment to share some in this initial and three subsequent seminars of our findings with the larger community. We © 2011 Sven Beckert and Katherine Stevens scoured Harvard’s archival records, drew countless want to inspire others to dig deeper into this published volumes from its library stacks, made history, but even more so we want to encourage Cover Image: “Memorial Hall” careful inspections of our neighboring colonial a broader debate on what this history means for PHOTOGRAPH BY KARTHIK DONDETI, GRADUATE graveyards, and carefully inspected Harvard’s us today. While the students could not agree on SCHOOL OF DESIGN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY oldest buildings. Much of what they found was what acts of memorialization, remembrance, or 2 Harvard & Slavery Introduction 3 restitution would be appropriate responses for librarians at Harvard and elsewhere went out Harvard, they all agreed that a broader commu- of their way to help us trace obscure sources on a nity needs to be drawn into this discussion. It is hidden history. Matthew Corcoran, Caitlin Hop- the community as a whole that needs to decide kins, Jesse Halvorsen, and Erin Wells supported, what needs to be done. in various ways, the publishing of the students’ I could not have embarked upon this project research. My colleague Evelyn Higginbotham without the support of many people. First, I want has been a much-needed participant observer to publicly thank the amazing group of Harvard all along, and I thank her for her support. And, students whose dedication and enthusiasm last but not least, a big “thank you” to Harvard drove this project forward from start to finish. President Drew Faust for sponsoring this publi- Harvard University was the first Teaching fellows Kathryn Boodry and Katherine cation, engaging with our efforts along the way, institution of higher learning in Stevens, who are themselves writing important and encouraging yet deeper consideration of the dissertations on the history of slavery, were the implications of our students’ research. colonial America. Founded in 1636 best possible colleagues: Engaged, opinionated, as a training ground for aspiring and ever giving of their time to help the students ministers, it capitalized on this with their research. With enormous energy and early start and became during the dedication, co-author Katherine Stevens took an important role in conceptualizing, writing Sven Beckert nineteenth century the nation’s and producing this publication. Archivists and Cambridge, September 2011 most influential university, and by the middle of the twentieth century, arguably the world’s. Not surprisingly, then, Harvard’s four centuries long career is tightly connected to the history of New England, the United States and the Atlantic world on whose most dynamic eastern edge it was perched. Notwithstanding a deafening silence on the topic in most remembrances of this great university, Harvard’s history entails a whole range HARVARD UNIVERSITY HARVARD of connections to slavery. 4 Harvard & Slavery harvard & slavery in the Colonial Era he story of Harvard and slavery begins saw their main chance for success lay in trade in the era of its founding. By the mid- connections to the vastly richer plantation colo- Tseventeenth century slaves were part of the nies of the South and especially the Caribbean. fabric of everyday life in colonial Massachusetts. Called the “West Indies” by British colonists, the They lived and labored in the colony. Their islands of the Caribbean and the eastern coast owners were often political leaders and heads of of South America were the primary economic en- prominent families. It should be no surprise that gines of the major European empires in the New slaves followed the children of that elite onto World. On plantations in the West Indies, slaves campus, working in Harvard buildings, passing labored in large numbers, mostly producing through Harvard’s yard, laboring in the houses sugar; profits from selling sugar, molasses, and of Harvard’s alumni, serving its faculty. Off their byproducts enriched Europe and its New campus, their toil contributed to many of the World intermediaries.1 Though half an ocean fortunes that funded the university. away from the Caribbean, the Massachusetts Still, few imaginings of colonial Harvard, in economy was an important vertex of the com- prose or paint, include slaves among the scholars plicated, vaguely triangular Atlantic trade. For and students who paced its yards. Why should the first 150 years of Harvard’s history, slaves not this be? For one, the numbers, occupations, and only served Harvard leaders, slave labor played prevalence of slaves in Massachusetts do not a vital role in the unprecedented appreciation of match the common image of slavery that, in the wealth by New England merchants that laid the United States, has come to be understood mostly foundation of Harvard’s status as a world-class through the lens of the nineteenth-century educational institution. South. We picture slaves on cotton plantations in Mississippi or on rice plantations in coastal Slaves at Harvard South Carolina. Slavery in the New World, how- Slavery was legal in Massachusetts until the ever, had a much longer and deeper history, in American Revolution. It should not surprise which Harvard played its own part. us, then, that during these same colonial years Not long after their first harsh winters, colo- Harvard students were deeply entangled with nists in Massachusetts and all of New England slave-owning. They recited their lessons to 6 Harvard & Slavery in the Colonial Era 7 slave-owning professors like Judah Monis then give Him his Liberty: Let him be esteemed African slaves to set foot in New England. If the abilities gained in his passage through Spanish and obeyed the rules set out by slave-owning a Free Negro.”4 slaves brought back on the Desire were the first to possessions.10 Slaves of his generation might presidents like Increase Mather and Benjamin Students in the Harvard and Slavery Semi- come to Massachusetts from the West Indies they have labored on a plantation in Cuba or served Wadsworth. They ate meals and slept in beds nars found only fragmentary evidence of slaves would have been remarkable not for being slaves, on Spanish ships before being caught up in a prepared by four generations of the Bordman working at Harvard: in single lines in diary en- but for being African.6 New England-bound captain’s hold. In this early family, the college stewards, whose many slaves tries, in wills, in probate records, and sometimes The first apparent mention of a slave on period emancipated slaves like Spaniard might likely did some or all of the actual cooking and on gravestones. In fact, a brief walk through the Harvard’s campus occurred not long after the have found a place, however humble, as free cleaning. On Sundays they attended church old Cambridge burial ground revealed the names Desire’s arrival. In 1639 the wife of Harvard’s first people within the social order in which they had at the First Church of Cambridge, where they of slaves who lived in Cambridge.

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