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Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities
Bloomsbury Press
September 2013
On Sale: September 17, 2013
433 pages
ISBN: 1596916818
EAN: 9781596916814
Kindle: B00EKHQ7UG
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
A 2006 report commissioned by Brown University revealed that institutionβs complex and contested involvement in slaveryβsetting off a controversy that leapt from the ivory tower to make headlines across the country. But Brownβs troubling past was far from unique. 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.
Many of Americaβs revered colleges and universitiesβfrom Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to Rutgers, Williams College, and UNCβwere soaked in the sweat, the tears, and sometimes the blood of people of color. The earliest academies proclaimed their mission to Christianize the savages of North America, and played a key role in white conquest. Later, the slave economy and higher education grew up together, each nurturing the other. Slavery funded colleges, built campuses, and paid the wages of professors. Enslaved Americans waited on faculty and students; academic leaders aggressively courted the support of slave owners and slave traders. Significantly, as Wilder shows, our leading universities, dependent on human bondage, became breeding grounds for the racist ideas that sustained them.
Ebony and Ivy is a powerful and propulsive study and the first of its kind, revealing a history of oppression behind the institutions usually considered the cradle of liberal politics.
 Media BuzzDiane Rehm Show - NPR - April 30, 2014
Diane Rehm Show - NPR - January 13, 2014
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