It’s precisely the rise and the elaboration of the Atlantic economy, based on the African slave trade, that allows for this sort of fantastic articulation of new growth of the institutional infrastructure of the colonies.ĪMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk specifically about particular universities.ĪMY GOODMAN: I mean, you are-you do look at some universities in the South-ĪMY GOODMAN: -but also in the Deep North.ĬRAIG STEVEN WILDER: It’s a very Northern story, actually. That 25-year period actually coincides with the height of the slave trade. The original three were Harvard, Yale and William & Mary, and all of a sudden there were nine by 1769. In the middle of the 18th century, from 1746 to 1769-fewer than 25 years, less than a quarter century-the number of colleges in the British colonies triples from three to nine. The first and probably most poignant, most provocative, is the relationship to the slave trade itself. What relation do they have to slavery?ĬRAIG STEVEN WILDER: I think there are multiple relationships. Professor Craig Steven Wilder joins us here in New York.ĬRAIG STEVEN WILDER: Thank you very much.ĪMY GOODMAN: So, talk about America’s most elite universities.

He writes, “the American campus stood as a silent monument to slavery.” Well, this history is silent no more.

In it, MIT history professor Craig Steven Wilder reveals how the slave economy and higher education grew up together. The book is called Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities. AMY GOODMAN: We turn to a new book 10 years in the making that looks at how some of the country’s major universities-Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Rutgers, Williams, the University of North Carolina, to name just a few-are drenched in sweat, and sometimes the blood, of Africans brought here as slaves.

Ebony and ivy book