Ebony And Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities, Craig Steven Wilder

After Words with Craig Steven Wilder

C-SPAN | BookTV

Craig Steven Wilder talked about his book, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities, in which he explores the history of some of the country’s elite universities and discovers that many have a past intertwined with slavery. Several notable campuses were not only built by slave labor but funded by profits earned from the practice of slavery. The historian discussed his findings with radio host and political activist Joe Madison.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/CraigSt

Pennsylvania Gazette

“Ebony and Ivy,” by Mr. Wilder, cites this ad for the sale of slaves by a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania

Dirty Antebellum Secrets in Ivory Towers

‘Ebony and Ivy,’ About How Slavery Helped Universities Grow

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER

Published: October 18, 201

When Craig Steven Wilder first began digging around in university archives in 2002 for material linking universities to slavery, he recalled recently, he was “a little bashful” about what he was looking for.

Charlie Mahoney for The New York Times  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/19/books/ebony-and-ivy-about-how-slavery-helped-universities-grow.html?hp&_r=0

Craig Steven Wilder, an M.I.T. history professor, spent a decade researching “Ebony and Ivy.”

“Ebony and Ivy,” by Mr. Wilder, cites this ad for the sale of slaves by a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania.

“I would say, ‘I’m interested in 18th-century education,’ or something general like that,” Mr. Wilder said.

But as he told the archivists more, they would bring out ledgers, letters and other documents. 

“They’d push them across the table and say, ‘You might want to take a peek at this,’ ” he said. “It was often really great material that was cataloged in ways that was hard to find.” 

Now, more than a decade later, Mr. Wilder, a history professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has a new book, “Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities,” which argues provocatively that the nation’s early colleges, alongside church and state, were “the third pillar of a civilization based on bondage.”