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

“We’re institutions that are founded to produce knowledge and pursue truth and we can’t be cowardly when those truths are uncomfortable for us.”  – Craig Steven Wilder, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology history professor specializing in American institutions speaking about the admissions, recently, of Ivy League schools addressing their involvement in slavery.

I give these schools credit for re-visiting the history they’ve ignored for the past few hundreds of years.  A history that has shaped these learning institutions and helped propel them into the world-known universities that have flourished since their inception.  

This book chronicles their relationship with slavery and its impact on these schools.  Particularly Harvard, Yale, Rutgers, Princeton, Williams College and UNC and how they used bondage to their advantage through its unpaid labor and monies received from slave holders.  Dependent on this ungodly institution, they, ironically,  became breeding grounds justifying racist ideas.

The silver lining with admitting their involvement, many have publicly apologized and some, such as Georgetown, have offered assistance to its admittance to any person of color, descendant of slavery.

A good step in the right direction.