Columbia’s ties to slavery revealed in new project
Students used to keep slaves at the college
Today, the Columbia University History department published a site called Columbia University & Slavery, highlighting our school’s ties to slavery in America.
It’s based on the work done over the course of two semesters in an undergraduate seminar offered by the History department, and is taught by Columbia’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Professor Eric Foner.
The project explains:
“The Columbia University and Slavery project explores a previously little-known aspect of the university’s history – its connections with slavery and with antislavery movements from the founding of King’s College to the end of the Civil War.
Pulitzer Prize-winning History Professor Eric Foner led a research course in the spring of 2015 on the role of slavery in Columbia’s early history. At the end of that spring semester, Foner’s class of undergraduates presented their novel findings to both their professor and President Lee C. Bollinger. From those discussions, the Columbia University & Slavery project was initiated to draw on further research to be conducted by faculty and students. Student work was continued in the spring 2016 course under Thai Jones, Department of History Lecturer, with the resulting student and faculty research added to this website.”
The website itself features a preliminary report, written by Foner himself, which provides in-depth historical background about Columbia University’s ties to slavery, a section about historic figures who had ties to both Columbia University and slavery, and lastly a section that features all the student research papers and exhibits that were submitted over the course of two semesters.
It details the story of a slave named Joe, who was purchased aged 15 by John Parke Custis, George Washington’s stepson. According to research, Joe was taken by Custis to study at Columbia in 1773 – then known as King’s College – as his servant. Other slaves were kept at the college during this period, although Joe is the only slave whose name to come out of the research.
Regarding the project’s goal, Foner explains: “We hope that this website, very much a work in progress, will contribute to public understanding of the key role slavery has played in our nation’s history and offer an example to other institutions of higher learning as they pursue their own investigations.”
Junius B. Stearns, “George Washington as a Farmer,” 1851
Columbia is one of a few of our nation’s oldest colleges and universities which has decided to confront its historical ties to slavery.
Last year Georgetown was prominently in the news surrounding revelations that the proceeds from the sale of 272 slaves that were owned by the Maryland Jesuits in 1838 were used to help the university maintain its solvency.
Georgetown has formally acknowledged these ties to slavery and offered the descendants of the men, women, and children who were sold preferential admission to the university.
Other universities who have formally acknowledged and researched their own ties to slavery are Brown, Harvard, Yale, and UVA.