Thread by @cgdhopkins

Harvard’s profits from Caribbean slavery go much further than this article acknowledges. Donors and alumni with plantations in Antigua, Jamaica, and Suriname gave gifts to Harvard, and Harvard invested its early endowment in slavery-dependent industries.

washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11…

This isn’t the first time Harvard has ignored Antigua’s call for reparations (a similar letter in 2016). Meanwhile, the Harvard president lives in a house (Elmwood) built by Antiguan sugar planter Thomas Oliver, who enslaved 11 people there and hundreds more in Antigua.

Next Thursday (Nov 14) I’m giving a lecture at the Longfellow House in Cambridge on the Vassall Family, the Jamaican sugar planters and Harvard alums/donors who built the house. One Vassall literally paid his Harvard tuition by giving the College a barrel of sugar.

I would also like to see reporters stop letting Harvard get away with the “we are doing more research” dodge. That is not true. I was the Harvard and Slavery Research Associate for two years. That fellowship is dead. @thecrimson @Meagan_Flynn thecrimson.com/article/2019/1…

Harvard is not doing the bare minimum that other universities do (collaborate with descendants, set up an accessible website, convene a committee rather than hiring a single postdoc to write a research report). They hand wave about research — ask a followup! What resources? When?

Spoiler for the real answer: they are fobbing off the research burden on undergrads and treating the faculty “committee” as strictly voluntary so that it is chronically under-resourced. Plaques are not reparations. Saying “we’re doing research” is not the same as committing $$$

Look, I’m proud of the work I did as the Harvard and Slavery researcher. It may never see the light of day because Harvard decided to commission it as proprietary research rather than forming an open academic committee like most other universities. There is so much more to do.

Research is great, but we know enough to act now. Harvard profited from slavery. Its early endowment was built on slavery-dependent industries like sugar, cotton, and the Caribbean provisioning trade. Major gifts came from sugar planters, slave traders, and cotton manufacturers.

At bare minimum, Harvard has an obligation to invest its current endowment in reparative ways. That includes divesting from prisons @HarvardPDC

Other reparative options:

- apologize

- invest in HBCUs

- invest in education in Antigua (and Jamaica, Suriname, Cuba)

Harvard should also be collaborating with people like @tamaralanier, who are the descendants of the enslaved people Harvard profited from financially and academically. Harvard has treated Ms. Lanier badly when they should have welcomed her as an essential stakeholder.

If you are looking for free, accessible, non-proprietary info about Harvard and Slavery, check out harvardandslavery.com, which is an independent website hosting student research from 2011 (directed by @katherinesmay and @Sven_Beckert).

Also:
Matthew Smith Miller's 2011 Hoopes-Prize-winning thesis on Steaurma Jantjes, a teenage South African who was exhibited in a human zoo in Boston (and by PTBarnum), whose body was dissected by Harvard Medical faculty after he died by suicide in 1861.
thinkingthreads.com/files/Matthew_…

Harvard's Colonial North America project has digitized many relevant documents. Here is a link to an account book kept by William Vassall (Harvard class of 1733), who owned and operated a sugar plantation called Green River in Jamaica.

@HoughtonLib
nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.HOU…

Aside: the Harvard libraries and archives staff have been unfailingly supportive, generous, and enthusiastic about this research and about preserving/digitizing/sharing documents related to Harvard's history.