Today, I'm at the Sheffield City Archives reading William Vassall's letterbooks (1769-1786).

In 1770, Vassall wrote from Boston to his agent in London to buy some new coach horses and ship them to New England. He had some pretty specific horses in mind: "three fine Geldings about 5 years old next spring of a fine dark Chestnut or full good black, it would be better if they had a star or blaze in their foreheads, full 15 hands high, extremely well broke & bitted and free from any Tricks, good natured but at the same time . . .

Asking the chat thing factual questions is pretty wild. It can't answer with facts, but it can sound convincingly fact-ish.

(According to his Wikipedia entry, Brigadier General Howard K. Ramey was born in 1896 and died in March 1943 when his plane was lost in the Pacific.) If you probe it, the AI will apologize for making a "mistake." But the issue is not that it makes mistakes. The issue is that it deliberately invents an alternate reality. Then it portrays that invention as fact.

I'm seeing press coverage today along the lines of "Harvard didn't own slaves, but its employees did."

The truth is more complicated.

In the 18th century, Harvard administrators and faculty were exempt from personal and property taxes. It's written into Harvard's charter. Thus, when the town of Cambridge made tax lists, Harvard presidents and professors did not appear, no matter what they owned. They didn't owe taxes! It was one of the perks of being affiliated with Harvard.

https://twitter.com/cgdhopkins/status/1101213468429037568?s=20&t=yAoHTjsejN270RerSNeprw

I am still making my way through the Harvard and the Legacies of Slavery Report, but I do want to say I am glad they included this bit from my report about Joshua Bowen Smith.

@Sven_Beckert @TiyaMilesTAM @HarvardArchives When I was the Harvard and Slavery Research Associate, I was under a lot of pressure to write about abolitionists at Harvard. Instead of writing about Charles Sumner (again), I wrote about Joshua Bowen Smith, who is not widely recognized at Harvard. I'm glad to see this included.

I taught a no-pay course at Harvard.

I was a postdoc writing a report for the President’s office on Harvard & Slavery, and was asked to teach an undergrad seminar on that topic. No extra money, and it wasn’t required. I did it to share the embargoed research w/ students. (Please don’t make a joke about the lack of pay and the topic - that’s not the point I’m making.)

I wrote about the gravestones of elderly people and babies who died in the Boston refugee crisis of 1775-6, and how their deaths were used to drive a narrative about innocent American civilians tyrannized by "Gage's bloody troops."

https://twitter.com/kylebroberts/status/1379802416326057986

Lydia Dyar, a 79-year-old shopkeeper from Boston, "left a good Estate & came into ye Country . . . to escape ye abuce of ye Ministerial Troops sent by GEORGE ye 3d to subject North America to Slavery."

Every time I see this photo, I remember when I taught second grade and we had mandatory lessons on creating classroom barricades. They told us to flip the table over (more friction) and then pile stuff on top of it. I rearranged my classroom to put a tall bookcase near the door. It was a good bookcase. It was like 7 feet tall and on wheels that could be locked. Very heavy. I liked it because I could roll it in front of the door during lockdown drills and then roll it back into place without freaking out the 7yos by destroying the room.

During the middle of the 18th century, every person in a position of authority at Harvard was a slaveowner. The president, the professors, the head tutor.

Working for Harvard meant that they didn't have to pay taxes on the people they enslaved. It was subsidized slaveownership.

https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/1347805249143246854

Harvard actively recruited enslavers in both the 18th and 19th centuries. It bent over backwards to accommodate the sons of Caribbean sugar planters and Southern plantation owners. It changed the rules for them, formally releasing them from the rules that governed other students.

One of the vexing questions about 17thc New England gravestones is when they were carved. I argued in my dissertation that there are very, very few stones dated before 1676 and quite a few of those appear to be backdated. (Compare style of Ann Erinton, Cambridge, dated 1653.) I think it's more likely that Ann Erinton's stone was carved in 1677-ish when Abraham Erinton died (also Cambridge, MA, Harvard Square Burying Ground).

I just received an email re: Harvard's plans to hire graduate students to continue the Harvard and Slavery research that I worked on for two years as the Harvard and Slavery Research Associate. Since Harvard thrives on obfuscation, let me speak clearly to anyone applying: 1) Your research will be a smokescreen for Harvard to say they are working on Harvard and Slavery, but you will not receive the resources and opportunities you need to be successful. Your cheap ($20/hr) labor will cover for Harvard's failure to invest in long-term sustainability.

Larry Bacow just sent out this "I believe" email about loving the American Dream or whatever that doesn't make any mention of the ways that Harvard has specifically profited from the enslavement and exploitation of Black people, nor what reparations he intends to pay. I was the Harvard and Slavery Research Associate for two years and have taught a seminar called "Harvard and Slavery" twice, so let's dispense with the "I Believe" and go to "I Know."

I know that Harvard was complicit in the enslavement of Black and Native people.

This conversation has me thinking about Prince Demah, the enslaved portrait painter from Boston whose enslaver, Henry Barnes, brought him to London in 1771 (before the Somerset decision). Barnes definitely worried about Black antislavery activism in London in 1771.

https://twitter.com/NicholasGuyatt/status/1220016724688482305

Prince Demah (1741-1778) was a talented artist (one of his portraits is currently on display at the Met). His mother, Daphney, was enslaved by Henry and Christian Barnes, a rich white couple from Marlborough, Massachusetts.

In honor of the #1620project and other 19th-century fables, allow me to tell you about the legend of Mother Goose and how it is actually about Antebellum Bostonians denying their complicity in slavery.

#vastearlyamerica In 1860, a column ran on the front page of the Boston Evening Transcript: “Many persons imagine that Mother Goose is a myth — that no such person ever existed. This is a mistake. Mother Goose was not only a veritable personage, but was born and resided many years in Boston.”

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.

I’ve been waiting for a day when the light would be right to take photos of the gravestones of enslaved people buried in the Old Burial Ground in Cambridge.

Jane, died 1741, age 22, enslaved by Harvard Steward Andrew Bordman Another stone nearby is for Cecily, who was 15 when she died in 1714 (enslaved by Harvard Treasurer William Brattle).

This stone is at a slightly different angle, so I’m going to wait a little while to see if the sun hits it better soon.

Today, I am learning about Joshua Bowen Smith (1813-1879).

Smith was a black abolitionist and member of Boston’s Vigilance Committee, protecting fugitives after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

photo from @MHS1791 Smith worked as a waiter and later opened his own catering business.

I came across his name in the Harvard records because he catered the Harvard Commencement dinners in the 1850s and 1860s. He also rented his catering space on Brattle St from Harvard

nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.ARCH…