Both of Judiths brothers, and her nephews from Natchez, attended Harvard. How did Winthrop and his sons, slave owners, fit into the culture of New England higher education? There exist 18th-c letters by plantation owners saying they sent their sons to northern schools to shield them from slavery until they were 21. (Melish, Disowning Slavery, [1998] xiii-xiv) But, slavery WAS a part of New England culture, with thousands of men, women and children in bondage, and an astounding 75% of all New England exports [were] tied in some way to the slave trade in 1770. (Chan, Slavery in the Age of Reason, [2007], 73) In a new book, Ebony and Ivy, MIT historian Craig Steven Wilder considers the role of slavery in our earliest universities, information that is often cataloged in ways that was hard to find,” and helps us to reconstruct this part of local history.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 12:28:51 +0000
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