Upcoming Event

Craig Wilder

discusses

Ebony and Ivy:
Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities

Date

Oct
14
Monday
October 14, 2013
7:00 PM

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome MIT Professor of History CRAIG WILDER for a discussion of his latest book, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities.

A 2006 report commissioned by Brown University revealed that institution’s complex and contested involvement in slavery—setting off a controversy that leapt from the ivory tower to make headlines across the country. But Brown’s troubling past was far from unique. In Ebony and Ivy, Craig Steven Wilder, a rising star in the profession of history, lays bare uncomfortable truths about race, slavery, and the American academy.

Many of America’s revered colleges and universities—from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to Rutgers, Williams College, and UNC—were soaked in the sweat, the tears, and sometimes the blood of people of color. The earliest academies proclaimed their mission to Christianize the savages of North America, and played a key role in white conquest. Later, the slave economy and higher education grew up together, each nurturing the other. Slavery funded colleges, built campuses, and paid the wages of professors. Enslaved Americans waited on faculty and students; academic leaders aggressively courted the support of slave owners and slave traders. Significantly, as Wilder shows, our leading universities, dependent on human bondage, became breeding grounds for the racist ideas that sustained them.

Ebony and Ivy is a powerful and propulsive study and the first of its kind, revealing a history of oppression behind the institutions usually considered the cradle of liberal politics.

Craig Wilder
Craig Wilder

Craig Wilder

Craig Wilder’s most recent book is Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).  He is also the author of In the Company of Black Men: The African Influence on African American Culture in New York City (New York: New York University Press, 2001/2004); and A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000/2001). His recent articles include, “"Driven . . . from the School of the Prophets’: The Colonizationist Ascendance at General Theological Seminary,” which was the inaugural essay in the fully digital journal New York History

In 2004, Columbia University awarded him the University Medal of Excellence during its 250th Anniversary Commencement. 

He has advised and appeared in numerous historical documentaries, including the celebrated Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon film, “The Central Park Five”; Kelly Anderson’s highly praised exploration of gentrification, “My Brooklyn”; the History Channel’s “F.D.R.: A Presidency Revealed”; and Ric Burn’s award-winning PBS series, “New York: A Documentary History.” 

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