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Harvard University has a longstanding history of academic excellence as the first institution of higher education in America. Harvard also has a less proud history of slaveholding within its administration. At least three past Harvard presidents are known to have owned enslaved people, and slaves were also forced to work on Harvard campus. Recently, Harvard has made efforts to uncover its slaveholding past. Listen to this story that describes Harvard’s initiatives to research the details of its past injustices, and commemorate the enslaved people Harvard once owned.
Story Length: 6:12
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August 19, 2015
5:14
Historically slaves in the United States are depicted as uneducated farm hands on plantations in the South. But that wasn’t true for all slaves. One famous slave named Yarrow Mamout was an educated Muslim who earned his freedom and even had his portrait painted by a famous American painter. He was a entrepreneur, money-lender and stock-owner, as well as having a reputation for being honest and moral. Archaeologists are trying to find out more about Yarrow Mamout by excavating a plot of land in Georgetown where he owned a home from 1796 until his death in 1823. Listen to this story to learn why this former slave is so well-known and respected.
Read MoreApril 30, 2015
8:57
New York City is planning to acknowledge its rarely discussed history in the slave trade with an official marker at the location that served as the city’s slave market from 1711 to 1762. From its founding as New Amsterdam, the city was shaped by slavery. Slaves physically built the infrastructure of lower Manhattan. In the city’s early days bankers and merchants grew rich from their connection to the trade of Southern sugar and cotton, which was based on slave labor. New York’s wealth was so connected to slavery the mayor of New York proposed the city side with the South and secede from the Union during the Civil War. Listen to learn more about the fascinating history of slavery in this modern day progressive city.
Read MoreJanuary 21, 2014
7:43
Kate Byroade knew her family once owned slaves. She feels uncomfortable acknowledging that her ancestors dominated other people, but she knows that the story is important. As Kate has learned more about her family’s past, it has become increasingly personal for her and hard to reconcile. For instance, she felt troubled when she learned that an ancestor once owned an 8-year-old child. Listen to this story to hear more about how Kate thinks about her family’s slave-owning past.
Read MoreDecember 4, 2013
4:26
Slavery is a horror of history. The capture and transportation of human beings from Africa to North America through the Middle Passage is an experience that is hard to imagine. First-person slave narratives were the first honest account of the experience and were used by the abolitionist movements in Britain and the United States to show the reality of slavery. Listen to learn more about the first-person account of freed slave Olaudah Equiano, shared in his autobiography in 1789.
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