Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781596916814)

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.

Author: Craig Steven Wilder
ISBN-10: 1596916818
ISBN-13: 9781596916814
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Language: English
Published: 09/17/2013
Pages: 432
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.68lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.50w x 1.39d
Award: Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award - Winner
Award: Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary_award - Winner

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 04/15/2013 pg. 58
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2013
Library Journal 08/01/2013 pg. 108
Booklist 08/01/2013 pg. 11
Kirkus Best Nonfiction 12/01/2013 pg. 40
Booklist Editors Choice/Adult 01/01/2014 pg. 9
Choice 05/01/2014
New Yorker (The) 11/02/2015 pg. 90
Library Journal 04/15/2013