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Dozens of American colleges and universities are investigating their historic ties to the slave trade and debating how to atone.

Profits from slavery and related industries helped fund some of the most prestigious schools in the Northeast, including Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and Yale. And in many southern states — including the University of Virginia — enslaved people built college campuses and served faculty and students.

Today a growing movement to confront this legacy is being spurred by student protests and campus leaders reacting to high-profile racial conflict that has recently beset the nation. The result has been historical investigations, university commissions, conferences, memorials, and, at Georgetown, a handful of the descendants of enslaved people arriving as first-year students at the institution that owned their ancestors.

Read the full story here.

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How slavery helped build many U.S. colleges and universities

by APM Reports, The Hechinger Report
September 5, 2017

<h1>How slavery helped build many U.S. colleges and universities</h1> <p class="byline">by APM Reports, The Hechinger Report <br />September 5, 2017</p> <p>Dozens of American colleges and universities are investigating their historic ties to the slave trade and debating how to atone.</p> <p>Profits from slavery and related industries helped fund some of the most prestigious schools in the Northeast, including Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and Yale. And in many southern states — including the University of Virginia — enslaved people built college campuses and served faculty and students.</p> <p>Today a growing movement to confront this legacy is being spurred by student protests and campus leaders reacting to high-profile racial conflict that has recently beset the nation. The result has been historical investigations, university commissions, conferences, memorials, and, at Georgetown, a handful of the descendants of enslaved people arriving as first-year students at the institution that owned their ancestors.</p> <figure></figure> <p><a href="https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/09/04/shackled-legacy">Read the full story here</a>.</p> <p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://hechingerreport.org/how-slavery-helped-build-many-u-s-colleges-and-universities/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://hechingerreport.org&quot;&gt;The Hechinger Report&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;</p> &lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://hechingerreport.org/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=35064&amp;amp;ga4=G-03KPHXDF3H&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://hechingerreport.org/how-slavery-helped-build-many-u-s-colleges-and-universities/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/hechingerreport.org/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;

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