At Johns Hopkins, Revelations About Its Founder and Slavery
Last edited Thu Dec 10, 2020, 10:29 AM - Edit history (1)
From the New York Times, and, beyond that, Johns Hopkins University itself.
At Johns Hopkins, Revelations About Its Founder and Slavery
Jennifer Schuessler
Wed, December 9, 2020, 2:59 PM EST
Its a tale that has long been repeated at the university and medical center in Baltimore that bear his name: In 1807, 12-year-old Johns Hopkins was summoned home from boarding school to work the fields of the familys sprawling tobacco farm in Maryland after his father, following the directives of his Quaker faith, freed the familys slaves.
Young Johns grew up to be a wildly successful businessman and, as the story goes, a committed abolitionist. And on his death in 1873, he left $7 million the largest philanthropic bequest in American history at that time to found the nations first research university, along with a hospital that would serve the citys poor without regard to sex, age or color. ... Hopkins Quaker rectitude has been a touchstone for the institution he founded. But an important part of that origin story, it turns out, is untrue.
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On Wednesday, Johns Hopkins University released new research revealing that there were enslaved people in its founding benefactors household as late as 1850. And while the Hopkins familys entanglements with slavery are complicated, the university has so far found no evidence of Johns Hopkins father freeing any enslaved people.
As for the long-standing claims that Hopkins himself held abolitionist beliefs, it is unclear whether they rest on any evidence at all.
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Johns Hopkins Namesake And Founder Was Slaveowner, Contrasting Longstanding Abolitionist Narrative
192 viewsDec 9, 2020
WJZ
Johns Hopkins University and Medicine announced Wednesday that it learned its founder was a slaveowner, which was in contrast with a longstanding narrative that Mr. Johns Hopkins was an early abolitionist.