Harvard University was the first institution of higher learning in colonial America. Founded in 1636 as a training ground for aspiring ministers, it capitalized on this early start and became during the nineteenth century the nation’s most influential university, and by the middle of the twentieth century, arguably the world’s. Not surprisingly, then, Harvard’s four centuries’ long career is tightly connected to the history of New England, the United States and the Atlantic World on whose most dynamic eastern edge it was perched. Notwithstanding a deafening silence on the topic in most remembrances of this great university, Harvard’s history entails a whole range of connections to slavery.

This site is a result of investigations Harvard students made into this forgotten part of the University’s history.