Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities by Craig Steven Wilder (review)

Craig Steven Wilder’s Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities is not an easy read. Moreover, this volume does not exaggerate the role of race and racism in the creation, expansion, and legitimization of the academy. At the same time, an approach that was less direct about the history of higher education would gloss over the complexity surrounding the establishment of colleges and universities during the colonial and antebellum eras of the United States. Furthermore, such an approach would not indicate one of Wilder’s main points of the volume: how important colleges were to expanding not only educational opportunities and knowledge but also in perpetuating genocide, slavery, and the myth of White racial superiority.

Wilder enhances the work of historians of higher education while expanding on how elite higher education developed, influenced the production of knowledge, and framed inequality. As he asserts, “Human slavery was the precondition for the rise of higher education in the Americas” (Chapter 4, p. 114). Race, racism, and slavery were integral aspects of higher education that continue to influence colleges and universities—not just in the framing of their own histories and experiences, but also in how knowledge is produced, received, and deployed.

Written in two sections with four chapters each, Wilder presents how colleges began in the Americas with a focus on the British American colonies that became the United States. He also describes how the foundations of higher education relied on the institution of slavery and beliefs in racial superiority among Whites in the United States and Europe and details the evolution of racial ideology among those in higher education that led to the rise of scientific racism prior to the Civil War.

Part 1, “Slavery and the Rise of the American College,” discusses the establishment of colleges in the western hemisphere in an emerging global slave economy and the missions of these early institutions in relation to the growing colonies, and interactions and perspectives with enslaved and indigenous populations.

Chapter 1, “The Edges of Empire,” examines the establishment of colleges as cultural entities of the new colonies strategically positioned in the expansion of colonial power. These institutions were used as military bases during early wars as well as seizing land from indigenous populations while establishing “Indian colleges” for “civilizing” missions.

Chapter 2, “‘Bonfires of the Negros,’” shows how the merchant elite became founders and trustees of colleges in the Northeast by taking ownership of education and funneling their growing wealth into expanding the educational opportunities for their sons. Chapter 3, “‘The Very Name of a West-Indian,’” details the development of academia’s links with the slave economy. During this time, colleges built rapport with wealthy colonial families in the North and South that were merchants of the slave trade and plantation owners.

Chapter 4, “Ebony and Ivy,” examines the years leading up to the American Revolution when the wealth of the colonial elite transformed colleges into important educational resources and status symbols, while centering the discussions of these institutions in the positions of the White colonial elite.

Part 2, “Race and the Rise of the American College,” examines the influence of early colleges and universities on the production of knowledge in fields such as anatomy, anthropology, law and policy, medicine, and philosophy, among others. Importantly, this section discusses the justification and legitimization of enslaving African-descended peoples, and “civilizing” indigenous peoples as a worthwhile missionary cause that the colleges later abandoned. These positions and efforts occurred while American higher education and the role of intellectuals in the public sphere expanded. Higher education solidified its position as an important aspect of American society.

Chapter 5, “Whitening the Promised Land,” details the abandonment of the mission to “civilize” indigenous peoples, and instead, used colleges to propagate religious and national divisions among European colonists in the pursuit of manifest destiny and divine providence—that is, the...