Harvard launched its $100 million Legacy of Slavery Initiative in 2022. Now, the same experts hired to investigate the university's ties to slavery have been fired.
All research roads led back to one place: Antigua. In the university's 2022 report, researchers outlined Harvard’s historical ties to various Caribbean islands. But in Antigua, the ties run deep. Harvard founder John Winthrop organized West Indies-bound ships from Boston. They left with grain and fish and returned with indigo, tobacco, cotton, sugar, and the first African people enslaved and sold in New England. Boston's role in the transatlantic trade was cemented. By the late 17th century, nearly half of the trading ships in the Caribbean were from New England.
An initial report accounted for fewer than 100 enslaved people. In 2025, researchers identified over 900 enslaved people and 500 living descendants. Winthrop's son, Samuel, enslaved 64 people who produced tens of thousands of pounds of sugar on his thousands of Antiguan acres. He made Harvard's first property donation with blood money. Today, the university's Widener Library sits on that land.
Dozens of university staff grew wealthy from enslaved labor—this truth got researchers fired because they were too close to revealing the whole story. Institutions like Harvard are invested in one thing.
Controlling the historical narrative. They're not invested in remembering. They want to control what gets remembered and what gets forgotten. Building a liberated Black future requires us to remember how wealth and power were built in this country and understand how that impacts our lives today. We can’t afford to forget.