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Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) was founded in 1853 and developed over its first half-century in downtown St. Louis before relocating to a new "Hilltop campus" west of the city in 1905. Several of the institution's founding leaders derived their wealth and power in part through the dispossession of Native Americans and exploitation of enslaved African Americans, and were otherwise invested in the perpetuation of white dominance, through slavery and other means.

The university emerged amid numerous "freedom suits" and the infamous U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). That case began in the St. Louis courthouse in 1846, within a mile of WashU's original downtown campus, and the university would be significantly shaped by the U.S. Supreme Courts' ruling that African Americans were not citizens recognized or protected by the U.S. Constitution.

There has been little consideration of WashU's entanglements with histories and legacies of slavery, including struggles for freedom, aside from exaggeration of the anti-slavery position of co-founder William Greenleaf Eliot. This is beginning to change. In Spring 2021 WashU joined Universities Studying Slavery (USS), the global consortium of colleges, universities, libraries, and other academic institutions examining and addressing relationships between our institutions and the history and legacy of slavery. We have learned that many of founding benefactors, early officials and faculty had ties to the institution of slavery, and fought to promote white supremacy.

The first half century of WashU's history ended with relocation to the "Hilltop campus," providing open space, distinction, and resources that fueled its growth into a prestigious academic institution. This came in part through further investments in racial capitalism. Whereas WashU admitted some African American students in its first few decades that stopped in the 1890s and did not resume until the mid-20th century, with this exclusion becoming part of its pursuit of distinction. Further, the financially distressed institution was buoyed by leasing parts of the new campus - including Brookings Hall and Francis Field - to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The new campus would stage some of the 1904 Fair's infamously racist spectacles, including "Anthropology Days" and the 1904 Olympics, and financial returns on this lease enabled further development of what is now the Danforth Campus.