Pictured: William Greenleaf Eliot, the co-founder (with Wayman Crow), initial president, and third chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis.
Revisiting the First Fifty Years
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.