Slavery shaped America’s old, elite colleges, says MIT historian Craig Steven Wilder in his book Ebony and Ivory. Wilder told NPR’s Robert Siegel, host of All Things Considered, this tidbit about Princeton: “John Witherspoon, the president of Princeton just before the Revolution, sent a missive to the West Indians promising that their sons were safer in New Jersey than they could ever be in England, where notorious and mean-spirited men preyed upon wealthy boys in the West Indies. But in New Jersey they would be protected and cared for, catered to and turned into responsible citizens.”

Here is the transcript, and here is the summary article, courtesy of Michele Tuck-Ponder. BF.