Johns Hopkins, who founded one of America’s most prestigious universities and was long thought an abolitionist, owned slaves, researchers have reportedly determined.
Historians at the Maryland university that bears his name have determined that Hopkins owned at least five slaves, outlets including the Baltimore Sun reported Wednesday, citing an email circulated by school officials.
Researchers led by Johns Hopkins University professor Martha S. Jones, a specialist in African American history, made the discovery through a months-long review of census records dating to the 1840s and 1850s, as well as other data, the report said.
The 1840 census tally revealed that Hopkins headed a household with one enslaved man, with the figure growing by 1850 to four men between the ages of 18 and 50, reports said.
Hopkins — a businessman whose name lived on after his 1873 death through a university and a nationally renowned hospital bankrolled by his vast fortune — was long thought a staunch abolitionist.
The university’s international coronavirus tracking map has been regarded as a definitive resource throughout the pandemic.
Jones told the paper that she was stunned by her findings.
“It was jarring,” she told the Sun. “When you work at [Johns Hopkins] and learn the history of the university, and then find something so antithetical to what you’ve learned, it’s a bit shocking.”
Three university leaders — president Ronald J. Daniels, dean of medical faculty Paul B. Rothman and Kevin W. Sowers, president of the Johns Hopkins Health System — issued a joint statement Wednesday echoing the sentiment, according to the Washington Post.
“The fact that Mr. Hopkins had, at any time in his life, a direct connection to slavery — a crime against humanity that tragically persisted in the state of Maryland until 1864 — is a difficult revelation for us, as we know it will be for our community, at home and abroad, and most especially our Black faculty, students, staff, and alumni,” the statement read.
“It calls to mind not only the darkest chapters in the history of our country and our city but also the complex history of our institutions since then, and the legacies of racism and inequity we are working together to confront.”
Hopkins becomes the latest prominent name from America’s past to face new scrutiny over ties to slavery or otherwise problematic records.
