Podcast appearances and mentions of Craig Steven Wilder

A Juneteenth special with Clint Smith, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Craig Steven Wilder.

A Juneteenth special with Clint Smith, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Craig Steven Wilder.

On a Sunday afternoon drive, Alexander and his son drove past each of the churches in the city. When they passed a theatre, his son Lewis asked “Whose church is that, father?”and  Alexander told him, “That is the devil's church, my son".   Lewis left for California in 1849 from Philadelphia, his wife Elizabeth LeBreton Stickney and four children joined him two years later, in Sonora, California. If you live in, or have been to Sonora, chances are you are familiar with the Gunn House Hotel, built 1850 by Dr. Lewis C. Gunn, who published the Sonora Herald and other abolition papers inside the now present Hotel. The Princeton Theological Seminary was established in 1812, it was the first Seminary founded by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. If you  do not  know, a seminary is an educational institute that also teaches scripture and theology.  Seminary can prepare someone to be a clergy member. This  was not the same school as Princeton University.  The College of New Jersey, later to become Princeton University, was supportive of this plan. Although the Princeton Theological Seminary did have the support of the school, and recognized that the specialized work required more attention than they could give. In 1835, Lewis was a student at the Princeton Theological Seminary, where the discussion of abolition was prohibited.  The 18 year old man learned that the American Anti-Slavery Society agent and abolitionist speaker, Amos Phelps had plans to visit the campus, against the will of the faculty and the local Presbyterian church.  Amos Phelps had graduated from Yale's Divinity School after graduating from Yale University. Training for the Christian ministry was a main purpose in the founding of Yale College in 1701.  Lewis wrote a letter to the Anti-Slavery agent Amos Phelps that March. He must have known the tremendous risk.  In this letter, Lewis told Amos Phelps that he should rent the second floor of a house for a private meeting. Lewis strongly advised against the use of a public gathering place. Lewis also directed Phelps to bring tickets, so that they could control who came in. The tickets would only be available to a small group of sympathetic students. Lastly, Lewis instruced Phelps to arrive without notice.  In the letter that Lewis wrote to Phelps, Lewis is quoted saying,  “The difficulty in holding a truly public meeting is that there are many very wild students in the college from the South, who would like no better frolic than to mob an antislavery man. For the sake of the cause of abolition here, as well as my peace while I remain in this place, I do not whisper it even though I have had a hand in bringing it about.”  September, 1835, the word on the street was that an abolitionist was in the area. The unsympathetic students were on high alert.   A group of students, all white were out and about on the fourth of September. The men decided to take a short cut through Princeton's black neighborhood. So the white men were all walking down Witherspoon Street in the black part of town, when someone in the group noticed that there was a white man inside one of the homes. The home of   Anthony Simmons, a professional caterer and a prominent member of Princeton's black community.  The assumption was made that this was the talk about the abolitionist, who was there to hold a meeting. The news of the rebellion spread fast. Soon, at least sixty undergraduates gathered on Witherspoon Street. The group made up almost a third of the entire student population of the Seminary. The men then mobbed down Witherspoon Street to the home of Anthony Simmons.  When they get to his house, Simmons attempted to block his door.  The crowd is demanding to know if Simmon's was hiding a white man inside.  At first, Simmons was frightened to death and answered no. The men aggressively continued the questioning until Anthony Simmons broke.  Leading the crowd was the freshman Thomas Ancrum, and the sophomore Hilliard Judge.  The two men barged into the home and grabbed  the hiding white man by the throat and drug him out onto Witherspoon Street.  While Ancrum and Judge rough the guy up, some of the students ransacked the man's belongings and quickly discovered that the man was an agent and author for many abolitionist publications. Papers like the Emancipator, the Liberator, and the Philanthropist. His books and notes were burned. The seething Seminary students were shouting suggestions for punishment. More local residents started to join in with the mob. “‘Lynch him', ‘kick him out of town', ‘kick him to death', ‘hang him', tar and feather him”.  The crowd voted to lynch the abolitionist. The man begged for his life, and the mob “told the man that they would let him go upon condition that he renounce abolition and swore by all that is holy he would have nothing more to do with it.”   On hearing that he had a family Judge who had been one of his most violent persecutors became his warmest advocate and said that no one should hurt the man unless he did it through him. They told the old fellow that they would let him go upon condition that he renounced abolition and swore by all that is holy he would have nothing more to do with it. He took the required oath and promised he would leave town directly, but they, to be more certain of his going and to have a little more fun with him, said they would accompany to the end of town. The parade was a warning to the rest of the students. Deterring them from pursuing talk of abolition.  They took him beyond the last house of the village, on the road leading to Phil, and letting him go told him to heel it for his life. Those who were there say they never saw a man run so fast before he soon got into a woods close by and they lost him. That you may not be astonished at his running so fast, I will just mention again the different kinds of punishment they threatened to inflict upon him if they caught him again; "tar and feather him,” "tar and feather him and set him on fire,” “put him in a hollow log stop up both end and heave him in the canal," “Lynch him," (which you know signifies thirty nine with the cowhide, tard and feathered, put in a canoe in the middle of the river without oars or paddle, and sent adrift) "hang him. The press announced the victim's name was Silas Tripp. This was the name found on the unpublished abolition papers he was writing, which were found and burned.  No such name is listed in any of the leading abolitionist publications of the era. Silas Tripp is believed to be the author's pseudonym.  Tripp told his attackers that he was married and lived in Philadelphia, and that it was for their support that he had undertaken this agency..  On the day following the attack, however, unspecified sources informed the students that he was single and from New York. Who really was the victim?  Two options. Was it the agent Amos Phelps, who would assume the editorship of the New York City-based Emancipator the following year? At the time of the attack, Phelps was married and had a child.   Or was it Lewis, the organizer of the secret meeting in Princeton, who was born in New York and graduated from Columbia? The newspapers in the south applauded the mob. The Princeton Administration did nothing. The discussion of abolition at the school was prohibited.   The faculty was committed to the act of colonization. The school was in deep opposition to abolition. That was well known.  The administration's silence gave insinuated approval of the mob's actions. Often, silence leads to violence.    The ringleader Thomas Ancrum left Princeton to run his family's plantation in South Carolina, where he came to own over 200 slaves.  He later assaulted Princeton Seminary alumnus and black abolitionist Theodore Wright at a Princeton graduation ceremony. Again, he faced no repercussions.    Whether Phelps made the journey to Princeton in 1835 is unclear. If Lewis' plan was successful, their meeting occurred in secret, with only a select few in town or on campus aware of it. If the meeting did occur, it may have contributed to the birth of a new anti-slavery society in Princeton.   Mob violence of this sort was not unusual in antebellum America. Historian David Grimsted counts thirty-five anti-abolition riots in the summer of 1835 alone. Violence occasionally erupted on college campuses encouraged by hostile or indifferent administrators and faculty members.  Abolitionist newspapers attracted special attention, and their presses were attacked and destroyed at least thirteen times during this period.    Lewis withdrew from Princeton and worked as a teacher until he moved to Philadelphia, where he started a printing company. Perhaps inspired by events at Princeton, Lewis abandoned secrecy altogether and specialized in abolitionist literature.    There he met Elizabeth Le Breton Stickney, who was also devoted to the antislavery cause and also spent much time visiting among the poor and black people of Philadelphia, trying to teach them to read and to become thrifty. They would marry two years later, and continue to live in Philadelphia.    Lewis also helped to organize a boycott of slave-produced goods. Responding to criticism that the boycott was impractical, he argued that it would keep the issue of slavery at the forefront of the public consciousness. “Free discussion,” he wrote, “is the vital air of abolitionism.”    In November 1837, Lewis' seminary classmate, Elijah Lovejoy, was shot to death while defending his printing press from an anti-abolition mob in Illinois.  Several months later, Lewis spoke on the right of free discussion, standing in front of a large crowd at the newly built Pennsylvania Hall, his voice booming. “There are two and a half millions of slaves who are never allowed to speak on their own behalf, or tell the world freely the story of their wrongs. There are also half a million of so-called free people of color, who are permitted to speak with but little more liberty than the slaves. Nor is this all. Even those who stand up in behalf of the down-trodden colored man, however white their skins may be, are slandered, persecuted, mobbed, hunted from city to city, imprisoned, and put to death! Without freedom of speech, we ourselves are slaves.”      Two days  later, that newly built Pennsylvania Hall was burned to the ground by an anti-abolition mob then pushed by local officials and politicians, leaving black families throughout the city under attack.     In 1838, Lewis wrote his address to Abolitionists and it was published by Merrihew & Gunn Printers in Philadelphia.      We are not about to tell you of the existence of slavery in our "land of the free," or to inform you that nearly three million of your countrymen are the victims of systematic and legalized robbery and oppression. This you know full well, and the knowledge has awakened your strong sympathy with the sufferers, and your soul-deep abhorrence of the system which crushes them. We mean not to prove that this system is condemned by every principle of justice, every precept of the Divine law, and every attribute of the Divine character, — or that no man can innocently sustain to his fellow man the relation it has established. You already believe this proposition, and build upon it as a fundamental doctrine, the whole superstructure of your anti-slavery creed and plan of operations. It is not our purpose to convince you that the slave, as your brother man, has a right to your compassion and assistance. You acknowledge his claim, and profess to be his fast and faithful friend. But we would propose to you a question of weight and serious import. Having settled your principles, do you practically carry them out in your daily life and conduct? To one point we would direct your attention. Do you faithfully abstain from using the products of the slave's extorted and unpaid labor? If not, having read thus far, do not immediately throw aside this address with an exclamation of contempt or indifference, but read it through with candor. Before entering upon a discussion of the question, whether our use of the products of slave-labor does not involve us in the guilt of slaveholding, we ask your attention to the two following propositions.     The love of money is the root of the evil of slavery — and the products of slave-labor are stolen goods.   The love of money is the root of the evil of slavery. We say that the whole system, with all its incidents, is to be traced to a mean and heartless avarice. Not that we suppose every individual slaveholder is actuated by a thirst for gold; but that slaveholders so generally hold slaves in order to make money by their labor, that, if this motive were withdrawn, the system would be abolished. If nothing were gained, it would not be long before the commercial staples would cease to be produced by slave-labor, and this would break the back-bone of the system. A comparison of the history of the cotton trade with that of slavery would show that every improvement in the cultivation and manufacture of cotton has infused new vigor into the system of slavery; that the inventions of Cartwright, Whitney and others, have diminished the proportional number of emancipations in the United States, enhanced the value of slaves, and given a degree of stability to the robbery system which it did not before possess. Indeed, every fluctuation in the price of cotton is accompanied by a corresponding change in the value of slaves.  It is the love of money, then, that leads to the buying and working of slaves. And all the laws forbidding education, sanctioning cruelty, binding the conscience, in a word, all the details of the system, flow from the buying of men and holding them as property, to which the love of money leads. Are we not, so far, correct?    Articles produced by slave-labor are stolen goods. Because every man has an inalienable right to the fruits of his own toil. It is unnecessary to prove this to abolitionists. Even slaveholders admit it. John C. Calhoun says: " He who earns the money — who digs it out of the earth with the sweat of his brow, has a just title to it against the universe. No one has a right to touch it without his consent, except his government, and it only to the extent of its legitimate wants; to take more, is robbery." This is what slaveholders do. By their own confession, then, they are robbers. In the language of Charles Stuart, "their bodies are stolen, their liberty, their right to their wives and children, their right to cultivate their minds, and to worship God as they please, their reputation, hope, all virtuous motives are taken away by a legalized system of most merciless and consummate iniquity. Such is the expense at which articles produced by slave-labor are obtained. They are always heavy with the groans, and often wet with the blood of the guiltless and suffering poor." But, say some, "we admit that the slaves are stolen property; and yet the cotton raised by their labor is not, strictly speaking, stolen, any more than the corn raised by means of a stolen horse." In reply, we say that it is stolen. In every particle of the fruit of a man's labor he holds  property until paid for that labor, the slave is under no such contract. He, therefore, who sells the produce of his toil before paying him, sells stolen property. If the case of the corn raised by means of a stolen horse is parallel, it only proves the duty of abstaining from that also. If it be not parallel, it proves nothing. If, then, the products of slave-labor are stolen goods, and not the slaveholder's property, he has no right to sell them. We are now prepared to examine the relation between the consumer of slave produce and the slaveholder, and to prove that it is guilty, all guilty.    Lewis and Elizabeth LeBreton Stickney made their home in Philadelphia after their marriage in 1839. Lewis left for California in 1849 from Philadelphia, his wife Elizabeth LeBreton Stickney and four children joined him two years later, in Sonora, California.  If you live in, or have been to Sonora, chances are you are familiar with the Gunn House Hotel, Built 1850, by Dr. Lewis C. Gunn, who published the Sonora Herald and other abolition papers inside the now present Hotel.    Enos Lewis Christman in July, 1850, printed the first number of the Sonora Herald, at Stockton, and carried it to Sonora on horseback, where it was circulated at 50 cents per copy. A printing office was soon established in a tent in Sonora, the first newspaper in southern mines and a little later he entered into partnership with Dr. Lewis C. Gunn, formerly of Philadelphia, running from 1850-1852, As well as the County Recorder's Office, where The Gunn House stands today.    The home of Dr. Gunn's family until 1861, the building is one of only a few original adobe structures in Sonora and the First Two-Story House in Sonora. According to the old tghhospital.com, the first Tuolumne General Hospital was built in 1861 on the northwest corner of Stewart and Lyon Streets in the notorious Tigre district of Chinatown. Right where Sonora has it's farmers market.   In 1873, the Lewis C. Gunn residence, now known as the Gunn House, was purchased, remodeled, and enlarged as Tuolumne General Hospital that remained until 1897.  Water was added to the facility in the mid 1870's.  Then made into a hotel called the Italia Hotel.  In 1960, the hotel was remodeled and renamed the Gunn House, which many say is haunted.  https://www.ptsem.edu/about/history [1]Lewis C. Gunn to Amos A. Phelps, 16 March 1835, MS A.21 v.5, p.20, Amos A. Phelps Correspondence, Rare Books and Manuscripts Department, Boston Public Library (Boston, MA); James H. Moorhead, “Slavery, Race, and Gender at Princeton Seminary: The Pre-Civil War Era,” Theology Today 69 (October 2012): 274-288. ⤴ [2]Amos A. Phelps, Lectures on Slavery and its Remedy (Boston: New-England Anti-Slavery Society, 1834); Edward A. Phelps, “Rev. Amos A. Phelps – Life and Extracts from Diary,” MS 1037, Amos A. Phelps Correspondence, Rare Books and Manuscripts Department, Boston Public Library (Boston, MA). ⤴ [3]William H. Hilliard, David Jones, and Paul Blount to William Lloyd Garrison, 30 July 1835, in the Liberator, 8 August 1835; John Frelinghuysen Hageman, History of Princeton and Its Institutions, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1879), 217-227. ⤴ [4]My reconstruction of this event is based on three manuscript letters: Thomas M. Clark to John M. Clapp, 8 September 1835, Spared & Shared 4, accessed 1 September 2017, http://sparedshared4.wordpress.com/letters/1834-thomas-march-clark-to-john-milton-clapp/; Gilbert R. McCoy to Gilbert R. Fox, [10] September 1835, in the Princeton University Library Chronicle 25 (Spring 1964): 231-235; John W. Woods to Marianne Woods, 14 September 1835, folder 10, box 7, John Witherspoon Woods Letters, Student Correspondence and Writings Collection (AC334), Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library (Princeton, NJ). ⤴ [5]McCoy to Fox, [10] September 1835, Princeton University Library Collection; The Anti-Slavery Record, vol. 1 (New York: R. G. Williams, 1835), 84; “List of Letters,” Liberator, 12 July 1834; “Letter from Mr. Johnson,” Colored American, 30 January 1841; Rina Azumi, “John Anthony Simmons,” Princeton & Slavery Project, accessed 1 July 2017, slavery.princeton.edu/john-anthony-simmons. ⤴ [6]McCoy to Fox, [10] September 1835, Princeton University Library Collection; Princeton Whig, 8 September 1835. ⤴ [7]McCoy to Fox, [10] September 1835, Princeton University Library Collection; Woods to Woods, 14 September 1835, Student Correspondence and Writings Collection. ⤴ [8]David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4, 35; “The Reign of Prejudice,” Abolitionist 1 (November 1833): 175; Craig Steven Wilder, Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013), 271-272. ⤴ [9]Princeton Whig, 8 September 1835; Trenton Emporium & True American, 12 September, 1835; Charleston Courier, 17 September 1835. ⤴ [10]“Subscription $1000,” folder 5, box 23, Office of the President Records (AC #117), Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library (Princeton, NJ). ⤴ [11]William Edward Schenck, Biography of the Class of 1838 of the College of New Jersey, at Princeton, N.J. (Philadelphia: Jas. B. Rodgers Printing Co., 1889), 163; Faculty Meetings and Minutes, 29 March, 27 June 1836, vol. 4, Office of Dean of the Faculty Records (AC118), Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library (Princeton, NJ); “Shameful Outrage at Princeton, N.J.,” Emancipator, 27 October 1836; 1850 Federal Census (Slave Schedule), FamilySearch, accessed 30 June 2017, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MVZB-P3B; C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut's Civil War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 70. ⤴ [12]Faculty Meetings and Minutes, 21 July, 10 August 1835, vol. 3, Office of Dean of the Faculty Records (AC118), Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library (Princeton, NJ); Faculty Meetings and Minutes, 4 April 1837, vol. 4, ibid.; Hilliard M. Judge to John C. Calhoun, 29 April 1849, in The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. 26, ed. Clyde N. Wilson and Shirley Bright Cook (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 385; 1850 Federal Census (Slave Schedule), FamilySearch, accessed 30 June 2017, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MV8H-CNG. ⤴ [13]Anna Lee Marston, ed., Records of a California Family: Journals and Letters of Lewis C. Gunn and Elizabeth Le Breton Gunn (San Diego: n.p., 1928), 4-5; Lewis C. Gunn, Address to Abolitionists (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838), 12. ⤴ [14]History of Pennsylvania Hall, which was Destroyed by a Mob, on the 17th of May, 1838 (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838), 62-64. ⤴ https://www.accessible-archives.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/gunn-address-to-abolitionists-1838.pdf   https://www.accessible-archives.com/2013/11/lewis-c-gunn-address-to-abolitionists-1838/   https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/letter-from-lewis-c-gunn https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/princeton-new-jersey-young-mens-anti-slavery-society   https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/letter-from-gilbert-r-mccoy   https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/letter-from-john-witherspoon-woods   https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/report-on-anti-abolition-mob   https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/hilliard-m-judge-dismissed   https://www.jstor.org/stable/3637548?seq=1   https://www.loc.gov/item/2011661680/   https://www.loc.gov/item/24022330/   https://www.hauntedplaces.org/item/gunn-house-hotel/?fbclid=IwAR20LwM48d3TigPthdelTYTE9ezK_n618cUoNwo8eCsSkk4DUIAxeELZ0hI     https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/attempted-lynching     https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:6w925v431     https://www.worldcat.org/title/address-to-abolitionists/oclc/505799665?referer=di&ht=edition   https://www.worldcat.org/title/age-to-come-the-present-organization-of-matter-called-earth-to-be-destroyed-by-fire-at-the-end-of-this-age-or-dispensation-also-before-the-event-christians-may-know-about-the-time-when-it-shall-occur/oclc/15192749   https://www.worldcat.org/title/time-revealed-and-to-be-understood/oclc/821694   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Gunn  

Reflections on a twitter hashtag and the book Ebony and Ivory: Race, Slavery and the Troubled History of America's Universities by Craig Steven Wilder

Fordham Conversations host Robin Shannon talks with Dr. Craig Steven Wilder about his book "Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities." The book explores the connection between Ivy League schools and the slave trade.

And what exactly do ya'll mean by "woke" when you say it in response to people resisting their own subjugation? Why would Van Jones applaud right wing views and also herald Kim K as the next coming of Malcolm in criminal justice reform? Why is the Mayor of Chicago so upset with one case, considering this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theroot.com/feds-confirm-that-the-chicago-police-dept-is-as-corrup-1791173264/amp Are you melting too? Also, what is the line between conservatism and racism? Well, there is no line so why does that word conservative exist? What could possibly be conserved? Join us as we parse out "bold, left leaning ideas", red, blue, progressive, liberal and all the ways that white supremacy is upheld by any other name. The rhetoric is deadly. Recommended Reading: The Sarah Lawrence Protests, please stand with them and demand the university to meet the students' demands https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/03/13/students-sarah-lawrence-want-review-tenure-conservative-professor-who-criticized What happened there in New Zealand isn’t isolated, it becomes inevitable when islamaphobia is fostered in our government at the federal and state level it’s connections to all of the aforementioned (There is in danger in not considering all forms of violence and how they lead to death—- Ilhan Omar vilification leads to this kind of islamaophibia that is fatal) Excellent article on the white terror attack in New Zealand by Sahar Ghumkhor https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/hypocrisy-zealand-claim-190319104526942.html?fbclid=IwAR1-8BMzamsE04e1Zz5s07an6MgV2PWDTs5jj_0aq7dQoL7U4oTapCpxdhM Ebony and Ivy by Craig Steven Wilder (black author) https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/ebony-and-ivy-9781608193837/ Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's Comments on Reparations https://medium.com/@SIIPCampaigns/the-congressional-black-caucus-needs-to-pass-a-reparations-bill-before-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-c3ef3c6ee438 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bet.com/news/national/2019/03/19/_who-is-black-_--alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-erasure-of-blackness-.amp.html Willie McCoy https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theroot.com/bodycam-footage-shows-vallejo-police-shoot-willie-mccoy-1833688793/amp Theme Music: Apathy Happy by Benjamin Earl Turner https://open.spotify.com/album/56MVukuaZLRsSvMHErDNo0 This episode is dedicated to Victor McElhaney and Ashanti Carmon

Many conversations about America's history reiterate’s the idea that the progressive north led the opposition to slavery against the racist South.  But in fact, many of the nation’s Ivy League universities had profitable connections to slavery. Fordham Conversations Host Robin Shannon sits down with Dr. Craig Steven Wilder. His latest book "Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities" explores the connection between Ivy League schools and the slave trade.

I am so stoked to share this week's conversation with Josh Odam. Josh and I met during my time as a grad student at UMass Amherst, where he was an undergraduate student. Through our interactions, I quickly learned about the poise and passion he possessed. It was magnetic. Since I left the Amherst community, I stayed in the UMass family - as I now work at UMass Boston - and I have kept in close touch with Josh as he has developed his brand of DIY activism through a clothing line he created. Josh started Free Negro University as a way to spread some positivity to his friends and community members in Amherst and beyond. Josh and I dig deep into the politics of race in America - especially in regard to the education system. Seeing as Josh is now a graduate student in Labor Studies, his perspectives on the intersections of race and the work force are incredibly nuanced and embattled. This was an informative and fun conversation and we hope you enjoy it! EPISODE NOTES: (visit CraigBidiman.com/edupunxpod for all of the hyperlinks, friends!) - Early on in the chat, Josh discusses the impact of the organization, Harlem Mothers SAVE, and how it cultivated him into the man he is today. Check out more information on them by visiting harlemmotherssave.org. - Josh also credits his time at the Institute for Responsible Citizenship for creating a numbers of the relationships that lead to the creation of Free Negro University. - Here is a great interview on how Free Negro University was created. - Check out this piece that ran about josh when he was campaigning for student trustee at UMass Amherst. - And here is another article on when he and a number of other student orchestrated a sitdown protest for UMass Amherst to be declared a sanctuary campus. - If you haven't listened to “The Low-End Theory,” by A Tribe Called Quest, have you ever really lived? - Josh and I are both big professional wrestling fans, and we both love Shinsuke Nakamura. - You can watch Josh's favorite film of all-time, the Blaxploitation film, "The Spook Who Sat by the Door," in its entirety on YouTube! - While we couldn't track down the exact article on colleges as plantations, the recent book from Craig Steven Wilder, "Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities" is a great look into the topic. - Make sure to follow Josh on Instagram or Facebook by searching "Free Negro University." MUSIC NOTES: - The intro and outro of the podcast feature the song, "List of Demands (Reparations)," by Saul Williams - which is apt given Josh's reference to the list of demands that the 1970s UMass Amherst students presented to the campus and were still unresolved 50 years later. - Big thanks to our friends at Counter Intuitive Records - a DIY record label in Massachusetts that is dedicating to supporting new and up-and-coming bands - this week we feature a song from the folks in Sleeping Patterns. - "Raindance" is off the new album, "A Little Blood Never Hurt Anyone" from Sleeping Patterns, which you can order a physical or digital copy from Sleeping Patterns by visiting SleepingPatterns.bandcamp.com or from Counter Intuitive Records at CounterIntuitiveRecords.com! ADVERTISING NOTES: - This week we hyped the vinyl subscription service, Table Turned! - Table-Turned is a DIY record-of-the-month club. Subscribers select from two genre options and receive a record each month for that genre, including some “classics” as well as albums they may have missed. - Right now, subscribers can subscribe for $160 until August 31. At that point, the price goes up to $175, but they can also subscribe month-to-month for $15 a month. That option only lasts until October 31, when our month-to-month option expires until the next round. Round Two’s records ship before January 1. - To learn more and/or to start your subscription, visit Table-Turned.com! FOLLOW, RATE, REVIEW, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE! - Any love on the iTunes app helps! CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE ITUNES STORE! - Follow along on Instagram and Twitter @eduPUNXpod! - Follow me on Instagram and Twitter @CrigBididman See you next week!

July 3, 2017 - Segment 3 - We hosted a rebroadcast of an interview I conducted in 2014. I talked with Dr. Craig Steven Wilder, Professor of History at MIT, about his eye-opening book Ebony & Ivy: The Secret History of How Slavery Helped Build America's Elite Colleges.

Many conversations about America's history reiterate’s the idea that the progressive north led the opposition to slavery against the racist South. But in fact, many of the nation’s Ivy League universities had profitable connections to slavery. Fordham Conversations Host Robin Shannon talks with Dr. Craig Steven Wilder about the connection between Ivy League schools and the slave trade.  Wilder's book is called "Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities."

Rebroadcast Join author Craig Steven Wilder for a discussion of his research and book - Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's University. Craig Steven Wilder is a professor of American history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught at Wiliams College and Dartmouth College. Many of America's revered colleges and universities - from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to Rutgers, Williams College, and UNC - were soaked in the sweat and the tears, and sometimes the blood of people of color. The earliest academies proclaimed their mission to Christianize the savages of North America, and played a key role in white conquest. Later, the slave economy and higher education grew up together, each nurturing the other. Slavery funded colleges, built campuses, and paid the wages of professors. Enslaved Americans waited on faculty and students; academic leaders aggressively courted the support of slave owners and slave traders. Significantly, as Wilder shows, our leading universities, dependent on human bondage, became breeding grounds for the racist ideas that sustained them. Ebony and Ivy is a powerful and propulsive study and the first of its kind, revealing a history of oppression behind the institutions usually considered the cradle of liberal politics.

On this week’s Past Present podcast, Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, and Neil Young discuss Confederate history and memorialization, selfie shaming, and Carly Fiorina and conservative feminism.  Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Students at Yale have petitioned the university to rename the residential college named for John C. Calhoun, the South Carolina politician and ardent defender of slavery. (You can read the formal petition: here.) Neil noted the recent book, Ebony and Ivy, by MIT historian Craig Steven Wilder explores the connection between northern universities and the institution of slavery.A group of sorority sisters being mocked for taking selfies at a recent Arizona Diamondbacks game quickly became a viral media sensation. Natalia referenced Christopher Lasch’s 1979 classic, The Culture of Narcissism, as one way to understand the “selfie” phenomenon, but suggested we might also recognize selfies as an act of female self-empowerment and self-expression in a culture with such demanding expectations regarding women’s appearance.With her recent essay calling for “redefining feminism,” Carly Fiorina has joined the small ranks of conservative women who call themselves feminists. Other examples included the women of Feminists for Life, a pro-life organization founded in 1972 that believed it was a feminist duty to protect women from the atrocity of abortion. In our regular closing feature, What’s Making History: Natalia shared an article about the history of leftover food as an example of how historical analysis can use the objects of everyday life to understand the bigger picture of American economic history.Neil recommended Gilbert King’s 2012 book, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, which chronicles Marshall’s legal defense of four young African-American citrus workers in central Florida falsely accused of rape in 1949.Niki discussed the reappearance of Richard Nixon in the form of the Twitter account @dick_nixon and how Nixon's funeral became a culture touchstone. Read Hunter S. Thompson's obituary of Nixon here.

Listen to this special edition of the Pan-African Journal hosted by Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire. We feature our regular PANW reports examining developments in Yemen, Nigeria, Cuba and the memorial services for Walter Scott who was killed by a white police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina. The second hour presents part II of the interview with Robin Blackburn on Marx, Lincoln and the questions of slavery and the civil war in the United States. In the final segment we provide an archived lecture by Craig Steven Wilder on African slavery and American education.

Body Text: Many converations about America's history reiterates the idea that the progressive north led the opposition to slavery against the racist South.  But in fact, many of the nation’s Ivy League universities had profitable connections to slavery. Dr. Craig Steven Wilder explores the connection between Ivy League schools and the slave trade in his latest book "Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities."

Join author Craig Steven Wilder for a discussion of his recent book - Ebony&Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's University. Craig Steven Wilder is a professor of American history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught at Wiliams College and Dartmouth College. Many of America's revered colleges and universities - from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to Rutgers, Williams College, and UNC - were soaked in the sweat and the tears, and sometimes the blood of people of color. The earliest academies proclaimed their mission to Christianize the savages of North America, and played a key role in white conquest. Later, the slave economy and higher education grew up together, each nurturing the other. Slavery funded colleges, built campuses, and paid the wages of professors. Enslaved Americans waited on faculty and students; academic leaders aggressively courted the support of slave owners and slave traders. Significantly, as Wilder shows, our leading universities, dependent on human bondage, became breeding grounds for the racist ideas that sustained them. Ebony and Ivy is a powerful and propulsive study and the first of its kind, revealing a history of oppression behind the institutions usually considered the cradle of liberal politics.  

Slavery in New York City from the 17th to the 19th century is discussed by a panel of three prominent scholars. The event takes place as part of the Black History Month program of Baruch College. The panel is introduced by Dr. Clarence Taylor of the Black and Hispanic Studies department. Panelists include: Dr. Graham Hodges, the George Dorland Landon Jr. Professor of History at Colgate University; Dr. Craig Steven Wilder, Professor of History at Dartmouth College; and Dr. Sherrill Wilson, Urban Anthropologist and Lecturer. The event takes place February 15, 2006 and is sponsored by Baruch's Black and Hispanic Studies department, the History department and by the dean's office at the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences.

Slavery in New York City from the 17th to the 19th century is discussed by a panel of three prominent scholars. The event takes place as part of the Black History Month program of Baruch College. The panel is introduced by Dr. Clarence Taylor of the Black and Hispanic Studies department. Panelists include: Dr. Graham Hodges, the George Dorland Landon Jr. Professor of History at Colgate University; Dr. Craig Steven Wilder, Professor of History at Dartmouth College; and Dr. Sherrill Wilson, Urban Anthropologist and Lecturer. The event takes place February 15, 2006 and is sponsored by Baruch's Black and Hispanic Studies department, the History department and by the dean's office at the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences.

Craig Steven Wilder, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyUFT Headquarters, Bronx, NYMay 24, 2011Craig Steven Wilder, professor of history at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speaks to New York City teachers about the influence of school districting on the racial segregation of Brooklyn neighborhoods.  Building on data from his book A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn (2000) Professor Wilder describes the evolution of residential segregation as a direct result of the intentional segregation of urban schools, which pre-dated the public housing policies that maintained residential segregation in northern cities for the greater part of the 20th century.  This talk was delivered on May 24th, 2011, at the United Federation of Teachers headquarters in the Bronx, New York.