Academics

MIT and the legacy of slavery

MIT class reveals, explores Institute’s connections to slavery

MIT’s first president, William Barton Rogers, possessed enslaved persons in his Virginia household until the early 1850s, roughly a decade before he founded the Institute, according to new research from an MIT history class scholars and administrators designed to examine the legacy of slavery in relationship to the university.

While Massachusetts outlawed slavery in the early 1780s, Rogers lived in Virginia, where slavery was still legal, from 1819 until 1853, mostly on the campuses of the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia. Documents from the time indicate that in those settings, Rogers had enslaved persons in his household in both 1840 and 1850.