Reexamining WPI’s Roots in the Histories of Slavery

Dube, Evelyn

Student Work

Reexamining WPI’s Roots in the Histories of Slavery

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WPI was founded just after the Civil War in a Massachusetts heavily intertwined with both slavery and antislavery. We investigated how a subset of WPI’s founders were connected to slavery and antislavery, and how these connections influenced WPI. We also investigated how and where WPI publishes its own history to see where it fails to discuss the time in which the founders created it. We discovered that several of WPI’s founders had indirect financial connections to slavery, which contributed to the monetary foundations of the university. We found that WPI’s published histories largely ignore the social environment the university was founded in. In light of the connections we found, we recommend that WPI adjust how it discusses its own history to highlight the era it was founded in and the questions of slavery, freedom, emancipation, and citizenship its founders grappled with.

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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