Slaveholders in our "Family"?
Slaveholders in our "Family"?
A Query from a Follower and a Reuters Investigation Suggest New Avenues for Research
This week we’re celebrating! Our Substack has reached a landmark 1,000 followers. Thanks to all of you have have long-followed our journey at Hard Histories at Hopkins, and welcome to the many of you who have more recently joined us! Please keep reading, commenting, and sharing! This week’s post is inspired by a comment from follower, a reminder that we’re always glad to hear from you!
Last week, one of our followers shared a tidbit from their own research. It concerned Henry Laurence Gantt who graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1880. Many sources credit Gantt with innovations in modern engineering, including a project management tool, the Gantt Chart. But this follower shared a personal detail about Gantt’s family history: He was born in 1861 and came from a family of slaveholders in Maryland’s Calvert County.
Our first look at the Gantt family story reveals the basis for our follower’s conclusion. In 1934, Gantt’s biographer, L.P. Alford, wrote admiringly of his subject and situated Gantt’s birth on a plantation where “for generations the work songs of negro slaves had been heard….”1 In this passage and throughout his book, Alford’s subscription to the Civil War’s Lost Cause narrative is evident. U.S. Census Slave Schedules provide additional clues. Enumerators recorded Gantt’s father, Virgil, to be an enslaver who held 37 enslaved people in 1850 and 56 enslaved people in 1860 in his household. These enslaved people were, by November 1864, manumitted pursuant to Maryland’s new state constitution.
A recent investigation by Reuters News Service asked a related question, one about family ties to slavery among today’s U.S. political leadership. Their research showed that “among America’s political elite … 5 living presidents, 5 Supreme Court justices, 11 governors, and 100 legislators descend from ancestors who enslaved Black people.”
The Reuters report makes an important point. Still today, many Americans, including those in the nation’s political elite, have old connections to one of the nation’s most shameful chapters. It reveals “how intimately tied America remains to the institution of slavery, including through the ‘people who make the laws that govern our country,’” explained Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
How did lawmakers react to the Reuters findings? The report explains: “Only a quarter of those identified as having slaveholding ancestors offered any comment to Reuters.” Still, we found those responses fascinating for their remarkable range: From Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) who “hadn’t known about her familial ties to slavery,” to Ohio Representative Bob Gibbs (R-OH) who remarked that “times were different back then. I, obviously don’t condone slavery … It has no bearing on anything I do today.” Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), representing Maryland, explained that the Reuters revelations led to personal reflection: “We have a moral imperative to confront the legacy and impact of our nation’s original sin with honesty and purposeful action.”
This range of reactions reminded us of the wide difference of responses we heard after, in December 2020, the university announced that Johns Hopkins was a slaveholder. The Reuters findings also led us to ask new research questions: How many of the early associates of Johns Hopkins University — administrators, family and students alike — had direct family ties to slave holding? How can a closer look at our collective history of slaveholding and the overall results of such an investigation shape our mission going forward?
— MSJ
L.P. Alford, Henry Laurence Gantt: Leader in Industry (New York: American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1935): 5
Great essay, and a super-important corrective to the ways that many white people have subtly changed the narrative by connecting with Black "family members"--who are indeed members of their family, but importantly--because their ancestors were enslavers, a fact that is often minimized as part of the reunion narrative.
Oh, Martha! What fun. My eyes popped open, just a little wider, with the mention of Calvert County. My father was born there in 1920. Though I live in Washington, DC, I am a third gen Calvert County property owner. I don't know if we're related to the Gantts. Calvert County was relatively sparsely populated 100 years ago, so anything's possible. This is fun. Keep digging. Yay!