Boston
Egypt Lloyd couldn’t hold back tears when she saw the names – her ancestors, Tony, Cuba, and Darby – in a study chronicling Harvard University’s involvement in America’s slave trade.
Ms. Lloyd grew up nearby, in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, but her family learned only recently of ancestors who were kept as slaves by Harvard benefactors during the first decades of the famed institution.
“I felt that my ancestors were saying ‘Thank you, God,’ for it finally coming to light,” said Ms. Lloyd. “I think this is the first step toward healing.”
Among the most startling revelations in Harvard’s report was the list of more than 70 people kept as slaves by Harvard leaders and supporters, often on or near the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their living descendants are estimated to number in the tens of thousands, including some who lived and worked in the Boston area without knowing their family connection to the Ivy League school.
The report from Harvard came with a pledge to atone for its wrongs and the profits it reaped from cotton, sugar, and other trades that relied on slave labor. The oldest and wealthiest college in the nation, Harvard said it would establish a $100 million fund to enact a series of recommendations in the report.
Among them is a call to identify descendants of the slaves and build relationships with them, with the aim of helping them “recover their histories, tell their stories and pursue empowering knowledge.”
For Ms. Lloyd and other descendants, the discovery has brought sadness and joy.
The Lloyd family learned that it descends from Darby Vassall, the son of Tony and Cuba, an enslaved couple kept by a wealthy family that helped found Harvard’s law school. Darby went on to become an abolitionist and prominent figure in Boston’s free Black community.
“They are still living through me, they are still living through my kids, they are still living through my dad,” said Ms. Lloyd, who lives outside Atlanta and founded a drone servicing company. “We can’t change the past but we can heal, and it can make us stronger.”
It was all the more stunning, given her family’s chance encounters with Harvard. Her sister, Jordan, for example, once worked as a waitress there.
Harvard researchers have been studying the topic for years and so