Harvard’s scientific school was funded by a fortune built on enslaved cotton labor.

Evidence

The deal was struck between Harvard’s president, Edward Everett, and Abbott Lawrence, a textile magnate and prominent Bostonian. … Lawrence had originally intended to underwrite a school of applied science, which would pay dividends in the form of better engineers for his textile mills. … Lawrence’s plans appear to have changed when Agassiz entered the picture, a shift that was likely propelled as much by self-interest as philanthropic vision. … Most of the textiles Lawrence’s business sold, a business that had made him extraordinarily wealthy, were made from cotton that was planted, picked, ginned, baled, and shipped by enslaved men, women, and children. In other words, his livelihood depended on slavery’s preservation—or, at a minimum, on access to cheap, black labor. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1048

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the reader’s prior interest in how institutions hold stolen things — here the funding chain is explicit.