JHU must atone for its slavery connection

Last year, Georgetown University joined other peer institutions in taking steps to address its historic ties to the slave trade. Johns Hopkins shares that history, which means it shares the obligation to address it.

The first endowed chair at Johns Hopkins was established in 1889 by Caroline Donovan, for whom the “Caroline Donovan Professorship in English Literature” is named. She is described as having been a prominent Baltimore philanthropist by the university’s own materials.

But that description conceals more than it reveals: Caroline Donovan was also the wife of Joseph Donovan, one of the largest slave traders in the state’s history.

Few traders anywhere rivaled Donovan’s operations. By the Civil War, he had purchased more than 2,000 slaves in the Maryland area, all of whom he shipped to New Orleans to be resold. Most were permanently separated from their families.

For the Donovans, the slave trade was a lucrative business. The 1860 Census, taken the year before his death, listed Joseph Donovan’s total wealth as $450,000 — more than $12 million today. Whenhe died, he left Caroline Donovan a very wealthy widow.

Caroline Donovan’s donation ... was only possible because she possessed significant wealth on which to live her day-to-day life. The source of that wealth was, without a doubt, her husband’s career as a slave trader. Her money was his money, and his money was hers, and make no mistake: It was

blood money.