By Wendy Anders

Reproduction of a handbill advertising a slave auction in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1769, Wikipedia.

Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the United States, Sir Ronald Sanders, called on Harvard University “to demonstrate its remorse and its debt to unnamed slaves from Antigua and Barbuda” whose lives were abused to establish the Harvard Law School (HLS), reported Caribbean News Now earlier this month.

In a letter to Professor Drew Faust, president of Harvard University, Sanders recalled that the bequest of Isaac Royall Jr to Harvard College in 1781 for the first endowed professorship of law in 1815 came from the labor of human beings enslaved on Royall’s plantation in Antigua.

The ambassador said he was sure “that Harvard University, like all other institutions with a consciousness of right, has been inspired by the recent acknowledgment and atonement by Georgetown University for the sale of 272 human beings in 1838 to save the University from collapse.”

Along these lines, his letter continued by saying, “This is an excellent example for your university to follow, particularly since the founding of Harvard Law School was premised on the brutal, violent, oppressive and dehumanizing use and sale of men, women and children from Antigua and Barbuda.”

Specifically, Sanders proposed that Harvard Law School show its remorse and repay its debt by offering scholarships to Antiguans and Barbudans on an annual basis.

Isaac Royall Jr., in the words of one HLS professor, was “a brutal slaveholder.” Born into a colonial-era family of wealthy Triangle Trade merchants, he owned an estimated 60 slaves. At one point, Royall and his father brokered the sale of 121 human beings in one day. Another time, they had 77 slaves burned alive at the stake following a failed rebellion.