Prologue : a Connecticut Yankee at an ancient Indian mound -- Part I. Slavery and the rise of the American college. The edges of the empire -- "Bonfires of the Negros" -- "The very name of a West-Indian" -- Ebony and ivy -- Part II. Race and the rise of the American College. Whitening the Promised Land -- "All students & all Americans" -- "On the bodily and mental inferiority of the Negro" -- "Could they be sent back to Africa" -- Epilogue : cotton comes to Harvard.
Summary
A leading African American historian of race in America exposes the uncomfortable truths about race, slavery, and the American academy, revealing that leading universities, dependent on human bondage, became breeding grounds for the racist ideas that sustained it.
