Town Hall: Reexamining the History of Mr. Johns Hopkins

In a message on December 9, 2020, Johns Hopkins University and Medicine leadership shared with the Hopkins community our archival discovery of government census records that state Mr. Hopkins was the owner of enslaved people in 1840 and 1850, and perhaps earlier. By 1860, there are no enslaved persons listed in his home.

The archival record we are piecing together indicates that Johns Hopkins was a complex person. A businessman and philanthropist whose bequest transformed higher education and accessible healthcare in America, a slaveholder who operated in a society that relied heavily on the institution of slavery, and a man reported at his death to have held anti-slavery views.

Historians have discovered few documents written by Johns Hopkins, and no historian has written a comprehensive biography of him. As far as we know, his personal papers were destroyed prior to his death or perhaps surviving records were lost. For many years, our institutions have invoked a narrative we now know to be erroneous that tells the story of Johns’ Quaker parents manumitting their enslaved individuals, but we did not previously scrutinize that account, nor did we fully investigate the subsequent history of the man or his family members. We are now taking a careful look at the widely accepted narrative of Johns Hopkins, a book of remembrances written by his grand-niece, Helen Thom, and we are beginning a journey of further research and understanding.

We will continue to pursue our research into his life in order to arrive at a more complete and truthful picture.

Learn more at: https://retrospective.jhu.edu/our-ini...