Johns Hopkins University

For generations, Johns Hopkins University taught that its founder was a lifelong abolitionist whose father had freed the family's enslaved people in 1807. In December 2020, the university's own historians disclosed census records listing Johns Hopkins as the holder of one enslaved person in 1840 and four in 1850, with none recorded by 1860. The revelation reframed the origins of the hospital and university his fortune built. (Some historians have since debated how conclusively the census schedules establish his personal slaveholding, a live scholarly question, but the university stands by its disclosure and its ongoing "Hopkins Retrospective" inquiry.)