Foundational Figures

Collaborators are examining how several of WashU's early leaders and benefactors - including co-founders William Greenleaf Eliot and Wayman Crow, and early trustees and benefactors including John O'Fallon, Henry Shaw, John How and others - are connected to histories and legacies of slavery. These examinations are contributing to a more accurate and honest account of the foundational story of Washington University in St. Louis. This retelling of our story will be critical to ongoing understanding, acknowledgement and remedial responses to the ways our academic institution remains implicated in structures of inequality.