About

The culmination of the 2025-2026 Humanities Lab, "Slavery, Freedom, and the Midwest: African Americans at Miami University and in Oxford," the Miami University and Slavery initiative brought students, faculty, and community members together to uncover the lives and legacies of several generations of African Americans who shaped Miami University and Oxford. From the foundational labor of free and formerly enslaved African Americans that sustained the university during the antebellum and Reconstruction periods to the emergence of Black student life and leadership in the Jim Crow era, members have engaged in archival research, oral history, and descendant collaboration.

Miami University and Slavery is a collaborative project between the Walter Havighurst Special Collections & University Archives and the Department of History, with support from Bethel A.M.E. Church in Oxford, Ohio. We are grateful to our co-sponsors and funders for supporting this initiative, including the Humanities Center, the Menard Family Center for Democracy, the Honors College, and the Western Program for Individualized Studies.