Dr Anne-Marie Angelo

A recent study by Sussex Historian Dr Anne-Marie Angelo, Associate Professor of American History at the Faculty of Arts, Media and Humanities, has uncovered the links between the founder of the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University and the transatlantic slave trade.

Dr Angelo’s research establishes that Peabody’s finances were entangled with the transatlantic slave trade through commerce, business, and banking relationships, and that he built considerable wealth through those relationships. She also finds that the majority of the founding trustees of the Peabody Institute, who Peabody selected, were enslavers. This research is part of a broader ongoing initiative at Johns Hopkins University, which aims to recognise the hard truths about its collective history and that of its founders.

The Peabody Institute is the oldest music and dance conservatory in the United States, and it was founded by Massachusetts-born Peabody (1795-1869), a merchant banker who traded in London for 27 years. He also founded the Peabody Housing Association in London as well as the Peabody Museums at Harvard and Yale Universities.

Dr Angelo says about the findings: “Interpretive historical methods can reveal the human meaning behind the dry figures in financial records. By tracing and corroborating the people named in these records, we have been able to link the labours of enslaved people of African descent to the fortune that enabled Peabody to found his namesake philanthropies.”

Read more about Angelo’s research in this piece by Professor Martha Jones, Director of the Hard Histories at Hopkins Project.