The Cost of Education: A Summary of Financial Transactions of Enslavement at the University of Alabama
Ansel Smith
University of Alabama
Keywords: Slavery, The University of Alabama, Financial Transactions, 19th Century
Abstract
A study of the history of enslavement at the University of Alabama offers critical insight into the implications of enslavement in higher education in the United States. The purpose of this project is to digitize financial transactions dating between 1828 and 1864 and develop descriptive statistics as a baseline for future historical inquiry. Data was collected from the Boole Special Collections of the University of Alabama between August and November of 2024. Transactions were parsed and organized into a dataset and key trends were visualized with the R Tidyverse. Among the 185 documents analyzed, a total of $523,042.25, adjusted for inflation, not accounting for overlap, was found to be spent by the university for the purchase, hire, and board of enslaved individuals. With this baseline investigation, future statistical and social network analysis is possible to answer deeper questions about the university’s history of enslavement and its contemporary financial impact.
