Seven buildings at St. John’s College, a small liberal arts school in Annapolis, are named after prominent early alumni and board members who enslaved African Americans, according to a new report released by the college.

Four years in the making, the findings solidify St. John’s place among a number of other Maryland colleges founded before slavery was abolished. The University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University and St. Mary’s College have all commissioned reports, added plaques and, in some cases, renamed buildings associated with slavery.

But what St. John’s does next will depend on what its community wants.

Students, alumni, faculty, staff and community members have until Dec. 12 to submit suggestions to the college’s History Task Force, the group studying the school’s relationship with indigenous and enslaved people. The task force will discuss that feedback and make recommendations, with next steps ultimately decided by the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors.

“This is how our community expects this to be handled,” said Nora Demleitner, president of St. John’s College. “Our classes are seminars that open with questions. In this case, we’re asking a broad question about the report and hearing feedback, just like how our classes operate.”

According to Demleitner, the college has already gotten “a couple dozen” responses. She said that they’re open to considering any suggestions that community members submit. That’s because of the school’s “unique pedagogy,” she said.

There are no majors at the college. Instead, students take a variety of small seminar-style discussion courses. Because St. John’s College solely has discussion-based classes, Demleitner said it “just made sense” for the college to also open up this decision to discussion. Students at the college have been reading the same authors, like Euclid, Plato and Aristotle, since the 1790s.

The history of St. John’s College has always been emphasized in its curriculum. But being as historic as the college is also brings challenges.

“I think any school of a certain age was supported by monies that really were due to the work of enslaved people,” Demleitner said. “We’re the type of institution that has these honest conversations.”

The report, which is just over 100 pages, was released earlier this month. It names the college’s first president, John McDowell, as well as multiple famous early alumni, benefactors and board members as enslavers.

McDowell “likely” lived with one enslaved person in present-day McDowell Hall, according to the report. He did not free that man until 1807, when he moved to Pennsylvania, where the import of slaves was prohibited.

There are several other structures on campus whose namesakes — including William Pinkney, Henry William Woodward, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, William Paca, Samuel Chase, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll the Barrister and Francis Scott Key — were determined to have enslaved people.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the namesakes of the Paca-Carroll house, was one of the largest enslavers in Maryland. According to a 1773 inventory, Carroll held 331 enslaved people on his Maryland plantation. Some estimate the number may have fluctuated between 300 to 400 people, according to the report.

Carroll was a member of the St. John’s College Board of Rectors, Visitors and Governors in 1786 and had donated 200 Great British pounds to the college.

While William Paca, the house’s other namesake, inherited 92 enslaved people. He was one of four Marylanders who signed the Declaration of Independence and was the third governor of the state. He was an early financial supporter of St. John’s College and signed the school’s charter while governor.

The Paca-Carroll house was named in 1939.

While the report’s authors wrote that they can’t be sure whether enslaved people were used to build the structures, which are now academic halls and dormitories, many of the architects and builders hired to construct the buildings were known enslavers.

Demleitner said the college is open to changing the names of those buildings associated with slave owners.

“I think everything is on the table for conversation,” she said. “I think some of it, at least, will also just be about providing context.”

Notably, Towson University in 2022 formally renamed its dormitories that had been named for Charles Carroll and William Paca. The buildings are now named after Marvis Barnes and Myra Harris, the first Black graduates of the university who completed four-year degrees.

Earlier this year, the University of Maryland, College Park, and Loyola University Maryland published reports similar to St. John’s, revealing how the colleges and their early leaders benefited from the labor of enslaved Black people.

Johns Hopkins reckoned with the university’s namesake in 2020, after discovering that he owned enslaved people. The Homewood campus is located on the former grounds of the Carroll family plantations. In 2016, St. Mary’s College of Maryland discovered that it was located on former slave quarters.

“This work is not only historical, it’s moral,” said Kirt von Daacke, a history professor at the University of Virginia who studies slavery and serves as the managing director of the Universities Studying Slavery consortium. Several Maryland colleges are members, though St. John’s is not. “Slavery isn’t just something that happened in the past; it shaped a lot of things after slavery ended.”

Daacke, who co-authored the 2018 “President’s Commission on Slavery and the University” report at the University of Virginia, said that understanding universities’ ties to slavery “helps to understand inequality in America today.”

“It’s not about blaming institutions, it’s about understanding that slavery is a really powerful thread in our history,” he said. “These projects add to our understanding of the university’s history, including both the founders, and the unsung founders, of the place.”

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