Johns Hopkins

This article is about the Quaker philanthropist. For the university that bears his name, see Johns Hopkins University.

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Johns Hopkins (May 19, 1795, Anne Arundel County, Maryland – December 24, 1873, Baltimore ) was a wealthy entrepreneur, philanthropist, and abolitionist of 19th century Baltimore, now most noted for his philanthropic creation of the institutions that bear his name, namely the Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Birthplace, family and name

On May 19, 1795, Johns Hopkins was born on Whitehall, a 500-acre (two km²) tobacco plantation with approximately 500 slaves located in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. His birthplace is now located close to the intersection of Reidel Road and Johns Hopkins Road in a new community in Maryland named Crofton. Johns Hopkins, who was nicknamed "Johnsie", was the second son and the second child of the eleven children born to Samuel, and Hannah Janney, Hopkins. He spent his childhood and youth on the Whitehall plantation where his parents settled after their marriage in a Quaker ceremony in Virginia on August 19, 1792. When his parents married, his mother Hannah Janney, born in 1774 in Loudoun County, Virginia, was 18 and his father Samuel Hopkins, born in 1759 in Anne Arundel County, was 33 years old.

The first member of the Hopkins' side of this family to settle in America was Gerrard Hopkins. Gerrard Hopkins, a member of the Church of England, emigrated from Canterbury, England and settled in Anne Arundel County, Maryland in the 1660s, approximately one hundred thirty five years before Johns Hopkins' birth. Johns Hopkins' birthplace, Whitehall, was one of many pieces of land purchased by Gerrard Hopkins' son and namesake, and Johns Hopkins' great great grandfather. According to one of Crofton's online sites, "The Hopkins family was in the Crofton area for 270 years and accumulated more than 1000 acres (4 km²) of land".

On the maternal side of the Johns Hopkins' family, Thomas Janney was the first member of the Janney family to arrive in America, He emigrated from Cheshire England and he was a preacher who had been prosecuted in England because of his Quaker faith. Thomas Janney arrived in America with his family in the 1680s. He settled first in a Quaker settlement in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Later the Janney family moved to Loudoun County in Virginia. In Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South published in 1996 by historian Brenda E. Stevenson, at least one member of the Janney family is cited as one of Virginia's largest land owners.

Johns Hopkins' first name, "Johns", is and was then an unusual first name for a child, but not for children in the Hopkins' family. A tradition of naming sons of the Hopkins' family "Johns" seemed to have started in the second generation after Gerrard Hopkins settled in Anne Arundel County. Gerrard Hopkins married Thomasin Eard after arriving in America.This couple had four children: three girls and a boy whom they named Gerrard. This Gerrard Hopkins seemed to have become a Quaker and he married Margaret Johns in a Quaker ceremony. "Johns", the wife's surname, was the first name they gave their tenth and last child. The first name "Johns" was given second to the first Johns Hopkins' oldest son, and then to the sons of Samuel and Philip Hopkins, the first and second sons of the first Johns Hopkins, by his third wife. Johns Hopkins' siblings also have their mother's surname "Janney" as part of their names. And by 1836 Janneys were also naming their children "Johns Hopkins".

Both the Janney and Hopkins' families arrived in America with indentured servants. Both families were farmers. Both families accumulated a lot of land. However, while the Hopkins' family became slave owners like so many other tobacco farmers in Anne Arundel County, the Janney family members were rarely slaveowners. Some members of the Janney family were even outspoken opponents of slavery. The Janneys were nevertheless divided when it came to their response to the Civil War. At the beginning of the Civil War, one member of the Janney family was a representative of his Loudoun County, Virginia. This community was one where many were opposed to slavery. He gave his support to the Confederacy. And despite their early adherence to slavery,even after they became Quakers, in 1778 the first Johns Hopkins freed his slaves. However, by the time of his marriage to Hannah Janney, Samuel Hopkins, the first son of the first "Johns Hopkins" and of the first "Johns Hopkins"' third wife, and the present Johns Hopkins' father, had become a slaveowner who possessed nearly 500 slaves and almost all of the land he and his brothers had inherited from their father. For nearly the first fifteen years of their marriage, and for the first twelve years of their son's Johns Hopkins' life. Johns Hopkins' parents were Quaker slave owners

The emancipation and its aftermath

In 1807 Johns Hopkins' Quaker parents freed their slaves. The family emancipated their able-bodied slaves, without any request for compensation, and took on the responsibility of taking care of the less able bodied slaves. As members of the local Quaker society, his parents had been among those who had decided on emancipating their slaves in this way and who had made this a requirement for all members who wanted to retain their membership in their local Quaker society. Because of this emancipation, the formal education of Johns and his older brother, Joseph, was interrupted. The two oldest of the eleven siblings, Joseph, the eldest who was fourteen years old, and Johns who was twelve years old, returned home from school to help with the farm and domestic work. Johns Hopkins also started to help to care for the younger children in the family, some born after this emancipation. At Whitehall the family, w after 1807 often could not afford hired labor. They instead worked along with the former slaves remaining on the farm, young and old, to do the child care, other domestic and farm work previously done by the family's slaves.

After his father's death in 1814, Johns Hopkins helped to take care of his mother. His mother died in 1846, a year after her eldest son, Joseph, also died. Johns Hopkins who lived longer than his other brothers, and who was the most successful of his siblings, helped to take care of his brothers and sisters, and his siblings' families after their's and their spouses' deaths, and after financial and other crises. Taking care of the elderly, the less able-bodied slaves, among them the elderly slaves, his siblings and their families, were responsibilities he began to undertake in 1807 and undertook from 1807 onwards. The story of the family's struggles and their life after this emancipation was told by a relative, Mrs.Helen Hopkins Thom, in the first and only biography of Johns Hopkins, Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette. This biography was published in 1929 by the Johns Hopkins Press. Thom named "Mintie", whom Thom said was born in Africa, and she mentioned Mintie's elderly daughter as two of the less able bodied slaves of the Hopkins' family, who were taken care of and who worked after the 1807 emancipation when and if they could. Throughout his life after 1807, Johns Hopkins continued to follow in his parents' footsteps after this emancipation, especially when it came to his Quaker faith and the abolitionism he displayed. His capacity for hard work and his frugality were two qualities which are linked to this experience by the authors of most sources on him. He shared a love of learning with his mother Thom said, and Thom recounted his and his family's efforts to continue his education after his formal education ended. His mother, also early, identified his instinct for business.

Business years

After he left the plantation, Hopkins worked for a time in his uncle's wholesale grocery business. His first success in business came while his uncle was away during the War of 1812. This also was his first experience operating, or assisting in the operation of, a business during and immediately after a war.

While staying at his uncle's home, he fell in love with his cousin, Elizabeth Hopkins. A Quaker prejudice against the marriage of first cousins existed and Elizabeth's parents would not allow them to marry. They pledged never to marry anyone else and remained single for the rest of their lives. Just as Johns Hopkins provided for his extended family, he provided a home for her in his will. She lived there until her death in 1889, almost fifteen years after his death in 1873.

After he left his uncle's store, Hopkins and Benjamin Moore, also a Quaker, went into business together. The business later became Hopkins & Brothers after Moore dissolved the partnership claiming that Johns loved money more than he did. One writer though calls this statement a "myth" or "fact" which "was so widely reported that the comment calling Hopkins "the only man more interested in making money than I" is variously attributed to his former business partner, a close associate, and even the international financier, George Peabody". Peabody like Johns Hopkins was also born in 1795.

After Moore's withdrawal, Hopkins partnered with three of his brothers and established Hopkins & Brothers. The company prospered by selling various wares in the Shenandoah Valley from Conestoga wagons, sometimes in exchange for corn whiskey, which was then sold in Baltimore as "Hopkins' Best." Later, Hopkins invested heavily in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and he also became a banker and a ship owner. He put up his own money more than once to save Baltimore City during financial crises, and at least twice in 1857 and 1873 he bailed the railroad out of debt. During the American Civil War, this businessman was a Union man. As the railroad's financial director, he and John Work Garrett, the railroad president, were largely responsible for the use of the railroad to support the Union cause. Many Marylanders, including its leading citizens and businesspersons, sympathized with, and often were supporters of, the South and the Confederacy. After the war, Johns Hopkins selected George William Brown as a trustee on the university board of trustees later established by Johns Hopkins. Brown had been the mayor of Baltimore during the Civil War, and while mayor Brown thanked Johns Hopkins because he was a member of a umber of bankers who gave $500,000 to the city of Baltimore soon after the start of the Civil War. Mayor Brown who later became a judge spent much of his term as mayor in jail because of his sympathies with the South which he discusses in his memoir.

One of the first campaigns of the Civil War was planned at Johns Hopkins' his summer estate, Clifton, and it was a meeting place for local Union sympathizers. Federal officials visited his home, which also was a place where he entertained at least one royal visitor from England. In a state which did not vote for Lincoln as the US President, and which opposed Lincoln's presidency and his policies including stationing troops in the state, in 1862 this businessman wrote a letter to Lincoln requesting the President to keep troops under the command of General John Ellis Wool stationed in Maryland. In addition to using his wealth and the B & O railroad to take troops to the front, Johns Hopkins supplied horsehoes and other supplies to the Union Army.

Johns Hopkins is listed as one of the 100 wealthiest men in America, in The Wealthy 100: From Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates - A Ranking of the Richest Americans, Past and Present, a book by Michael Klepper and Robert Gunther published by Citadel Press in 1996. Johns Hopkins is 69th on this list.

His death and his philanthropy

Johns Hopkins died without heirs on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1873. He left $7 million, mostly in Baltimore & Ohio Railroad stock, to establish his namesake institutions. This sum was the single largest philanthropic donation ever made to educational institutions up until that time. The bequest was used to found the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum first as he requested, in 1875, the Johns Hopkins University in 1876, the Johns Hopkins Press (the longest continuously operating academic press in America) in 1878, the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1889, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893. The first of these posthumously founded institutions, the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum (JHCCOA) aka Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Children Orphan Asylum (JHHCCOA) was founded by the trustees selected by Johns Hopkins to serve on the hospital board of trustees, one of the two interlocking boards of trustees established by Johns Hopkins.

The rest of the institutions named above were founded under the administration of the first president of the Johns Hopkins University, Daniel Coit Gilman. Gilman, formerly the president of the University of California. Gilman was unanimously chosen by the trustees of the university board of trustees, the other board of trustees established by Hopkins. The university and the hospital boards of trustees were interlocking ones in that the president of one board was a member of the other board and about nine members of the trustees on one board were also members of the second board. Some of these trustees were also the executors of his will. Johns Hopkins' views on their duties and responsibilities and his bequests can be found primarily in four documents, the incorporation papers filed in 1867, his instruction letter to the hospital trustees dated March 12, 1873. and in his will's two codicils, one dated 1870 and the other dated 1873. . , his will, which was quoted from extensively in the Baltimore Sun's obituary,

The original site for Johns Hopkins University was chosen personally by Hopkins. It was to be located at his summer estate, Clifton. This property, which is now owned by the city of Baltimore, is the site of a golf course and a park named "Clifton Park." This site was referred to in his will. While a decision was made not to found the university at Clifton, the orphan asylum which was constructed by one of most famous architects of that time, was founded first as Johns Hopkins had formally requested. The educational and living facilities were praised at its opening and a Baltimore American reporter said about the orphan asylum founded by the hospital trustees, that it was a place where "nothing was wanting that could benefit science and humanity". It was constricted by one of the most prominent architects of that time, John Niernsee,and after correspodences with those in charge of similar institutions, and visits to such sites in Europe and America. The Johns Hopkins Orphan Asylum opened with twenty four boys and girls. This orphanage was later changed to serve as an orphanage and training school for black female orphans principally as domestic workers, and next as an "orthopedic convalescent" home and school for "colored crippled" children and orphanage. It was closed in 1924 nearly fifty years after it opened and never was reopened.

Johns Hopkins' wish for a training school for female nurses was also formally stated in the March 12th 1873 letter. The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing was founded in 1889, also by the hospital trustees led by a fellow Quaker businessman and friend. Florence Nightingale was consulted. Like the colored orphan asylum, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing was closed in 1973. Unlike the asylum, it reopened in 1983.

Both the nursing school and the hospital were founded in 1889 by the hospital trustees almost sixteen years after the abovementioned instruction letter and Johns Hopkins' death. In this instruction letter completed about eight months before his death, Johns Hopkins formally stated in the section on the hospital his wish to provide assistance to the poor of "all races', and no matter the indigent patient's "age", their sex, second, and their "color" third. Wealthier patients, he wrote, should pay for services and thereby subsidize the care provided to the indigent. The hospital he wrote further was to be the administrative unit for the orphan asylum for African American children, which was to receive $25000 annual support out of the hospital's half of the endowment to the institutions that would become his namesake. The hospital and orphan asylum should serve 400 patients and 400 children respectively. These African American children could be orphaned or could be in need with one parent or two parents.In the abovementioned documents scholarships were provided for poor youths in the states where Johns Hopkins had made his wealth. Assistance was also given to orphanages other than the one for African American children and to other institutions for youths. In addition to the assistance he gave to members of his family, Johns Hopkins provided assistance, often unsolicited, to unrelated youths who needed help to start a career or business. One of the latter youths was one of those who asked Thom to write her biography on Johns Hopkins. Also in his will he provided for those he employed, black and white, his family, the cousin he loved, and many institutions for the care and education of youths, including educational ones for blacks and whites, and for the care of ill,including the mentally ill. In the beginning sentence of the Chicago Tribune's obituary of December 28, 1873, and titled "A NATIONAL BENEFACTOR" it is said "In these days of degeneracy, dishonesty, fraud, and corruption, it is refreshing to read the record of the life of Johns Hopkins, who died in Baltimore last week."

Johns Hopkins' abolitionism

Johns Hopkins was represented as an abolitionist during three periods in his life in Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette. This biography was published by his relative Mrs. Helen Hopkins Thomin 1929 by the Johns Hopkins Press. Today this biography is still the first and only book-length biography on him. After the 1970s, a few other sources represented him as an abolitionist. . For instance,in 1974 almost fifty years' after Thom's 1929 publication, Kathryn Jacob, a former archivist at Johns Hopkins University's library called him a unionist and an abolitionist.She discussed the 1807 emancipation and also gave examples of his use of the railroad to support the Union cause. In 1995 almost two decades later Mike Field stated that Johns Hopkins was a abolitionist before the word "abolitionist" was "invented" Field's article was published in the Johns Hopkins Gazette to commemorate the bicentennial anniversary of Johns Hopkins' birth in 1795. Jacob's article was published in an alumni publication, the Johns Hopkins Magazine, to commemorate the centennial anniversary of Johns Hopkins' death. Field like Jacob, and Thom before her, also portrayed Johns Hopkins as a child or twelve year old, participant in what Thom referred to as his parents' "abolition" of the family's slaves in 1807.. Both Jacob and Field, though less so Jacob, point to the paucity of writings by him, and both use adjectives like "anecdotal" and "apocryphal" to describe the sources of information on him, including Thom's biography. Jacob's article titlrf "Mr. Johns Hopkins" has been cited as the best brief biography of Johns Hopkins.

Between 1807 and the Civil War Johns Hopkins' abolitionist stance was also evident. Before the Civil War Johns Hopkins worked closely with two of America's most famous abolitionists, Myrtilla Miner and Henry Ward Beecher. During the Civil War Johns Hopkins was a supporter of Abraham Lincoln In 1862 Johns Hopkins wrote a letter to Lincoln which he signed "your servant" and "friend" . This letter can be found in the holdings of the Library of Congress. While many Marylanders were demanding the removal of troops from Maryland, in this letter Johns Hopkins asked that the troops remain stationed in Maryland. Thom also cited the 1887 memoir by Baltimore's mayor referred to above. In this memoir by George William Brown Johns Hopkins was referred to as a "wealthy Union man" and again a member of a committee of bankers who gave $500,000 to the city of Baltimore after the first bloodshed in the Civil War was shed in Baltimore city.

After the Civil War and during Reconstruction, Thom represented Johns Hopkins as a banker, a railroad man, and an abolitionist. His abolitionism was demonstrated in various ways during this period, some Thom reported and others she did not. The instructions he provided in the four documents mentioned above also said that his philanthropy should be used in ways that were often opposed to the racial practices that were beginning to emerge or re-emerging during the American Reconstruction period, and later even in the posthumously constructed and founded institutions that would carry his name. Local newspapers and magazines in the post Civil War Reconstruction period also covered his actions and they usually praised him for founding three institutions, a university, a hospital and an orphan asylum for colored children. The Baltimore American praised him for being beyond his times when it came to his provisions for blacks and whites in the the hospital. This Baltimore reporter also pointed to similarities between Benjamin Franklin's and Johns Hopkin's views on hospital care and construction, such as their shared interest in free hospitals, the availability of emergency services, and the hospital location in urban area.

The newspapers also covered Johns Hopkins and the others who filed an injunction to "block" the holding of the Constitutional convention in Maryland where the present constitution of Maryland was framed. The Maryland Constitution had been previously framed by Marylanders who were unionists and radical republicans. At their 1864 Constitutional Convention they ended slavery in Maryland, required oaths for those who sided with the Conferderacy, provided state support for the education of African Americans, and gave the vote to all white males, but not to blacks. The Baltimore Sun article on Johns Hopkins, this injunction, and the response to it can be found online in the Maryland Archives, and in William Starr Myer's book on "self-reconstruction" in Maryland. also online.

1867 was also the sixtieth anniversary of his family's emancipation of their slaves without any request for compensation. The 1867 Constitution passed by the democrats and conservations stated that ex-owners of slaves should be compensated, removed both the requirement of an oath, and the state support of education for African American schools. Again, in articles yet unpublished, Dr. Reynolds points to Johns Hopkins' "dream" and formally stated wish for a colored children orphan asylum and the trustees' founding of it in the papers incorporating the Johns Hopkins Institutions, and discusses its existence for the nearly fifty years before it was completely closed in 1924. Reynolds presents her findings almost seventy years after Thom wrote about his wish for this orphan asylum and reported that Johns Hopkins stated this wish in his "long and painstaking will." Interestingly while Thom stated that Johns Hopkins' wish for an orphan asylum was expressed in his will, she did not mention that this institution was actually opened on Biddle Street in 1885 in her 1929 biography on him,or that it was closed only about five years before this biography was published. Thom did include Johns Hopkins' March 12th, 1873 instruction letter at the end of her biography on him, and it is evident that this letter was prepared for the members of the hospital board of trustees.

According to Thom's account, Johns Hopkins was a Reconstruction actor whose abolitionist stance angered the leading citizens of Baltimore especially those who had been supporters pf slavery, secession, the South or the Confederacy. These citizens she wrote attacked and belittled him only after his death and he was no longer able to defend himself.phere is more support for Thom's representation of Johns Hopkins as an almost life long abolitionist in publications during Johns Hopkins' lifetime, and immediately after Johns Hopkins' death, than there are after the founding of the Johns Hopkins University.

Thom's definition of the word "abolitionist" differs in many ways from the definition of the word "abolitionist" used by popular and academic writers until recently. At Johns Hopkins, and in the academy in general, there has been a long-standing convention which only now seems to be ending. The word "abolitionist" coined in 1836 according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), was long used as a label only to refer to 1830s abolitionists, and their methods and activities. A 2001 publication was praised by reviewers for being one of the first publications on pre-1830s abolitionists, and on their organizations, methods, and activities. In light of this publication, Johns Hopkins appears to be more like the pre-1830s abolitionists than the 1830s abolitionists. Pre-1830s abolitionists were elite white males who used the legal system, the legislatures, petitions, and their wealth to end slavery or to provide education and social services to those of African descent. In addition, the word "abolitionist" was an epithet for many including George William Brown in his 1890 memoir, before, during, and after the Civil War. Even now few call the activities Johns Hopkins undertook after the Civil War abolitionist ones as Thom did.

In line with this conventional way of defining abolitionists, it is unsurprising that writers on Johns Hopkins and on the institutions that carry his name rarely use the label of "abolitionist" for Johns Hopkins. Furthermore, it is almost never reported that the first, and the most well known of the Johns Hopkins Institutions were all posthumously constructed and founded during Reconstruction. This period is an understudied one, especially when one compares attention to it and to the Civil War. Studies of this period like that of Hawkins who wrote the second major history of the Johns Hopkins University and who reviewed local newspapers written during and after Johns Hopkins' lifetime in this history, may well uncover the competing definitions of science, research, medicine, public health, doctoral education, medical education, and education in general, of freedom , cirizenship and equality, or of services and institutions for and of the poor, the aged, women and African Americans, and of the role of those employed by and educated in the elite institutions that emerged during this period. The role and legacy of this real world actor in his world will be better understood with such studies of this period. Such studies may give us a better understanding of the winners and losers in this period's contests, the silences in the literature, including that which surrounded Johns Hopkins and his life story, his abolitionism. The emphases in the academy, public relations, and the media during his lifetime, and since will also be better understood..

Another silence in the literature is that on Thom's discussions of the negative responses to his activities as an abolitionist from 1807 to his death. In her opinion, "hostility" towards Johns Hopkins began with his family's 1807 emancipation in a tobacco growing county dependent on slave labor since slavery became legal in the 1660s. This hostility Thom wrote persisted when he became a banker, philanthropist, and railroad man who often did not subscribe to many of the racial and class prejudices of his time. In addition she criticized those who misrepresented him as illiterate, and as a self-made man. Representing him as a self-made man she wrote ignored the support he received from his own family in Maryland and Virginia, and other Quakers. Representing him as illiterate ignores his literate mother's, his and other efforts undertaken by his family to continue his education after the ending of his family's involvement in slavery and of Johns Hopkins' and his elder brothers' formal education. Thom wrote about a love of learning he inherited from his mother.

Until today Johns Hopkins is cited for saving Baltimore city and the B&O railroad after financial crises. He is rarely cited as an abolitionist, a friend of Lincoln, a Unionist, or for being a businessman who used his earlier war time experiences during and after the War of 1812 to rebuild Baltimore city's economy after the Civil War, as Thom also suggested. Further studies may well provide further support for her representation of Johns Hopkins,including her representation of him as as an almost lifelong abolitionist. Future studies also may providee more support for the December 2006 statement of Ross Jones, an alumnus and a retired assistant to six presidents and board of trustees of the Johns Hopkins University who like most others does not refer to Johns Hopkins the abolitionist, namely that "Without Johns Hopkins, I don't think the city of Baltimore or the state or the world would be what it is”.

See Also

Legacy of Johns Hopkins

External links

• Genealogical Records on Marylanders
• Thom and Jacob discuss his love for his cousin and Quaker traditions
• In his 1887 memoir, Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War, George William Brown city Johns Hopkins as a wealthy Union man in Baltimore, a city with strong Confederate and Southern leanings
• In The Chronicles of Baltimore: Being a Complete History of "Baltimore Town" and Baltimore City from the Earliest Period to the Present Time published in 1874, John Thomas Scharf cited the 1873 instruction letter to the hospital trustees and a city council resolution thanking Johns Hopkins for his philanthropy. Thom's biography and New York and Maryland newspapers were sources that published parts or all of this letter
• The Institutional Records of The Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum
• Abstract Johns Hopkins Dream for a Model of its Kind: The JHH Colored Orphans Asylum", 2000 Conference International Society for the History of Medicine BY Dr. P. Reynolds
• Grave site of Johns Hopkins
• Graveside ceremony for Johns Hopkins
• Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War, the memoir of George William Brown then the mayor of Baltimore city, later a member of the university board of trustees of the Johns Hopkins University
• The Chronicles of Baltimore: Being a Complete History of "Baltimore Town" and Baltimore City from the Earliest Period to the Present Time published in 1874 by John Thomas Scharf
• "If He Could See Us Now: Mr. Johns Hopkins' Legacy Strong University, Hospital Benefactor Turned 200 on May 19, 1995", Mike Field, the author, contradicts this statement
• Chronology, Nursing school
• The Institutional Records of The Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan
• Abstract Johns Hopkins Dream for a Model of its Kind: The JHH Colored Orphans Asylum" By Dr. P. Reynolds
• "If He Could See Us Now: Mr. Johns Hopkins' Legacy Strong University, Hospital Benefactor Turned 200 on May 19, 1995" by Mike Field a writer for the Johns Hopkins Gazette. Field, Thom, and Jacob called Johns Hopkins an abolitionist. See also The Racial Record of Johns Hopkins University in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 25, Autumn, 1999, pp. 42-43/ JSTOR
• Johns Hopkins, Maryland State Archives
• "The History of African Americans @ Johns Hopkins University" See in particular the chronology and the paper by Danton Rodriguez.