<p>For the last two decades, histories of slavery and universities have grabbed the attention of the academy and the public. The main thrust of both scholarship and institutional research projects have focused on the complicity of colleges and universities with slavery and settler colonialism. This article considers an alternative interpretation of universities and slavery studies. It centers the ideas and actions of Black people who were critical of colleges during the age of slavery and proposed novel ideas about the meaning and purpose of higher learning as a tool for Black liberation. The arguments of enslaved and free Black people paralleled those of Black people who created Black Studies departments over one hundred years later. This article considers the thought and actions of Black people on higher learning from the nineteenth century as a historical encounter of a Black Studies tradition with the academy.</p>