John Fox Slater

John Fox Slater (March 4, 1815 – May 7, 1884) was an American philanthropist who supported and funded the education of freedmen after the Civil War.

John F. Slater was educated in academies at Plainfield, Connecticut, and Wrentham and Wilbraham, Massachusetts.

Among the original trustees of the Slater Fund were Rutherford B Hayes, Morrison R Waite, William E Dodge, Phillips Brooks, Daniel Coit Gilman, Morris Ketchum Jesup and the donor's son, William A. Slater; and among members chosen later were Melville W Fuller, William E Dodge, Jr, Henry Codman Potter, Cleveland H Dodge and Seth Low.

[3] The fund was of great value in aiding industrial schools in the South, its largest beneficiaries being the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute of Hampton, Virginia, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute of Tuskegee, Alabama, Spelman Seminary in Atlanta, Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee.

The John Fox Slater Elementary School in Washington, D.C., now closed, was named in his honor.