Centre never owned slaves, but did use slaves by hiring them from their owners. Slaves are twice mentioned in a student newspaper created in 1864, and although it is unclear whether these were slaves who worked at Centre or elsewhere, their mention demonstrates the familiarity that Centre students had with slaves while in school¹. Financial ledgers from 1824 through 1853 show that Centre hired slaves from the Cowan family and Centre president Gideon Blackburn on a task-by-task basis to do chores such as chopping wood, washing, and janitorial services. Slaves were also hired from their masters to work full-time at the school. One man who did such work was Harrison Wickliffe, a Kentuckian who was born a slave but was a free man by middle age.

Harrison was born between 1812 and 1816, likely under the ownership of U.S. Representative Charles A. Wickliffe, of Lexington. He was sold to the Crittenden family at a young age, and came to be owned by Centre president John C. Young when Young married Cornelia Crittenden in 1839². Young rented Harrison to the college to work as a janitor and groundskeeper, but by 1850, Young had apparently set Harrison free as he did others of his slaves. After gaining his freedom, Harrison, his wife Casina, and their children Beatty, Joseph, and George Ann continued to live in a house that they rented from the college. Meanwhile Harrison's oldest son, Rowan, enlisted in the 55th Massachusetts Colored Infantry as a boatman in 1863, and was eventually promoted to full corporal.

Harrison continued working as a janitor and painter at Centre for an annual salary of $150 until 1870. He then became self-employed as a house painter while his sons Beatty and Joseph worked as hotel waiters, perhaps at the Gilcher Hotel, where the Hub Coffee House now stands. In January 1893, a widower at age 81, Harrison moved to Chicago to live with Joseph and Joseph's wife, a white woman named Amelia. Harrison died in 1905.

¹ The student newspaper was "Hoots from the Pine Woods Owl," written in December 1864. The two stories of African American slaves are of "Ben the Ethiope," who was attacked while delivering a basket of food at the request of Centre students, and an unnamed woman who writes about being distracted by the other servants (it is not entirely clear that she was a slave).
² It is a hypothesis that Harrison belonged to Charles A. Wickliffe and Cornelia Crittenden. In the March 1864 issue of the Danville Quarterly Review, Robert J. Breckinridge wrote that John C. Young had twice freed slaves owned by his wives. The father of Cornelia Crittenden (Young's second wife) had defended Charles A. Wickliffe in court, and so it is plausible that slave sales happened between the two men since they had known connections to each other. Since slaves were usually given the surnames of their owners, it is most likely that Harrison was born under the ownership of someone with the surname Wickliffe; Charles A. Wickliffe was also one of the largest slave owners in Kentucky.

Centre's faculty were strong believers in gradual emancipation, a moderate view that held that while slavery was an evil institution, the immediate liberation of all African Americans would devastate the American economy on account of the overnight disappearance of thousands of unpaid laborers. Further, African Americans who had never before been free would supposedly be unable to support themselves without the aid of their masters. Gradual emancipationists usually freed their slaves once the slaves had reached a certain age, usually in their twenties or thirties.

Robert J. Breckinridge, for whom Breckinridge Hall is named, wrote that gradual emancipation was "good will towards the poor slave, and the desire, earnest and sincere, to do him good as fast and as effectively as it can be done, and he is prepared to receive and enjoy it....[Immediate abolition] seems to be, as far as charity can even judge, not so much love to the slave as hate to the slaveholder." Breckinridge and his gradualist compatriots at Centre were themselves slaveholders: Breckinridge owned more than 21 slaves who worked on his hemp plantation near Danville.

For the slave-owning Centre professors, faculty, and presidents, gradual emancipation went hand in hand with the project of colonization in Liberia. The Kentucky Colonization Society began in 1828 with the goal of transporting freed African American Kentuckians to the West African colony. The spirit of the colonization project was not just of benevolence towards former slaves. In an 1833 speech given to the Society, John C. Young expressed a common fear among whites that the number of free blacks would increase greatly; colonization eased that fear by removing free blacks from America.

Several African Americans with Centre connections were present on the first Kentucky Colonization Society voyage to Liberia in 1833. A ship called the Ajax carried two freed slaves of Gideon Blackburn, former President of Centre, and two freed slaves of John C. Young. Cholera broke out onboard only days after the Ajax set sail, and the ship was forced to stop in the Caribbean Islands, where nearly forty of the emigrants died. Both of the people that Young had sent - a young woman and her son - died of cholera upon arrival in Liberia, as did one of the people that Blackburn had sent.