The University of Illinois has over a century of engagement in Brazil. Eugene Davenport, for whom Davenport Hall is named, was the first dean of the College of Agriculture at Illinois. As a young man he spent 1890-91 in São Paulo, Brazil, where he advised the coffee planter Luiz de Queiroz on establishing Brazil’s first school of agriculture, currently known as ESALQ (Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz), part of the University of São Paulo. In a memoir found in the UIUC archives, Davenport comments on the social conditions in Brazil in the years immediately following the abolition of slavery.
-Joseph Love, Emeritus Professor of History