NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Yale University apologized Friday for the institution's founders role in slavery and announced a series of actions designed to increase connections between the school and the New Haven community.
Centered around a new book, “Yale and Slavery: A History,” authored by Yale Professor David W. Blight with the Yale and Slavery Research Project, leaders said their ongoing goals were to take action in response to the findings.
Some of Yale’s founders and early leaders owned enslaved people according to the book, "Connecticut Hall was built in part using enslaved labor; and prominent members of the Yale community joined with local leaders in 1831 to stop a proposal to build a college in New Haven for Black youth, which would have been America’s first Black college."
"We apologize for the ways that Yale’s leaders, throughout our early history, participated in slavery,” said Yale President Peter Salovey. "Acknowledging and apologizing for this history are only part of the path forward. These findings have propelled us toward meaningful action to address the continued effects of slavery in society today.”
New actions being announced today by the university include:
• Designing a new residency fellowship program in partnership with the New Haven Public School system, New Haven Promise, and Southern Connecticut State University, that funds the education of aspiring teachers and aims to place 100 teachers with master’s degrees into the city’s schools in five years.
• Launching a four-year teaching institute program to foster innovation in the ways regional history is taught and help teachers meet new state mandates on Black and Indigenous history.
• Focusing the Fall 2024 DeVane Lecture (a free program for members of the public to attend a semester-long class alongside Yale students) on Yale’s history with slavery.
• Opening a new, free exhibit at the New Haven Museum focused on this topic.
• Updating content for virtual and in-person campus tours.
• Placing art and informational installations on campus.
• Supporting the development of a state-of-the-art mixed-use retail, residential, and cultural hub in New Haven.
Ongoing commitments from the university include:
• New Haven Promise, a college scholarship and career development program that has supported more than 2,200 New Haven Public School students.
• The Pennington Fellowship, a scholarship that supports New Haven high school graduates to attend a partner HBCU institution.
• The Law School Access Program, a pipeline program for first-generation, low-income, and under-represented students from New Haven.
• Faculty research partnerships with HBCUs across the country.
Doug Stewart is a Senior Digital Content Producer at FOX61 News. He can be reached at dstewart@fox61.com.
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