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RESOLUTION ACKNOWLEDGING THE CITY OF NEW HAVEN'S ACTION IN 1831 TO OPPOSE A COLLEGE FOR BLACK MEN, APOLOGIZING FOR THE HARM DONE, AND CALLING FOR REPARATIVE MEASURES AND RACIAL EQUITY INITIATIVES.
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WHEREAS: Knowledge is power, and higher education is a proven and essential means for personal improvement, community development, and intergenerational wealth creation; and
WHEREAS: throughout much of the history of the United States, the doors to educational opportunity have been closed to Black people and other demographic groups on the basis of race, gender, religion, and socioeconomic status; and
WHEREAS: Black Americans were not allowed to enroll at most colleges or universities, including Yale University, much before the Civil War; and
WHEREAS: in 1831, a group of courageous and committed abolitionists, including New Haveners John Creed, J. L. Cross, Simeon Jocelyn, Alexander C. Luca, Augustus Scipio, and Bias Stanley, came together to support a bold idea-to establish the nation's first college for Black men-an idea formally endorsed by the first annual Convention of the Free People of Color meeting in Philadelphia; and
WHEREAS: committees were formed to raise $10,000 from Black donors and $10,000 from white allies, with the college to be governed by a board of four Black trustees and three white trustees; and
WHEREAS: these visionaries chose New Haven as the site of their proposed college, believing it to be "healthy and beautiful" with "friendly, pious, generous, and humane" people, among other advantages; and
WHEREAS: the site for the college would have been on Water Street between East and Wallace Streets, land that now sits below the juncture of Interstates 91 and 95; and
WHEREAS: Dennis Kimberly, the Mayor, called the city's "freemen," i.e., white male property owners eligible to vote, to an extraordinary town meeting on the proposed college, where town leaders, including distinguished Yale alumni of Yale and others in positions of p...
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