MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale
MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition

Shining Light on Truth with David Jon Walker and Michael Morand

Oct
20
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Original event page

Mondays at Beinecke

“Shining Light on Truth: Black Lives at Yale & in New Haven” illuminates ongoing research that recovers the essential role of Black people throughout Yale and New Haven history. The exhibition puts back at the center of local storytelling people who have always been central to local history. It celebrates Black community building, resistance, and resilience on campus and in New Haven.

Zoom webinar registration: https://yale.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_t0EYMvO3RHWZUY1GVYU3gw

The show includes nearly one hundred images of Yale’s earliest Black students from the 1800s and early 1900s, many of whom had deep New Haven connections. The Schwarzman exhibition features compelling reproductions of photographs of New Haveners who were custodians of Yale. The Luke, Grimes, Creed, Park, and Bassett families, among the many people key to founding and sustaining Yale, and who are heralded in the show.

“Shining Light on Truth: Black Lives at Yale & in New Haven” showcases the proposal, made and thwarted in 1831, to build a Black college in New Haven. It also highlights the successful efforts of Black students in the 1960s to establish the Afro-American Cultural Center and Afro-American Studies at Yale.

This exhibition brings forth knowledge kept alive in archives and memory for many centuries—even when the dominant culture chose to ignore, bury, or forget. It extends the work of the Yale and Slavery Research Project and follows from the exhibition, “Shining Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale and Slavery,” previously at the New Haven Museum.

Walker and Morand were joined by collaborators, including Timeica Bethel ’11, Robert Laird Brown, Jennifer Coggins, Mohamed Diallo ’26, Regina Mason, Hope McGrath, Carlynne Robinson, and Charles Warner, Jr.

Mondays at Beinecke online talks focus on materials from the collections and include an opening presentation at 4pm followed by conversation and Q & A beginning about 4:30pm until 5pm. Episodes are generally recorded and published on the library's YouTube channel within a few weeks of the original live program.