New Haven rejected plans for the nation’s first Black college almost 200 years ago. Today, the city is weighing an apology

By Dawn Sawyer, CNN

(CNN) — The New Haven Museum in Connecticut displays a collection of libraries in a recreated walkthrough of the city’s 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. But one bookshelf stands empty throughout those 300 years: what would have been the 1831 shelf of publications from the College of Black Youth.

New Haven had the opportunity to create what would have been the nation’s first Black college almost 200 years ago, but White residents killed the proposal in a 700-4 vote.

Today, New Haven city officials are being asked to make a public apology for rejecting the proposal to build the school.

“Not only did we miss out on the building and creating this culture, but think about all of the work that was lost,” said Tubyez Cropper, community engagement program manager of the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

Four men spoke against the proposal, three of whom were Yale alumni. Only one spoke in favor of the college – an abolitionist and minister, Simeon Jocelyn, who helped propose the initiative with the Rev. Peter Williams, a freed Black man from the North.

The proposal’s resolution, written by a committee that included two prominent founders of Yale Law School, highlighted concerns that the Black college would damage Yale’s reputation and be an “unwarrantable and dangerous interference” in the Southern institution of slavery, according to the resolution document.

The proposal was rejected and followed by violence and legal retaliation against the Black citizens and White abolitionists of New Haven.

A 2021 documentary about the story, produced by the Beinecke Library, garnered significant attention to the topic. It followed the university’s 2020 announcement of the Yale & Slavery Research Project.

“We need to see history as dynamic, and to recognize that this is not some deep, past history,” New Haven City Historian Michael Morand told CNN. “The opportunity lost is one that has reverberations down to our present today. (Our) contemporary responses need to be as broad and as deep as the impact of stories such as this in history.”

In August of this year, Morand, along with the alder of New Haven’s Beaver Hills neighborhood, Thomas Ficklin Jr., submitted a proposed resolution to the New Haven Board of Alders requesting action from the city. The proposal encourages educational programs on the events of 1831 to be offered in the city’s school and at Yale University. Committees from the board held a public hearing for the proposed resolution in late August.

On October 9, 2024, Ficklin passed suddenly at his home in New Haven. Ficklin’s wife told the Associated Press one of the last things on his desk was the proposed resolution.

Morand, a longtime friend of Ficklin’s, said the city official was a “centurion of the New Haven Community,” dedicated to opening doors for others. It was this motivation that encouraged him to seek action, said Morand.

“He was following the work that others had done to open doors for him,” Morand said.

According to the city, the resolution is still in the process of being considered.

“The building of the nation’s first Black college would have been an incredible contribution and asset to our city, and it was truly a missed opportunity for New Haven,” Mayor Justin Elicker said in a statement to CNN.

For Cropper, a Black resident of New Haven and producer of the Yale documentary, the documentary and proposed resolution opens up the conversation about education as a necessary form of reparations.

“It just made sense to continue pushing through this story, because it has that additional perspective of educational reparations, and how part of the reason the world may identify Black culture a certain way is because of the lack of resources, educational, financial and more,” Cropper said. “This story gets to the real sort of origin of that.”

A resilient movement: ‘It is clear that people did not give up’

The year 1831 was the dawn of the abolitionist movement. It marked the first annual Convention of the People of Colour in Philadelphia and the first time the college for Black men in New Haven was proposed and organized.

“It was a story of networks,” Morand said. “Networks of Black liberation and the beginnings of the convention movement.”

The proposal for the college listed a variety of reasons why New Haven was best suited for the first Black college, including the fact “its inhabitants are friendly, pious, generous and humane,” and its laws “protect all without regard to complexion.” The city’s ties to the West Indies also seemed hopeful for starting a college that could advance the global liberation movement, the proposal said.

“In addition to Black Americans coming to this college, there likely would have been Black Haitians, Black Jamaicans and others who could have gone back to their home countries and helped build the development and liberation of Jamaica, Haiti and other places,” Morand told CNN.

But that vision never came to fruition.

The day before Minister Jocelyn’s address to the Third Congregational Church promoting the college, news of Nat Turner’s rebellion hit New Haven newspapers for the first time.

The insurrection resulted in the murders of over 60 White women, men and children in Southampton, Virginia. According to the documentary, historians partially credit the rebellion for the proposal’s rejection four days later.

Both the proposal and the almost unanimous vote against it made national news, along with the riots that ensued. The Liberator, a New Haven abolitionist paper, reported an abolitionist’s house was attacked and stoned, a house owned by a freed Black man on Mount Pleasant was “leveled to the ground,” and Black men were being pushed down in the streets.

The reactions were described as an “admirable lesson” in a Richmond newspaper that year.

On May 24, 1833, the Connecticut State Legislature passed the “Black Law,” preventing Black people from coming into the state for education and prohibiting the establishment of schools for Black people. In it, lawmakers cite the College for Black Youth and an informal school for Black women in 1832.

According to Morand, New Haven missed the opportunity to have an influence similar to that of HBCUs today, which produce 70% of Black physicians, 50% of Black lawyers and 40% of Black engineers, according to data released by the White House in 2022.

“While we can’t be certain what the impact would have been, the impact would have been huge for Black families, Black community, and for liberty and justice for all, for the entire nation,” Morand said.

However, Morand said the movement was not halted by the rejection, but simply redirected.

Jocelyn, the minister who promoted the proposal, eventually left the city – but continued with his work along with the other influential Black leaders. Cropper says it is the work of those leaders that contributed to the reality today.

“I want to make a bold statement that they are the reason that we have this equality that we have today,” Cropper said. “These are brave men who and women who just took a shot in the dark and knew that this was the right step and the only step.”

In 1837, The African Institute was founded, becoming the nation’s first Black institute for higher education. It is now known as Cheyney University of Pennsylvania.

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