Yale University has come clean about its “entanglement” in slavery, offering a formal apology and unveiling a book the describes the roles that Black and Indigenous People played in the evolution of the institution.
Through its Yale and Slavery Research Project, the school has investigated its “history with slavery and the role of enslaved individuals who participated in the construction of a Yale building or whose labor enriched prominent leaders who made gifts to Yale,” the university said in a Friday statement.
While Yale itself did not enslave people, many of its Puritan founders did, and so did “a significant number of Yale’s early leaders and other prominent members of the university community,” according to the university.
The research project, underway for years, has identified more than 200 of those enslaved people, most of them Black but including some Indigenous people, Yale said. These enslaved humans helped build Connecticut Hall, the campus’s oldest building, while others were put to work in cotton fields, rum refineries “and other punishing places” in and outside Connecticut — “grueling labor” that benefited funders — the school said.
“We apologize for the ways that Yale’s leaders, over the course of our early history, participated in slavery,” Yale said in the statement, which was signed by President Peter Salovey and Yale Corporation senior trustee Josh Bekenstein.
“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.”
The history is detailed in a book being released in conjunction with the apology, a scholarly, peer-reviewed tome by Yale professor David Blight, a noted historian of American slavery. The book, published by Yale University Press and titled simply “Yale and Slavery: A History,” is available for free and online.
“At Yale University, a multitude of its founders and rectors and presidents, faculty, donors and graduates played key roles in sustaining slavery, its ideological defenses and its power,” Blight said at a Yale event Friday, according to The Washington Post, adding that those who tried to dismantle it were no match for those in power who made sure the existing social order was protected.
Yale also laid out a number of initiatives to address the residual effects of that period in U.S. history, ranging from economic support to educational outreach and fellowships. The university is the latest of a number of colleges and universities that have undertaken similar measures, including Harvard, Brown and Princeton universities, according to CNN.
