New Haven rejected Black plans to establish a university in 1831. Generations later, he's considering an apology

In 1831, a coalition of Black leaders and white abolitionists proposed the nation’s first African-American college in New Haven, Connecticut, to open a door to education that had been largely closed during slavery.

Instead, the city’s freemen (white male landowners with sole voting authority, many with ties to Yale College) rejected the plans by a vote of 700 to 4. Violence broke out in the following months, with attacks on black residents, their homes, and the property of their white supporters.

Now, 193 years later, New Haven’s leaders are considering a public apology for the damage done when their predecessors foiled their plans.

Councilman Thomas Ficklin Jr., a Democrat, introduced a proposed resolution in August with the help of City Historian Michael Morand. It calls for a formal apology and encourages city schools and Yale to offer educational programs about the events of 1831. Officials are considering holding a second public hearing on the proposal, and the full Board of Alders is expected to take up the issue later this fall.

But Ficklin failed to see the offer come to fruition. He died suddenly at his home on October 9, at the age of 75, a few weeks after his interview with the Associated Press.

City Alder Thomas Ficklin Jr., who died suddenly at his home on Oct. 9 at the age of 75, poses at the site of the proposed site for the nation's first African-American college in New York in 1831, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. Haven, Connecticut (Jessica Hill/AP) — City Alder Thomas Ficklin Jr., who died suddenly at his home on Oct. 9 at the age of 75, poses at the site of the proposed site for the nation’s first African-American college in New York in 1831, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. Haven, Connecticut (Jessica Hill/AP)

“My political ancestors were in this business,” Ficklin told the AP. “We now have a chance to comment not only on their actions, the actions of our ancestors, but also on how we will be judged in the future.”

His wife, Julia Ficklin, said the decision was one of the last things on her desk at home.

“I know this means a lot to him,” she said in a phone interview. “And one of my prayers over the last few days as I’ve been grieving is that someone will come along and pick up where they left off and make this work, one way or another.”

Morand promised to continue Ficklin’s work and said the alders would move the resolution toward a vote.

Interest in the city’s rejection of the black college was reignited two years ago with the release of Morand and Tubyez Cropper, who both worked at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. a short video documentary about this.

Tubyez Cropper (left) and Michael Morand pose in Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Wednesday, October 9, 2024, New Haven, Connecticut (Jessica Hill/AP) — Tubyez Cropper (left) and Michael Morand pose in Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Wednesday, October 9, 2024, New Haven, Connecticut (Jessica Hill/AP)

The debate over the apology comes after Yale, which has been in New Haven since the early 1700s, formally apologized in February for its ties to slavery. A research project by the Ivy League school determined that many of its founders and early leaders, as well as many donors, were slave owners. Prominent members of the Yale community were part of the opposition to the Black college.

Two years after the 1831 rejection, state legislators passed what was called the “Black Code,” making it illegal to open a school to educate Black people from outside the state. This law was cited in the US Supreme Court’s famous 1857 decision. Dred Scott’s decisionHe said African Americans could not become US citizens. This decision was invalidated by constitutional amendments made after the Civil War.

Cropper said the events of 1831 were an important early period in the abolitionist movement, although the term “abolition” was not widely used at the time. He said plans for colleges for Black men in New Haven became known nationwide after they were approved by the first Free Colored People’s Convention in Philadelphia and reported by abolitionist publications.

“This really feels like a turning point,” Cropper said.

By the summer of 1831, supporters of the Black college had concrete plans. The site was chosen in New Haven, where interstates 95 and 91 are located. A funding plan called for donations of $10,000 from white supporters and $10,000 from black supporters.

In early September, Simeon Jocelyn, the white pastor of a Black congregation in the city, gave a speech at church about improving the lives of Black people. He and William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of an abolitionist newspaper in Boston, were among white supporters of the proposed university.

A highway overpass and empty parking lot mark the site proposed for the nation's first African-American college in New Haven, Conn., in 1831. (Jessica Hill/AP) — A highway overpass and empty parking lot mark the site proposed for the nation’s first African-American college in New Haven, Conn., in 1831. (Jessica Hill/AP)

But a day after the speech, the city’s white mayor, Yale graduate Dennis Kimberly, issued a proclamation saying that the city’s freemen would hold a meeting within two days to consider the proposed university. At that meeting, the university was rejected.

While Jocelyn was speaking at church, Nat Turner’s violent slave rebellion He had reached the city in Virginia. At least 55 whites were killed in the rebellion. Scores of Black people were killed in revenge, and Turner was later executed. According to Yale researchers, the rebellion may have played a role in white freemen’s opposition to the university.

At the time, slavery was still legal in Connecticut but not common. The state would not abolish slavery until 1848, the last in New England to do so.

Freemen’s resolutions against the school stated that immediate emancipation of slaves in some states was “an unjust and dangerous interference with the domestic concerns of other States, and that such enterprise must be discouraged.” They also said a Black college would be “incompatible with the prosperity, if not the existence,” of Yale and other schools in the area and would be “detrimental to the interests of the city.”

City historian Morand wrote in his chronicle of events that after the vote, newspapers throughout the South applauded the freemen’s action.

He noted that the decision not only closed educational opportunities for Black people. He sent a message across the country that “reinforced the status quo of slavery and racial oppression.”

One of the key players in opposition to the New Haven college was David Daggett, founder of Yale Law School and former U.S. senator. Daggett was also a Connecticut state judge, and in 1833 he presided over a trial that led to the conviction of Prudence Crandall, who was officially designated a state hero by the legislature in 1995, for running a school for Black girls in Canterbury. the province’s Land Code.

Crandall’s conviction was later overturned, but he closed his school due to safety concerns arising from repeated harassment of him and his students by local residents, including arson at the school.

In 1837, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania became the nation’s first Black college or university. A year later, Connecticut’s Land Code was repealed.

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