Sunday, February 18, 2024

GET ME REWRITE: Yale doesn't apologize for waiting 154 years to admit a Black student


Photo credit:  Wikipedia
Headline:  New York Times, 2/16/2024


1701.  Yale founded.

1854.  First Black student admitted to Yale School of Medicine.
 
“To illustrate the power of relationships at the time, when Creed was admitted to the Yale School of Medicine in 1854 none of the faculty revolted and no students walked out of the classrooms,” said Patton. In 1857, Creed became the first black person to graduate from Yale School of Medicine.

But it was another 14 years before Yale accepted a black student in its undergraduate program.

1870.  First Black student admitted to Yale College.

From the Yale Alumni Magazine (January/February 2006)
In 1870, Edward Alexander Bouchet became the first black person to enroll in Yale College. Bouchet, also the son of a Yale employee, was the valedictorian of the Hopkins School in New Haven. He was the first African American in the country elected to Phi Beta Kappa and ranked sixth in the Class of 1874. Bouchet went on to the Yale Graduate School to study experimental physics, calculus, chemistry, and mineralogy. When he received his doctorate in physics in 1876, he became the first African American to earn a PhD from an American university. 
Even though Bouchet was only the sixth man to hold an American doctorate in physics, opportunities for him to teach at the college level were virtually nonexistent  [emphasis added]
 

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