SC Connecticut News

Around 100 Yale alumni, donors, and guests gathered at the International African American Museum in Charleston, S.C., on September 14 to hear two Yale scholars discuss the importance of confronting historical legacies.

David Blight, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Yale history professor, and William Barber, Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at YDS, shared insights on oppression and the necessity of addressing it.

Propped on a table between Blight and moderator Tonya Matthews (IAAM President and CEO) was a copy of "Yale and Slavery," authored by Blight and a research team that included YDS alum Michael Morand ’93 M.Div. This history documents Yale’s involvement with slavery.

“This history—we’ve got to learn from it and act on it,” Barber stated. “Every time this kind of truth comes out, it lets me know a reckoning is coming. I don’t mean a violent reckoning. I mean we are going to come to a point where the weight of the injustices and divisions are too heavy to continue to exist.”

The museum opened last year on Gadsden’s Wharf, where tens of thousands of enslaved Africans arrived in America from the late 1760s through 1808. Elijah Heyward ’07 M.A.R., former Chief Operating Officer of the museum and member of the YDS Dean’s Advisory Council, attended along with other DAC members, YDS alums, and numerous Yale graduates.

During the question-and-answer session, Blight spoke about Charleston as a site reflecting both noble and ignoble aspects of human spirit. He recalled sharing a platform with Rev. Clementa Pinckney in 2015—two months before Pinckney was murdered along with eight parishioners at Emanuel A.M.E. Church by a shooter motivated by racial animus.

Charleston is also where the first shots of the Civil War were fired—an event memorialized at Fort Sumter National Monument adjacent to IAAM.

“This town,” Blight said, “has a beautiful, powerful, and terrible place in American history, and all of that has to be told.”

YDS Dean Greg Sterling welcomed attendees by appreciating their willingness to engage with difficult subjects. “Your presence indicates you have a commitment to addressing one of the great problems we face in our society,” Sterling said. “(At YDS) we view it not just as a political and social issue but as a moral issue.”

“It wouldn’t be enough to simply talk about what’s happened in the past,” Sterling added. “It needs to transform us in the present and shape our future.”