Early Black Women Students at Yale: Lunchtime Webinar
The lives and careers of Black women who attended Yale from the 1910s through 1940 will be surveyed by Jennifer Coggins, Community Engagement Archivist for the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, in a lunchtime webinar for the New Haven Museum (NHM). “Early Black Women Students at Yale,” will be presented on Wednesday, March 5, 2025, at 12:30 p.m. Register here.
The free NH250 event will be recorded and available via New Haven Museum YouTube and social media. It will be the third lecture in the new NHM webinar series, “Voices of Legacy: Lunchtime Conversations on Early Black Women.”
Though Yale College did not become coeducational until 1969, the university’s graduate school and many of its professional schools accepted women much earlier. A significant number of Black women, many of them from New Haven, attended Yale in these early years. During her webinar, Coggins will discuss the lives and careers of Black women who attended Yale through 1940 and are featured in Beinecke Library’s anticipated online resource, “Shining Light on Truth: Early Black Students at Yale.”
Coggins notes that while some of the women she will highlight, such as Helen Hagan and Shirley Graham Du Bois, are better known, many of them have not been widely recognized. “Their stories offer insights into the history of New Haven and of higher education, and an opportunity to explore the impact they have had as leaders in their professional fields and communities,” she says.
Her goal, Coggins says, is for attendees to be inspired to learn more about these fascinating and accomplished women and their lives at Yale and in New Haven, and for the brief profiles she shares to spark further research.
