Ulysses Simpson Grant Bassett, graduate of Hopkins Grammar School (1891)
and Yale College (1895), from Quarter Century Record of the Class of Ninety
-five Yale College,Yale Library
New Haven, Conn. (August 9, 2024) –New Haven Museum’s exhibition, “Shining Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery,” will remain on view through Saturday, March 1, 2025. Presented by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale Library, the exhibition was curated by Michael J. Morand with Charles E. Warner, Jr., and designed by David Jon Walker. Admission to the New Haven Museum remains free during the show’s run, made possible by Yale University.
The exhibition has drawn strong interest from the New Haven community, Yale affiliates, and visitors from beyond the region. The extension of the show through March 1, 2025, means many more young people and educators will be able to visit in the fall and early winter. The New Haven Museum and exhibition organizers are especially grateful to the nearly 50 local schoolteachers and chaperons who brought nearly 400 school students this past spring.
The exhibition opened on February 16, 2024, as part of a set of efforts to share widely the findings of the Yale and Slavery Research Project, including a book, a website, and audio walking tour.
“Shining Light on Truth” presents evidence of the essential role of enslaved and free Black people in New Haven and at Yale. It celebrates Black resistance and community building. And it illuminates knowledge kept alive in archives and memory for more than three centuries—even when the dominant culture choses to ignore, bury, or forget.
The exhibition features archival images of materials from Beinecke and other collections, connects to items in the New Haven Museum collections, and notes other local sites of memory. It introduces visitors to some of the unheralded builders of Yale. It celebrates early Black writers such as Jupiter Hammon, Jacob Oson, and William Grimes, and it showcases women such as Mary Ann Goodman, whose generosity opened paths for Black students at Yale, as well as the women who were local pioneers in Black education early in the 19th century.
The exhibition is located in the museum’s upper rotunda and an adjacent gallery room. That gallery has been made into a reading room that evokes a library of the Black college proposed, and thwarted, in New Haven in 1831. Visitors can view dozens of photographs of early Black Yale students and alumni, a number of whom grew up in New Haven. This reading room also features “school albums” with images and biographies of nearly 200 early Black Yale students, from James W. C. Pennington in the 1830s to Shirley Graham a century later in the late 1930s. It also has bookcases with related texts and reproductions of archival materials. Visitors are encouraged to sit, read, and reflect in this library space.
“This is a deeply meaningful New Haven story that we have been honored to host – and we are delighted that it will be extended, and especially glad that more school groups will be able to visit” says New Haven Museum Executive Director Margaret Anne Tockarshewsky. “‘Shining Light on Truth’ supports the New Haven Museum’s continuing mission to connect with the community and expand our audiences.” She adds, “We are grateful to Yale for making that possible by underwriting free admission during the course of the show and ensuring access to all who want to visit.”
Morand is director of community engagement at Beinecke Library. He authored a chapter in the recently published book, “Yale and Slavery: A History” and has been a leader in the research project. A New Havener for four decades, he was appointed the official City Historian by the Mayor of New Haven in April. Morand chairs the Friends of the Grove Street Cemetery and is on the boards for the Dixwell Q House and the Community Foundation.
Warner is a graduate of Morehouse College and works with the New Haven Public Schools. He chairs the Dixwell Church History Committee, is a member of the Yale and Slavery Working Group and is a Beinecke Community Engagement Fellow. Warner is chairman of the Connecticut Freedom Trail, a collection of 160 sites and institutions throughout Connecticut related to the history of slavery, abolition, and Black history.
Walker earned his MFA in graphic design from Yale in 2023. He has a BA in art from Tennessee State University and an MFA in web design from the University of Memphis. Before coming to New Haven, he was a professor in design at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee. He has been an Artist in Residence at Yale’s Jonathan Edwards College.
Morand, Walker, and Warner express their gratitude to scores of colleagues and collaborators whose effort and support have been essential to this exhibition, with special thanks to everyone at the New Haven Museum, to former Yale President Peter Salovey and Susan Gibbons, Vice Provost for Collections and Scholarly Communications and Chief of Staff to the President of Yale, to community engagement colleagues Jennifer Coggins, Tubyez Cropper, and Hope McGrath, among others, in Yale Library.
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