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Yale and Slavery: 20th Century Sources

Bibliographic list of source materials on Yale and slavery.

20th Century Sources

The Yale and Slavery Research Project ended, chronologically, in 1915 with the dedication of the Yale Civil War Memorial and protests in New Haven against the film The Birth of a Nation. Topics in the 20th century included Black students and employees; Yale’s relationship with Southern alumni and students; memorialization, university celebrations, and events, especially related to the Civil War; art and architecture; and campus and community climate connected to racism and white supremacy. Student publications provide an especially rich source for studying this period, as do many of the memoirs and histories of Yale listed on the first page of this guide.

Please note that research into early Black students and employees at Yale is ongoing at the Beinecke Library. For more information, please contact Hope McGrath, Research Coordinator for Yale, New Haven, and Connecticut History (hope.mcgrath@yale.edu).

Medicine and Slavery at Yale

Primary Sources

Ellsworth Huntington papers (MS 1)

Robert Means Yerkes papers (MS 569)

Irving Fisher papers (MS 212)

Milton Charles Winternitz papers (MS 859)

"Selective Sterilization for Race Culture" by Theodore Russell Robie (1932)


Secondary Sources

"Rethinking Mental Retardation: Education and Eugenics in Connecticut, 1818-1917" by Lawrence B. Goodheart (journal article)

"Eugenics from the New Deal to the Great Society: Genetics, Demography and Population Quality" by Edmund Ramsden (journal article)

"The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine" by Nathaniel C. Comfort (Chapter 2 covers Dr. Irving Fisher and Yale's role in Human Eugenics)

"In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Study of Human Heredity" by Daniel J. Kevles

"Milton C. Winternitz and the Yale Institute of Human Relations: a Brief Chapter in the History of Social Medicine" by A.J. Viseltear (journal article)

"Cross Era Dark Secrets Resurfaces" (New Haven Independent 2014)

 

 

 

Secondary Sources

"Which Southerners?  Which Southern Historians? A Century of Teaching Southern History at Yale" by Glenda E. Gilmore (journal article)

"A Banner Year for Black Students" by Judith A. Schiff (Yale Alumni Magazine article)

"Eloquence in the Cause of Freedom" by Judith A. Schiff (Yale Alumni Magazine article)

"Levi Jackson: Hometown Hero" by Judith A. Schiff (Yale Alumni Magazine article)

"The Grove Street Cemetery: A history read before the New Haven Colony Historical Society" by Henry H. Townshend (1947 paper discusses the burial of African Americans at the Grove Street Cemetery in the 19th century)

"Yale, Slavery and Abolition" by Antony Dugdale et. al. (Amistad Committee report)

"New Haven Negroes: A Social History" by Robert Austin Warner (book)