Yale Admits Blacks - 1969

Yale Elite Series

The Power of Privilege by Joseph Soares, 2007, Excerpts

The other important change in the composition of the Yale College was the enrollment of Black undergraduates. In 1969, Yale enrolled a total of twenty-six Black undergraduates. Yale was as white as elephant ivory. Racist drawings adorned the inner walls of Payne Whitney Gym. The college named after the radical slave master John C. Calhoun had Confederate flags and bull whips outside its dining room.

By 1975, eighty-six undergraduate Blacks entered ale. The average between 1975 and 1997 was ninety-one per year or 7 percent of each undergraduate class. By 2000, Black faculty representation had inched up to being 3 percent at Yale. Blacks, however, continue to be overrepresented in maintenance positions. In 2002, Blacks were nearly 44 percent of Yale’s blue-collar workers.

Even though Yale is now, without doubt, more diverse in gender, race, and religion than ever before, the preponderance of wealthy, White families has not changed from 1952 to the present.