YSM & Slavery Pilot Project

Yale School of Medicine (YSM) became the institution it is today due, in part, to its connections with slavery and racism. It benefitted financially from the contributions of slave owners and of physicians paid by slave owners. National and international networks of slavery  financed the education of medical students and ensured their incomes after graduation.

YSM, like all nineteenth-century American institutions, was connected financially and culturally with slavery and racism. This context does not, however, mean that YSM is guiltless. YSM faculty members, students, and alumni could have rejected these ties and identified instead with contemporary anti-slavery and anti-racist activists, but most instead chose to follow the dominant racial logic.

Below, a series of articles explores YSM’s nineteenth-century connections with slavery and racism. Many of these articles bring to light troubling and emotionally loaded moments from the school’s past, but we hope by sharing them their legacy can begin to be repaired. We offer these stories as a reflection on past mistakes and as a promise to do better in the future.