nothin Windows On A Shameful Past | New Haven Independent

Windows On A Shameful Past

This window panel remains in Calhoun College.

Now-gone panel.

Twenty-seven shards of glass: That is what remains of a stained-glass pane at Calhoun College depicting slaves picking cotton after Corey Menafee, an African American employee at Yale University, knocked it down with a broomstick. Mr. Menafee explained his act with great clarity, stating that “… I don’t know, something inside me said, you know, that thing has to come down … It was a picture that just — you know, as soon as you look at it, it just hurts.”

For decades, people of color have had to endure this and other images glorifying slavery in a Yale college named after John C. Calhoun, the nation’s most avid proponent of slavery, a man who saw slavery as a positive good” instead of a necessary evil, as other pro-slavery politicians of his time described it.

This panel of Calhoun himself remains on display …

The images are everywhere at Calhoun College. The Dining Hall includes panes depicting a minstrel playing the banjo (witness the white lips under the hat) and three separate images of living quarters in the Old South — a plantation, a house for white yeomen and slave quarters. Wander into the Common Room, and you will see a seal of South Carolina, an image of Calhoun as a young man and another one depicting him as an elder statesman (for 59 years this same pane included a slave in chains kneeling at his feet but it was altered after student agitation in the 1990s).

Those who live and work at Calhoun are the ones who most strongly feel the effects of this, a shrine to a white supremacist and a celebration of slavery. But the building – and Yale University – are not an isolated island. They are located in this city, our city. A city whose population is majority people of color.

… as does this one …

Despite recent student protests demanding that the university change the name, Yale announced in April that it would keep the name in order to confront, teach, and learn from the history of slavery in the United States”. What this means for the people of color who live, work and study at Calhoun is that they must continue to suffer from the degradation, pain and humiliation of seeing these offensive and racist images on a daily basis. They will come at an added cost to students of color, for these images are not academically neutral: research shows that they may actually risk lower academic performance for students of color resulting from what is known as stereotype threats.

It is doubtful that Yale will follow through on its recent commitment, since it has failed since the introduction of Calhoun’s name and the installation of these racist images in the 1930s to use them in any way to confront,” teach,” or learn” about slavery or how slavery helped pay the bills at Yale from its earliest days.

… and this one showing the state seal of South Carolina …

Until Mr. Menafee’s act, the battle over the Calhoun name and racist images at the college had been largely an internal one. But over the last few weeks, a movement has sprung up, consisting of city residents and those affiliated with the university. They have come together not just in defense of Mr. Menafee, but to also demand that the university change the name of Calhoun College and remove any association between the city, the university and John C. Calhoun.

In 1849, Frederick Douglass wrote of how history should treat John C. Calhoun:

All this talk about the rights of slaveholders and the rights of slave States, is the height of impudence. By what equity, by what morality are they justified? and upon what foundation do they rest their right of property in human flesh? Why, none other or better than may be set up by a band of robbers. We meet John C. Calhoun and the forty thieves” associated with him, as being no better, or more entitled to respect, than a ship’s company of pirates; and the time is coming when they will be so regarded generally.

… as well as this one …

Yale has chosen to continue to honor Calhoun. Despite his enormous impact on our country, there is no building at Yale named for Douglass, only one for Calhoun, a man who would have characterized the majority of residents of New Haven, because of the color of their skin, as sub-human.

Douglass proved correct — history has passed damning judgement on Calhoun and his ilk. History will no doubt do the same for his modern-day apologists.

Kica Matos is director of immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Community Change. She is a resident of New Haven.

… and this one.

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