Yale continues to judge its historical figures by twenty-first century standards, with the most recent target being former school president Ezra Stiles.
Stiles, “an American academic and minister,” led the Ivy League college for 17 years in the late 1700s. Unfortunately, as Stiles College Head (formerly known as “Master,” remember?) Stephen Pitti says, he also once “controlled the lives of three young people” — two African-Americans and one Native American — and a new plaque outside of the Stiles dining hall reminds students of this fact.
Pitti also runs the new Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration at the school.
As reported by the Yale Daily News, this situation is the latest in “a racially charged naming debate that last year focussed [sic] primarily on Calhoun College. ” But unlike the history surrounding Calhoun — a “fervent advocate for slavery” — Stiles’ views of the time were rather progressive.
“Progressive” back then, however, is still not quite … sufficient.
“It is certain that [Stiles] was never a white supremacist of the 19th-century sort,” Pitti says. “But there’s no ignoring the fact that this abolitionist, minister, and university president lived in a world in which slavery played a prominent role, that he was a slaveholder for a time, and that he served as the master of two indentured servants.”
As a young man, Stiles purchased a 10-year-old black boy named Newport, who worked for him as a slave for more than two decades, even as he publicly inveighed against the “great inhumanity and cruelty” of slavery.
Newport was freed in 1778, the same year Stiles became president of Yale. But four years later, Stiles hired Newport as a free man, on the condition that Newport’s son, Jacob, work for him as an indentured servant. Jacob served Stiles alongside another boy, a Native American named Aaron, until Stiles’ death in 1795.
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Over the past few years, the complicated history of Ezra Stiles has generated intermittent discussion in the college community. And as those conversations intensified last spring — in the wake of University President Peter Salovey’s announcement that name of Calhoun College would not change — students and faculty coalesced around the idea of a plaque honoring Stiles’ slaves and servants.
“Students in this college have been excited for years to discuss Ezra Stiles as an historical figure, including his support of the Jewish community in Rhode Island, his ideas about race and gender, and other topics,” Pitti told the News. “Our new memorial plaque of course calls to mind three individuals whose histories are not so well documented, whose lives have been mostly forgotten, whose stories raise new questions about the past and present, and who leave us wanting to know more.”
The plaque reads in full:
“As a leading minister and intellectual in the 18th century, Ezra Stiles controlled the lives of three young people. Two were African American and one was Native American (Western Niantic). One was a slave (he was manumitted), and the others were indentured servants, but none were free. We remember them here.”
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