Paul Bass Photo
Inaugural HBCU-bound Pennington Scholarship recipients, from left, Anaya Moore, Skye Williams, Tiara Walters, Laniyah McNeil, Antoine Pittman, Trinity Ford, Brianna Lane, and Migdalia Marquez at Monday's event with Promise President Patricia Melton.
Eight high schoolers made hopeful history Monday — and in the process helped New Haven confront historical wrongs.
In a ceremony held at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, the students (pictured above) were named the first recipients of James W.C. Pennington scholarships. New Haven Promise is administering the Yale-funded four-year $20,000-a-year scholarships to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) including Morgan State, Howard, Spelman, Hampton, and North Carolina A&T. The winners competed with more than 100 students for the scholarships, the first in New Haven Promise’s 12-year history for schools outside Connecticut.
Yale expects the program to grow to 40 to 50 scholarships a year for New Haven public school students. The university said it formed the program in part to address “historical disparities in educational opportunities for Black citizens.”
Those “disparities” include the rejection by New Haven leaders in 1831 of an effort by Black and white abolitionists to create the country’s first HBCU here in town.
The scholarship’s eponymous James Pennington, a fugitive former slave who came North, himself got a raw deal from Yale. He audited classes at the divinity school, the first-ever Black student on campus. But was not allowed officially to register because of his race. He went on to “a noteworthy career as a minister, antislavery organizer, scholar, and speaker” who wrote “the first African American history textbook,” according to an account by the university, which now plans to grant him a posthumous degree.
Proud parents filled the room at Coop for the ceremony, in which the mayor and members of a selection committee urged “the Amazing 8” to return home after college to, in the words of former Coop Principal Dolores Garcia-Blocker, “make New Haven a better place for everyone.”
Recipients like Laniyah McNeil, at center above, repeatedly thanked their mothers for being their rocks of support through their public school journeys, in some cases raising them on their own. “She’s been there since day 1,” teary-eyed Spelman-bound Tiara Walters said of her mom.
Laniyah’s mom Ernestine Giles phone-captured the day for posterity.
Morgan State-bound graduating Coop senior Trinity Ford (in above video) spoke of how her mom helped “push me and inspire me to figure out everything I want to do in my life.”
“She’s been there for my entire ride and always been by biggest supporter,” Skye Williams said of her mom Casey, who sat in the front row (above) with potential 2036 Pennington scholarship recipient Chase.
Scholarship winners and the HBCUs they will attend: Trinity Ford (Morgan State), Migdalia Marquez (Howard), Anaya Moye (Morgan State), Tiara Walters (Spelman), Brianna Lane (Hampton), Laniyah McNeil (Morgan State), Antoine Pittman (Morgan State), Skye Williams (North Carolina A&T).