A new route to HBCUs

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Starting this fall, New Haven public school graduates will be eligible for a $20,000 annual scholarship to help pay their way to one of four historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In December, President Peter Salovey ’86PhD announced the creation of the Pennington Fellowship, a Yale-funded program that will help support ten to twelve students per year to attend Hampton University, Morehouse College, Morgan State University, or Spelman College. “This scholarship addresses, in part, historical disparities in educational opportunities for Black citizens,” Salovey wrote in his announcement.

The program will be administered by New Haven Promise, which, with funding from Yale, has been providing scholarships for public school graduates in the city to attend Connecticut colleges and universities since 2010. It is named for James Pennington, a nineteenth-century minister who is considered the first Black student at Yale. Pennington audited classes at the Divinity School in the 1830s but was not permitted to enroll.