Content Examples

On May 1, 1970, the city of New Haven, Connecticut, found itself at the center of a national protest, a pivotal trial, and a college campus in uproar. Such were the unique circumstances surrounding the arrest of the group of Black Panther activists who became known as the “New Haven Nine” for the murder of Alex Rackley, a suspected FBI informant. At a time in American history in which racialized violence and oppression against Black people were widespread and well known in the United States, the May Day Rally represented renewed calls for racial justice by New Haven residents, affiliates of Yale University, and, of course, Black activists from around the nation, including but not limited to those within the Black Panther Party.

"Jappalachia": Connections Between the Appalachian Trail and Japan’s Shinetsu Trail explores how the concept of a “long trail” has traveled through the world and evolved in changing relationships to the environment. The Shinetsu Trail and Appalachian Trail are both nationally funded long-distance trails established during times of increasing industrialization. This exhibit explores how social and environmental changes that followed in the areas helped spur the development of a long trail. Though the connections may be surprising, the relationships between the two trails reveal the manifold purposes and unique aspects of the places they serve.

This exhibition documents the implementation of Coeducation in Yale College through the lens of the buildings and spaces of the Yale University campus. Through records, photographs, and audio-visual materials kept at the Yale University Archives, co-curators Charlotte Keathley, Class of 2022 (Ezra Stiles College) and Michael Lotstein, University Archivist invite visitors to experience the many challenges the first women undergraduates faced in creating a community for themselves on a campus conceived of, and built for, male students.

The song “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” written by James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson at the turn of the twentieth century, is often known today as the Black National Anthem and is sung in schools, churches, and civic settings throughout the United States.

This exhibit offers a look at the creation of the song, and at the lives and careers of the brothers who created it, through primary sources held in the Yale University Library. It is intended to provide teachers and students at the K-8 level with information about the history of the song, but also to serve as a primary-source teaching tool that can be tied into various aspects of the curriculum at the teacher’s discretion. Captions are often minimal so that the material may speak for itself.

“Tomorrow’s overture is always best, no codas for me—I’m a no-stalgia gal.” —Kay Swift, 1975

Reflecting on her lack of "no-stalgia" at age 78, composer Kay Swift (1897–1993) aptly summarized a long and prolific career in music. In addition to being the first woman to compose the complete score of a successful Broadway musical (Fine and Dandy—1930), Swift wrote music for one of George Balanchine’s first American ballets (Alma Mater—1934), served as a staff composer at Radio City Music Hall, and continued to compose works for stage, screen, and concert hall through to her final New York performance in 1986 at age 89. Perhaps George Gershwin’s closest personal and professional companion during the last ten years of his life, Swift also made invaluable contributions to his legacy—arranging over fifty musical numbers from a combination of his sketchbooks and her own impeccable memory after his death in 1937. Through a combination of photographs, scores, programs, writings, and recordings, “Tomorrow’s Overture is Always Best”: The Music of Kay Swift will provide a glance into the unique breadth of Kay Swift’s career and her substantial contributions to the American musical canon.

Bookplates, also known as ex-libris, are labels pasted inside the front covers of books to indicate ownership. The Yale Bookplate Collection—one of the largest such collections in the world—is a unique visual archive that forms a timeline of the history and the art of the ex-libris.