Harvard Will Hold School’s First Ever Black Commencement

Explore Our Galleries

An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

Breaking News!

Today's news and culture by Black and other reporters in the Black and mainstream media.

Click Here

Ways to Support ABHM?

Click Here

May 10, 2017

By Taryn Finley

Huffington Post Black Voices

(Photo by Paul Marotta/Getty Images)

Black students at Harvard University are getting their kente cloth stoles ready for a special graduation ceremony: an all-black commencement.

Two days before the general university graduation, black students will celebrate the obstacles they’ve overcome and the accomplishments they’ve made despite racial issues they face at their Ivy League. More than 170 students and 530 guests have confirmed their attendance to the May 23 celebration, according to The Boston Globe.

Though black students have held separate graduations at predominantly white institutions before, Black Commencement 2017 will be Harvard’s first university-wide graduation ceremony honoring students of the African diaspora. Student organizers raised more than $27,000 to pay for the ceremony and reception. Though this year’s celebration includes mostly graduate students, organizers hope to expand the event to include undergraduates next year.

At a time when students are pressuring Harvard to reckon with its role in slavery and address current racial issues on campus, they see a separate ceremony as a way to reaffirm and uplift their community.

Read the entire article here

Comments Are Welcome

Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors – adults and youth –– can exchange informed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits.

Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. Such comments are posted in the exhibit Hateful Speech. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. Submissions longer than 120 words will be shortened.

See our full Comments Policy here.