Yale University Removes Painting Deemed Racist

For more than a century a portrait of Elihu Yale has hung in the Corporation Room in Woodbridge Hall. The painting depicts Yale with a young black servant sitting at his feet. The servant has a silver collar around his neck signifying that he was held in bondage. Elihu Yale is not known to have owned slaves.

The university has decided to take down the portrait and replace it with one showing Yale standing alone beside the sea.

Elihu Yale was an English merchant who spent a large part of his adult life in India. In 1718 Yale donated gifts with a value of about $200,000 to the school which would later be named after him. All told, Yale has seven portraits of the man for whom the university gets its name. Three of the seven portraits show Elihu Yale being attended by a black slave or servant.

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