Members of the class of 2015, on behalf of the faculty and staff of Yale Divinity School, Berkeley Divinity School, and the Institute of Sacred Music, we salute you. Long-suffering spouses, doubting parents, and perplexed friends, we thank you for all of the support that you have provided these graduates and for joining them and us in a celebration of their achievements.
Graduates, you have reached a significant milestone in your life and achieved something that few others have: only 8% of the national population has a master’s degree and only 2% has a professional degree. You have now joined either the 8% or the 2%. More than that, you have accomplished this through one of the world’s leading universities, which makes your achievement all that more remarkable. We salute you and celebrate your accomplishment with your family and friends.
Your degree is now a fait accompli. Where do you go from here? I want to tell you the story of a remarkable individual who, like you, attended classes at YDS. James Pembroke was born into slavery in Maryland in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Trained as a blacksmith, he reacted to the horrors of slavery at an early age. He determined to flee north and, on a hot Sunday afternoon, walked into the woods and never looked back. For eight days he made his way north. Traveling mostly at night to avoid apprehension as a fugitive, he entered Pennsylvania. Desperate for food and in need of putting miles between himself and Maryland, he ventured onto a major road. Exhausted, he was captured by locals on the lookout for runaway slaves but managed to escape. He found refuge in the home of William and Phebe Wright, a Quaker couple, who gave him a job on their farm and began his education. While living with the Wrights, he changed his name from James Pembroke to James William Charles Pennington to mask his fugitive status and to create a new identity.
Although he enjoyed his new life, he knew that he could not stay and made his way to New York City where he found employment and continued his education. It was during this period that he made up his mind to enter the ministry. One of the things that he taught himself was how to read the New Testament in Greek! Through discipline, he became educated enough to win a teaching position at a black school in Newtown on Long Island.
In 1834 he made the decision to come to Yale, in part through the assistance of Simeon Jocelyn. Jocelyn had founded a black church in New Haven, the Temple Street Congregational Church, or what we know as the Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church that Jerry Streets serves today and where a number of you have worshipped. Jocelyn decided to move to New York and offered Pennington accommodations in his New Haven home and the use of his personal library. Pennington accepted and probably also served the church as an assistant to David Dobie, who succeeded Jocelyn.
With this living arrangement, Pennington sought to enter Yale. There were a number of obstacles. He was a first; no African American had ever attended Yale University. He also lacked the prerequisites: he did not have a bachelor’s degree and probably did not read Hebrew, one of the field requirements. He also faced local and regional pressures not to permit blacks to enroll in colleges. He found a compromise. In his own words, preserved in the papers of Frederick Douglas: “I was refused entry to Yale Seminary, but I was told that I could sit with the classes as a visitor, and hear the lectures but my voice was not to be heard in the class room asking or answering a question. I could not get a book from the library and my name was never to appear on the catalogue.” He called his years at Yale his “visitorship.” With the agreement in place, on October 1, 1834, James Pennington began attending classes at Yale. Classes ran until the third week in August when commencement took place! Since there are no official records, we are not certain whether he attended classes for two or three years. Unlike you, he never received a degree.
He later received an honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg. He sought the degree through an influential member of the faculty named Carové whom he met on a European trip. Pennington wrote: “I beg to convey my deepest and most sincere reverence to the honored theological faculty at Heidelberg and particularly and earnestly to assure them that I am not asking for the kind granting of the degree of Doctor of Theology on account of any personal merits nor for personal distinction. I hope to receive this high honor in order to encourage the entire colored population of the United States and for the support and furthering of my endeavors and work for the said population.” The University of Heidelberg agreed and awarded him his degree honoris causa in 1849. He deserved it!
What did Pennington do with his Yale education sans degree? He became a noted minister in Connecticut and New York. Ordained as a Presbyterian minister, he returned to Newtown and served the black Presbyterian church there for the first of two terms. During his first tenure, he performed the marriage ceremony of Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray in Manhattan. He went on to serve churches in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was elected the president of the Hartford Central Association of Congregational Ministers; New York City; Mississippi, Maine, and finally Florida, where he died in 1870.
Pennington was, however, more than a local minister: he embraced the global possibilities that the missionary movement of the nineteenth century offered and served its societies in numerous capacities, most as a member of the executive committee of the American Missionary Association from 1846 to1856.
Pennington’s skills were not only oral and administrative but literary. He wrote the first textbook of the history of African Americans, A Textbook of the Origin and History of the Colored People (1841). A few years later, he wrote the story of his flight north, The Fugitive Blacksmith, a work read in England with such interest that it went through three editions in two years (1849-1850).
But above all, Pennington should be remembered for his work for abolition. He began this work while he was still the fugitive blacksmith in New York before coming to New Haven and worked at it his entire life. While serving the Fifth Congregational Church in Hartford, he raised funds for the Amistad victims. While serving as a minister in New York, he worked to desegregate the New York City public transportation system, a goal that he saw realized in 1855. During the Civil War he worked to raise the Connecticut “Colored Regiment” in which a number of local Native Americans also served—native Americans now studied here on the Quad by the Indian Papers Project. He not only helped to win the war, but worked to prepare black Presbyterian and Congregational Churches for the realities of the postbellum South. Pennington’s work went beyond words of encouragement. At the end of the war he went to Natchez, Mississippi, as a station preacher for the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It was a different world than the one that he walked away from almost forty years earlier.
James Pennington was a remarkable man. He was the first African American to study at Yale. We have in this class, the largest number of black persons ever to graduate from YDS. Pennington was the beginning point. Early last fall I learned about Pennington. One of the documents that I read was a letter written by Professor Corové to the faculty of Heidelberg urging them to award Pennington the honorary doctorate. He said: “Europe has to atone for a terribly heavy guilt for the wretched sons of Africa who since centuries have been robbed of their most sacred human rights.”
I would add that Yale needs to do the same. Pennington has been in the shadows for too long. With the assistance of Jim Hackney, Catherine Kropp, and Lecia Allman, we found a photo of Pennington and a number of primary sources about his life. The photo now hangs with a brief outline of his life in the Sarah Smith gallery. His “visitorship” is over; his photo belongs on the walls with your photos. He is one of us!
I have, however, told his story for another reason as well. You need to know some of the stories of the people who have preceded you at YDS. Pennington did not have the advantage of a Yale degree, but he did have a Yale education. His life is a challenge to all of you who have both: use what you have to make a difference in the world. Pennington overcame enormous challenges to make a difference in the world. His life is a challenge to each of you to do the same.