Yale University has launched a new website chronicling the history of theological education for African Americans. The website, entitled Been in the Storm So Long, has a particular focus on Blacks at the Yale Divinity School.
Among the many online features, the website offers historical accounts of James Pennington, an African American who attended Divinity School classes in the 1830s, Solomon Coles, a former slave who was the first Black graduate of the school in 1875, and Rena Weller Karefa-Smart, who in 1945 was the first woman to graduate from Yale Divinity School.
The project at Yale in under the direction of Yolanda Smith, an associate professor at Yale Divinity School. Dr. Smith holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Arizona State University. She earned a master of divinity degree at Virginia Union University and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the Claremont School of Theology in California. She is the author of Reclaiming the Spirituals: New Possibilities for African American Christian Education (The Pilgrim Press, 2004).
Below is a video showing Professor Smith discussing the Been in the Storm So Long project.
