Mary Ann Goodman - The Good Woman of New Haven: Lunchtime Webinar
The inspirational life story of Mary Ann Goodman, a free woman of African descent whose bequest to create a fund for seminarians of color made history, will be presented by Joan Duffy, senior archives assistant in the Yale Divinity Library Special Collections, in a lunchtime webinar for the New Haven Museum (NHM). “Mary Ann Goodman - the Good Woman of New Haven,” will be presented on Wednesday, February 19, 2025, at 12:30 p.m. Register here.
The program is the second in the new NHM webinar series, "Voices of Legacy: Lunchtime Conversations on Early Black Women.” During her webinar, Duffy will demonstrate how Goodman’s 1872 endowment of her entire estate ($5,000) made her the first woman of color to establish a scholarship at Yale University. Goodman’s bequest to Yale Divinity School, at a time when students of color were denied formal matriculation into the University, was extraordinary, says Duffy. The gift changed the face of the school with the admission of Solomon Melvin Coles. From that point forward, Duffy says, the Divinity School’s African American presence has continued to grow and thrive.